Manuel Fraga

Fraga was born in Vilalba, Lugo Province, Galicia. Trained in law, economics and political science, he began his political career in 1945, during Francisco Franco's reign.

Fraga married Carmen Estévez Eguiagaray, whom he had met in 1945 in the Faculty of Law, on 17 January 1948.[2] They had 5 children: Carmen, Isabel, José Manuel, Ignacio and Adriana. He also adopted Amalia.[2][3] Aside from Spanish, Fraga also spoke French, English, Italian, German, Portuguese, Galician and Basque.[4]

Fraga started in the Franco cabinet in 1962 as Minister of Information and tourism. He played a major role in the revitalization of Spanish tourist industry, leading a campaign under the slogan Spain is different!. On 8 March 1966, he attempted to dispel fears of a nuclear accident after the Palomares hydrogen bombs incident by swimming in the contaminated water with the American ambassador, Angier Biddle Duke.[5]

Fraga authorized the execution of political prisoners under the Francoist State. A notable case is the execution of communist leader Julián Grimau, whom he called "that little gentleman" (Spanish: ese caballerete) in a press conference when asked about his detention and death sentence. His death sentence caused a large controversy outside of Spain. Grimau was executed by firing squad in 1963. Fraga never publicly apologized or expressed regret for Grimau's execution.

Another notable case was the assassination by Spanish police of Enrique Ruano, a student activist who opposed the Francoist State. Fraga telephoned Ruano's father and threatened to arrest his other daughter, Margot, who was also an anti-Francoist, unless she immediately stopped her activism. The then-director of Spanish newspaper ABC, Torcuato Luca de Tena, later confessed that Fraga ordered him to publish a manipulated copy of Ruano's personal diary in order to present Ruano as a mentally unstable person who killed himself.[6]

Later in the decade, Fraga established himself as one of the more prominent members of a reformist faction in the government who favoured opening up the government from above. He introduced an a posteriori censorship law, which was based on lifting pre-publication censorship and a reduction in its strictness. Additionally, a certain sexual liberality in films was popularly summarized in the expression Con Fraga hasta la braga[7][8] ("With Fraga [you can see] even the panties"). His departure from the government was prompted by the MATESA affair: the debt of the important publisher Manuel Salvat Dalmau was tangled with members of the Opus Dei, faction which Fraga opposed. When he published this information, the caudillo Franco expelled both sectors.

In 1973, Fraga (according to his memoirs he had been in the shortlist for becoming prime minister along Carrero Blanco and Raimundo Fernández Cuesta), accepted a proposal by Foreign Minister Laureano López Rodó to become Ambassador to the United Kingdom, under the conditions of the stint no being longer then 2 years, having the ability to appoint a counsellor and a press officer and not being excessively constrained by the Francoist administration.[9] He also wanted to finish a book titled La España de los 70.[9] He served until 1975.

Following Franco's death on 20 November 1975, Fraga was appointed deputy prime minister (Vice President of the Government) and Interior Minister (Ministro de Gobernación) on 12 December 1975,[10] under Carlos Arias Navarro, a post he held until 5 July 1976.[10][11] This was the first government with Juan Carlos I as chief of state.

By this time, Fraga believed Francoism could not be maintained forever. However, while he still favoured liberalization from above, his vision entailed an extremely gradual transition to full democracy. The drastic measures he took as interior minister and head of state security during the first days of the Spanish transition to democracy gave him a reputation for heavy-handedness, and deeply damaged his popularity. The phrase "¡La calle es mía!" ("The streets are mine!") was attributed to him[12] as his answer to complaints of police repression of street protests: he claimed that the streets did not belong to the "people" but to the state. He was known to be an admirer of Cánovas del Castillo. During a clash at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Vitoria (Euskadi) between police and striking workers, on Fraga's orders the police stormed into a packed church into which 4,000 demonstrators had retreated and went on a shooting spree, resulting in five dead and over 100 wounded.[10]

Prime Minister Felipe González holding a meeting with Fraga in La Moncloa in July 1983.

In 1976, Fraga and other former prominent members of the Francoist government founded the People's Alliance (AP), initially a loose confederation of political parties that later became a full-fledged party. Although he tried to brand the party as a mainstream conservative party, the people did not trust him. Besides the large number of former Francoists in the party, Fraga's performance as interior minister gave voters pause. Fraga was one of the writers of the new Spanish constitution approved in 1978 (the "Fathers of the Constitution"). AP fared poorly in its first years, but following the 1982 crisis and the collapse of the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD), the party that—led by Adolfo Suárez—had won the first two democratic elections, AP became the second biggest group in the Congress of Deputies after the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE).

Fraga was reckoned as the Leader of the Opposition to the PSOE government. The PSOE enjoyed great popularity and an absolute majority winning streak in the 1982 and 1986 elections, in part because Fraga and the AP were generally viewed as too reactionary to be an alternative. He was subject to a scandal in 1983, when it was reported that Rodolfo Almirón, a former Argentine national police officer leader of the Triple A, a far-right death squad in Argentina, had become chief of his personal security team.[n. 1]

Following a political crisis in AP in 1986 that saw former Secretary-General Jorge Verstrynge leaving the party and the breaking of the alliance with the christian-democrats of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) under the People's Coalition (CP), Fraga resigned from the presidency of AP in December 1986.[14] Replaced as party leader by Antonio Hernández Mancha, Fraga ran first in the People's Alliance list for the 1987 European election and was subsequently elected MEP. He served as member of the European Parliament until 1989.

With the AP in headlong decline, Fraga briefly resumed the leadership of the party in 1989. With the addition of several lesser Christian democratic parties and the remnants of the Democratic Center Union, he refounded the People's Alliance as the People's Party (PP). Later in the same year, Fraga encouraged the election of José María Aznar as the party's new president. Fraga was then appointed as honorary president of the PP.

José María Aznar and Fraga in 1996

Manuel Fraga returned to his Galician homeland in 1989, and following the results of the 1989 regional election, with the People's Party in Galicia (PPdG) winning a simple majority in the regional parliament, he became President of the Xunta of Galicia.[15] He remained in charge for almost 15 years until 2005, when the PPdeG lost its overall majority.

Fraga was widowed on 23 February 1996.[16][3]

Fraga saw his credibility damaged in late 2002, when the oil tanker ship Prestige sank off the Galician coast. It caused a massive oil spill that affected the shoreline in the northwest of the region. Fraga was said to have been slow to react and unable, or unwilling, to handle the situation. In 2004, a power struggle between factions of PPdeG further hurt the party's image.

Subsequently, in the autonomous elections of 2005, Fraga and the PPdeG lost their absolute majority in the Parliament of Galicia. Despite their obtaining a 45% plurality in the elections, a left-government coalition developed between the Socialists' Party of Galicia (PSdeG) and the Galician Nationalist Bloc, making socialist Emilio Pérez Touriño the new president. Fraga remained on the political scene from Galicia, as a member of the Senate representing the Parliament of Galicia. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, a member of the Galician Popular Party, succeeded Fraga as head of the PPdG on 15 January 2006.

Manuel Fraga (Third from left) on a convention on climate change of the European People's Party in Madrid (2008).

Fraga was designated as member of the Senate by the Parliament of Galicia in 2006.[16] He served in the Upper House until 2011.

Fraga died on 15 January 2012 of a respiratory disease.[17] His funeral was attended by Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia.[18]