José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (b. 1960, Valladolid) led the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from 2000 to 2012 and served as President of the Government of Spain from April 2004 to December 2011. His unexpected electoral victory came three days after the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings, in which the outgoing Partido Popular government of José María Aznar was widely criticised for initially attributing the attacks to ETA rather than to jihadist perpetrators.

In foreign policy, Zapatero moved quickly to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq, fulfilling a campaign pledge and distancing Madrid from the Aznar-era alignment with the United States and the United Kingdom on the Iraq War. He promoted the Alliance of Civilizations, an initiative co-sponsored with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and adopted under UN auspices in 2005, aimed at bridging relations between Western and Muslim-majority societies.

Domestically, his first term is associated with a wave of social legislation: the legalisation of same-sex marriage (July 2005, making Spain the third country worldwide to do so), an expedited divorce law, the Law of Historical Memory (2007) addressing legacies of the Franco dictatorship, and a Gender Equality Law (2007). He also negotiated, then saw collapse, a ceasefire process with ETA in 2006–2007.

His second term (2008–2011) was dominated by the global financial crisis and the eurozone sovereign debt crisis. After initial fiscal stimulus, Zapatero reversed course in May 2010 under pressure from EU partners and markets, announcing austerity measures including public-sector pay cuts and a constitutional amendment (Article 135, agreed with the PP in 2011) enshrining budgetary stability. Facing collapsing approval, he called early elections in November 2011, which the PSOE lost decisively to Mariano Rajoy's PP. Since leaving office he has been active as an international mediator, notably in Venezuela.