Mariano Rajoy Brey (Galician: [maɾiˈanʊ raˈʃoj], Spanish: [maˈɾjano raˈxoj]; born 27 March 1955) is a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 2011 to 2018. A member of the People's Party, he served as the party's president from 2004 to 2018. At a total of nearly 15 years, Rajoy was the longest-serving politician in the Spanish government since the transition to democracy, having held ministerial offices continuously from 1996 to 2004 and from 2011 to 2018.
Born in Santiago de Compostela, Rajoy studied law and graduated from the University of Santiago de Compostela in 1977. In 1979, he became a property register at the age of 24, one of the youngest in Spain at the time. He then entered politics during Spain's transition to democracy, initially as a member of the Regional Government of Galicia. In 1986, Rajoy was elected a member of the Congress of Deputies but shortly resigned his seat later that year to be appointed Vice President of Galicia, a role that he served in until the following year. In the 1989 elections, Rajoy was reelected as a member of the Congress of Deputies and from 1996 to 2004 held several ministers during the Premiership of José María Aznar. In 2004, Rajoy ran as the People's Party for the general election but his party narrowly lost to the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), something repeated in the general elections held four years later. Three years later in 2011, Rajoy won the general elections by a majority and was sworn in as prime minister on 21 December.
Rajoy's first term was heavily marked by the 2008–2014 Spanish financial crisis and oversaw a major restructuring of the Spanish financial system as well as a major labour reform. The financial crisis peaked with a bailout of the Spanish banking system in June 2012. Unemployment in Spain peaked at 27% in 2012, leading to an initial drop of the People's Party in the polls, which was aggravated by the revelations of a series of corruption cases that seriously damaged the party's reputation. This, among other factors, led to a profound shift in the Spanish party system, with the rise of new political parties from the left and the right: Podemos and Citizens. Rajoy also oversaw the 2017–18 Spanish constitutional crisis marked by the Catalan independence referendum of 2017 and the Catalan unilateral declaration of independence on 27 October 2017 that led to the imposition of direct rule in Catalonia.
On 1 June 2018, Rajoy and his government was ousted by the opposition parties led by the opposition leader Pedro Sánchez, the secretary-general of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, which only held 84 seats at the time and Sánchez was sworn in the following day. Four days later, Rajoy resigned as president of the People's Party and retired from politics shortly after and he was succeeded as his party's president by Pablo Casado a month later. While credited for lifting Spain out of the economic crisis, the austerity measures Rajoy and his government took, as well their handling of the Catalonia crisis, were heavily criticized. Corruption scandals in the People's Party further damaged the party and Rajoy's reputation.
Born 27 March 1955 in Santiago de Compostela, in the province of A Coruña, in what is now the Spanish autonomous community of Galicia, Rajoy is the grandson of Enrique Rajoy Leloup, one of the architects of the Galician Statute of Autonomy (1936) (Estatuto de autonomía de Galicia), who was removed from university teaching by the Franco dictatorship in the early 1950s. He is the son of Olga Brey López and Mariano Rajoy Sobredo, a jurist, and president of the Provincial Court of Pontevedra, the city where he grew up.
Later on, his father was transferred to León and the whole family moved there. He was duly enrolled, together with his brothers Luis and Enrique, and spent ten years there before moving to the Jesuit school in Vigo. After finishing secondary school he started university, enrolling in the Law Faculty in Santiago de Compostela.
Rajoy graduated from the University of Santiago de Compostela and passed the competitive examination required in Spain to enter into the civil service, becoming the youngest-ever property registrar.
He was assigned to Padrón (A Coruña), Villafranca del Bierzo (León) and Santa Pola (Alicante), a position he still holds. In that year, Rajoy sustained facial injuries in a traffic accident. Since then, he has always worn a beard to cover the scars from these injuries.
Rajoy married Elvira "Viri" Fernández Balboa on 28 December 1996, on La Toja Island (Pontevedra). The couple have two children.
While on the campaign trail in 2011, Rajoy published his autobiography, En Confianza (In Confidence).
Earlier member of the Spanish National Union (UNE), Rajoy joined the right-wing party People's Alliance (AP), becoming a deputy in the inaugural legislature of the Galician Parliament in 1981. In 1982, he was appointed by Galician regional president, Xerardo Fernández Albor, as Minister of Institutional Relations of the Xunta de Galicia. On 11 June 1983, Rajoy was elected President of the Provincial Deputation of Pontevedra, a position he held until 10 December 1986.
In the General Elections of 22 June 1986, he won a seat in the Congress of Deputies as the head of the AP's list for Pontevedra, although he resigned in November to take up the post of vice-president of the Xunta of Galicia following the resignation of Xosé Luis Barreiro and the rest of the ministers. He occupied this latter position until the end of September 1987. In May 1988 he was elected General Secretary of the AP in Galicia during an extraordinary congress of the regional party.
When in 1989 the AP merged with other parties to form the People's Party (PP), with Manuel Fraga as its president, Rajoy was named a member of its National Executive Committee and delegate for Pontevedra. He was reelected to parliament in 1993. Before the PP's triumph in the 1996 elections, he was a PP-designated member of the Commission of Parliamentary Control of the RTVE.
In April, the former president of Castile and León and presidential candidate of the government general elections in 1989, José María Aznar, was elected president of the PP. Confirmed in the National Executive, Mariano Rajoy was appointed deputy secretary general of the party. He was re-elected in Pontevedra in the election on 6 June 1993.
Ministerial career (1996–2003)
On 3 March 1996, the PP won the early parliamentary elections and formed a government with the support of the Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ-PNV), Convergence and Union (CiU) and the Canarian Coalition (CC). Rajoy, a long-time associate of newly elected prime minister José María Aznar, made the move into national politics in Aznar's first government when he was appointed Minister of Public Administration on 6 May. His term was marked by the adoption, in 1997, of the Law on organization and operation of the general administration of the State (LOFAGE), which regulates the organization and functions of central government, and the Law on Government.
He changed his portfolio on 20 January 1999 and replaced Esperanza Aguirre as Minister of Education and Culture. Just after his appointment, he was reelected vice-secretary general of the PP during its thirteenth national conference.
In 2000 he led the People's Party election campaign for the elections on 12 March, in which they won absolute majority. On 28 April 2000, Rajoy was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Presidency.