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Jos Mara Aznar Jos Mara Aznar López (born February 25, 1953) was President of the Government (styled Presidente del Gobierno, i.e., Prime Minister) of Spain from May 5 1996 to April 17 2004, and was referred to in English as the Prime Minister of Spain. Aznar was born in Madrid, but is of Basque descent. He is the grandson of Manuel Aznar Zubigaray, a Spanish diplomat and newspaper editor. He studied law at Madrid's Universidad Complutense, and then became an inspector for the Spanish Tax Authority. He joined the conservative People's Alliance (Alianza Popular), and was elected Member of Parliament for La Rioja. He was later elected to the presidency of Autonomous Community of Castile-Leon. His success earned him the trust of the party leader Manuel Fraga, who appointed him as new party leader. Aznar reorganised Spanish conservatives into a new party, the People's Party (Partido Popular), moving to the political center by embracing economic liberalism without attacking the welfare state. Aznar moved the PP from the Conservative group in the European Parliament to the more centrist and Christian Democratic European People's Party. On April 19, 1995, the Basque terrorist group ETA made an assassination attempt on Aznar. He only survived the attack thanks to his armored car. One woman was killed as a result of the blast. After a strong campaign against the corruption scandals of Felipe Gonzlez's Socialists and against Gonzlez's alleged involvement with the GAL – an illegal anti-terrorist group – Aznar's PP lost the Spanish legislative election in 1994. Two years after this, and again versus Felipe Gonzlez won the 1996 general election. Short of an absolute majority, Aznar had to reach agreements with other parties. After some negotiations, he became Prime Minister with the support of three regionalist parties: Convergence and Unity (Catalan), Basque Nationalist Party and the Canary Islands Coalition. His first term was dominated by the economic agenda and the need to negotiate with the nationalist parties. Aznar was re-elected with an absolute majority in the 2000 general election. The major interests of his administration were to further improve the Spanish economy and to fight against local and national terrorism. Aznar and his party adopted a firm defense of the current wording of the Spanish Constitution of 1978, strongly opposing a plan for further Basque autonomy presented by Basque president Juan Jos Ibarretxe. He actively supported US President George W. Bush and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq in spite of the strong public opposition and street protests. In January 2004 Aznar requested the dissolution of the Cortes and new elections, and announced he would not be seeking the prime minister's office again. He nominated Mariano Rajoy as the PP's candidate for the elections held in March 2004, which the PP, although it had been leading in the polls, lost three days after the Madrid train bombings, attributed to Islamic terrorists, which claimed 191 lives. Aznar is married to Ana Botella Serrano with two sons and a daughter. In 2004, Ana Botella was elected as a city councilor for Madrid on the PP ticket. After leaving office, he has presided over the FAES think tank, which is associated with the Partido Popular. He is a Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership at Georgetown University. List of Works - "Libertad y solidaridad" (1991)
- "La Espaa en que yo creo" (1995)
- "Espaa: la segunda transicin" (1995)
- "Ocho aos de Gobierno. Una visin personal de Espaa" (2004)
External links See also Aznar, Jos Mara
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