Arantza Quiroga Cía

Arantza Quiroga Cía (Irún, July 26 1973) is the current President of the Basque Parliament, an office commonly known in the Anglophone world by the name of "Speaker of the Parliament". Mrs. Quiroga, who has a degree in Law, is a member of the conservative People's Party and the current Deputy Secretary-General of the Basque branch of the party.

Born to a father from Valladolid and a Basque mother, she grew up in her grandmother's caserío in Andoain. The Basque nationalist leanings of her grandmother, who tried to swerve her into voting the PNV when she came of age, did not succeed in recruiting her for the nationalist cause: she became a member of the Spain-wide conservative People's Party youth movement Nuevas Generaciones at 21 and was elected concilmember of Irún on the party list. Her political career began to take off three years later, when she pronunced a speech in a party meeting in Madrid regarding the 20th anniversary of the first democratic elections.

She was first elected to the Basque Parliament in the 1998 election for the constituency of Guipúzcoa, and has since had a continuous presence in the chamber (she lost her seat in the 2001 election, but entered parliament because fellow PP MP María San Gil resigned her Guipúzcoa seat shortly after the election). On virtue of a deal between her party and the PSE-EE after the 2009 election, the conservatives announced that she would be their candidate to preside the Basque Parliament even though she is not fluent in the Basque language, which prompted criticism from nationalist parties. She was elected as Speaker on April 3, 2009, and formally opened the new Parliament with a speech mixing Basque and Spanish.

External links

1. Basque Parliament: Arantza Quiroga - Bio Template:Es icon