Mariano Rajoy

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.