Federico Jiménez Losantos

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Federico Jiménez Losantos is a popular and controversial radio talk show hosts of Spain. He was born in Orihuela del Tremedal (Teruel, Spain) on September 15, 1951. He earned a degree in Hispanic Philology from the University of Barcelona and was a senior teacher of Spanish Literature at the Instituto Lope de Vega, a high school in Madrid.

During Francisco Franco's regime Jiménez Losantos was an active anti-Francoist member of different illegal maoist and communist organizations in Barcelona, where was based before and during the Spanish transition to democracy.

He grew disillusioned with the communist creed as a result of a journey to Maoist China, where he had gone to receive military and ideological training, but, having realized instead of the real situation of the populace and the thorough control it was subjected to, this triggered a complete reversal of his political stances. Nowadays he defines himself as classic liberal, and is accused by others of being close to the European hard right. He is particularly positioned against the PSOE, which he argues has been leading Spain into a Leninist-Maoist status in league with terrorists in Spain and abroad, on the one side and Catalan and Basque nationalism (and what he sees as their alleged historical revisionism) on the other side. He is opposed to mass immigration, in particular that of Muslims and Arabs, arguing that many in such groups bring crime and terrorism. He supports the 2003 invasion of Iraq and believes Global warming is not caused by human activity. Despite his Spanish nationalist opinions, he has been highly critical of the Spanish king, arguing that he is a closet socialist who should have opposed the PSOE government over its policies in the Basque country and Catalonia and should abdicate in favour of his son.

In 1981, he was abducted and shot in the leg by the now-defunct terrorist organization Terra Lliure after signing a manifesto demanding an end to the Catalan government's policies restoring the use of the Catalan language in Catalonia, following its previous repression during the Franco dictatorship. These then-new policies were, at the time, being set up according to the Catalan government's Linguistic Normalization Law as approved by its Parliament.

As a result of these events, he moved permanently to Madrid, where he was hired as Op-Ed Editor of Diario 16. He has since worked in Antena 3 Radio and afterwards in the Spanish radio network COPE. After a year living in Miami, he returned to Spain and took charge of La Linterna, a night program in Spanish radio. In 2003 he became director of La Mañana. He is one of the most listened-to radio talk show hosts in Spain, with his mainly political morning show La Mañana.

He is founder and editor of the Spanish on-line newspaper Libertad Digital, yet he is a regular columnist for El Mundo. In 2005 he founded The Spain Herald, an English-language digest of articles from Libertad Digital. The Spain Herald has been off-line since June 2006.

He has been successfully prosecuted on a number of occasions for illegal and defamatory pronouncements, including being ordered, along with his employers COPE, to pay compensation of 60,000 euros to the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya political party, which was donated to non-profit organisations. [1] [2] [3] [4]