Francisco Fernández Ordóñez

After graduation, Fernández Ordóñez joined the ministry of economy in 1959, becoming the assistant secretary in 1973 and president of the National Institute of Industry in 1974, but resigned the same year for political reasons. He then founded the tiny Social Democratic Party. In 1977, his party joined the larger Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD), led by Adolfo Suárez, serving under him as the finance minister from 1977 until 1980, and then as the minister of justice, in which position he legalized divorce.[1]

In 1982 he resigned from office and from the UCD in protest over a case of police torture, creating the small, new Democratic Action Party (Spain) (PAD). He then joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE),[3] becoming one of its deputies in the Cortes Generales when it won the general election of 28 October 1982. He was made president of the Banco Exterior de España until 1986 and was made later minister of foreign affairs. In the Congress he sat as a deputy for Madrid from 1977 to 1979 and from 1982 onwards and represented Zaragoza between 1979 and 1982.