Loyola de Palacio

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Ignacia de Loyola de Palacio y del Valle Lersundi (September 16, 1950—December 13, 2006) was a Spanish politician. She was one of the first women to rise to political prominence in Spain after the death of General Franco. She was a minister in the Spanish government from 1996 to 1998, and a member of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. Her sister, Ana Palacio, was Foreign Minister of Spain from 2002 to 2004, and is vice president of the World Bank.

De Palacio was born in Madrid, into an aristocratic Basque family, the eldest of four sisters and three brothers, daughter of Luis María de Palacio y de Palacio, 4th Marqués de Matonte, and wife Luisa Mariana del Valle-Lersundi y del Valle. Her mother Luisa died of lung cancer when she was 22, and she took charge of the family. She was educated at the Lycée Français in Madrid, and studied law at Complutense University.

In 1976, she was a founder member of the right-wing Alianza Popular (later renamed the Partido Popular) led by Manuel Fraga, and she became the first leader of its youth section, Nuevas Generaciones. Her politics were on the "soft", liberal wing of her party. She was elected to represent Segovia in the upper house of the Spanish Parliament (the Senado) in June 1986 Spanish general election. She joined the national executive of the Partido Popular in 1989, and was elected as a deputy for Segovia in the lower house (the Congreso de los Diputados) in the October 1989 Spanish general election, remaining in the lower house until 1999. She served as minister of agriculture, fisheries and food in José María Aznar's Partido Popular government that took power after the 1996 Spanish general election.


Loyola de Palacio in 2004
Loyola de Palacio in 2004

She headed the Partido Popular's list in the June 1999 European elections, and was duly elected to the European Parliament. She also joined the European Commission on 13 September 1999, as commissioner for energy and transport, in the Prodi Commission. She also served as vice-president (jointly with Neil Kinnock), and took charge of relations with the European Parliament. She pushed forward the Galileo positioning system, and new maritime safety regulations following the Prestige oil spill off the coast of Galicia in November 2002.

After leaving the Commission on 21 November 2004, she became a director at the banks BNP Paribas and Rothschild Bank, and at the pharmaceutical company Zeltia.

She was a devout Catholic but denied being connected with the Opus Dei group,[1] claiming that her name (after that of the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola) made that impossible.[2]

She enjoyed sports, including mountaineering but she preferred diving and windsurf. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2006, and was treated in Houston and Madrid for five months. She died in Madrid. Following her death a state memorial was made in which all parties, including the extreme left-wing and harsh PP critics United Left, to remember her strong policies to improve EU regulations.

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  1. ^ Sainthood for 'sect' founder. Sunday Herald (October 6, 2002). Retrieved on 2006-12-19.
  2. ^ "Obituary", The Independent, 15 December 2006. Retrieved on 2006-12-15. "Loyola de Palacio was on the right of a conservative party, and her devout Catholicism prompted accusations that she was a member of the ultra-conservative, secretive Opus Dei. Her riposte was unanswerable: 'How can I be a member of Opus with a name like Loyola?' Ignacio Loyola's Jesuits are bitter opponents of Opus Dei." 

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