Fernando Buesa

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Fernando Buesa Blanco (29 May 1946 – 22 February 2000) was a Spanish Basque politician in the Basque Christian Democracy and in the Socialist Party of Euskadi - Euskadiko Ezkerra (PSE-EE) branch of the social democratic Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). He was assassinated by ETA.

Born in 1946 in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain, Buesa studied law in Madrid and Barcelona and practiced from 1970 to 1986 in Vitoria-Gasteiz. He was a councillor in Vitoria-Gasteiz (1983-97), a member of the parliament of the Basque Country (1984-2000) and leader of Álava province council (1987-91). Buesa was also deputy lehendakari (president of the Basque government) and secretary of Education in a coalition PSE-Basque Nationalist Party Basque government from 1991 to 1994.

From this position, he steered the process that moved the Basque-language schools (ikastolak) into either the Basque public education network or the Basque private education sector.

Fernando Buesa was married and had three children.

At the time of his death Buesa was the leader of the PSE-EE in Álava and the PSE-EE spokesman in the parliament of the Basque Country. He was killed by the terrorist group ETA while he was walking through the university campus in Vitoria-Gasteiz on the 22 February 2000. The car bombing also killed his bodyguard, the ertzaina (Basque policeman) Jorge Díez Elorza. The killing inspired a celebrated documentary by the Basque filmmaker Eterio Ortega Santillana titled Asesinato en Febrero ("Assassination in February").

His brother, an economics professor in Madrid, has become politically active analysing the economic implications of eventual Basque independence.

The sports arena of the Vitoria-Gasteiz Baskonia basketball team, which was formerly known as Araba Arena, was renamed Fernando Buesa Arena following his death.

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