Pablo Casado Blanco (Spanish pronunciation:[ˈpaβlokaˈsaðoˈβlaŋko]; born 1 February 1981) is a Spanish former politician. He was a member of the
Congress of Deputies representing
Madrid until 4 April 2022,[2] having previously represented
Ávila between 2011 and 2019.[3] From 2015 to 2018, he also served as vice secretary general of communication of the
People's Party (PP).[4] From July 2018 until April 2022, he was the president of the PP.[5][6]
Biography
Early life and education
Casado was born on 1 February 1981 in
Palencia. His father, Miguel Casado González,[7] was a doctor and his mother, Esther Blanco Ruiz,[7] a nursing university professor. His family owns an
ophthalmologic clinic in his native city.[8] He studied at the Colegio Castilla, managed by the
Marist Brothers, and took the 8th year of the General Basic Education (EGB) at
Douai School[1]
in the
United Kingdom.[9] He has five brothers.
He started his university studies in law at the
ICADE (a centre located in Madrid and integrated within the
Universidad Pontificia Comillas) in 1999, but he switched to another centre in 2004,[10][n 1] enrolling in the
CES Cardenal Cisneros, a privately managed centre owned by a
foundation of the
Community of Madrid and attached (for the purpose of the issuance of the degree) to the public
Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).[10] He ultimately obtained his degree in law in the CES Cardenal Cisneros in September 2007 after having reportedly passed half of the credits of the 5-year licenciature in four months of that year.[10] The centre issued a statement where they denied accusations of impropriety or preferential treatment regarding the student Casado.[15]
He also has a BA in Business Administration and Management and an MA in Administrative Law from the
King Juan Carlos University (URJC).[16] The latter degree is a source of significant controversy, as Casado was found to have obtained it from the now controverted School of Administrative Law of that university without ever attending any class, taking any test, and turning in a final dissertation.[17] An internal investigation by the URJC confirmed that the degrees were legitimate and uncovered no impropriety.[18]
Casado has said that he also earned a postgraduate degree at
Harvard University; he had in fact attended a four-day course in 2008 at the Madrid campus of
IESE Business School which is allied with
Harvard Business School. No academic requirements were needed to attend the course, and attendance was the only requirement for completion.[19] The
Supreme Court of Spain decided in September 2019 that he did not evidently violate laws against
prevarication or bribery, but said the matter “could deserve other types of consideration outside criminal law."[20][21]
Start of political career
Casado entered politics and joined the
People's Party (PP) in 2003 when he was still a student.[22][23]
In 2007, he was included as candidate in the PP list for the
election to the Assembly of Madrid; he became a member of the 8th term of the
regional legislature (in June),[29] where he held the functions of spokesman in the parliamentary Commission of Justice and Public Administrations and assistant spokesman in the Commission of Budget and Finance.[30]
He resigned as regional legislator in July 2009.[31] In June 2009 Casado married Isabel Torres Orts;[32] the couple have a daughter Paloma and a son Pablo.[33] Isabel Torres is from a wealthy industrial family in
Elche, and works as a psychologist in a private clinic in Madrid.[34]
Between 2009 and 2012 he directed the office of former Prime Minister
José María Aznar. During this period, in 2010, he became one of the founders (along with
Carlos Bustelo,
Rafael Bardají and Enrique Navarro Gil) of the Friends of Israel Initiative
think tank.[35][36]
He was designated spokesman of the Campaign Committee of the PP for the
local and
regional elections of May 2015.[37][38] Later, in June 2015, he was appointed vice secretary general of communication of the PP by the party president
Mariano Rajoy.[39]
On 9 October 2017, Casado made a comment about the former
President of Catalonia,
Carles Puigdemont, alluding that should Puigdemont declare
Catalan independence, he could end up like
Lluís Companys, who was imprisoned by the
Spanish Second Republic. His words were used by some Catalan nationalists[by whom?] to suggest that he referred to Companys' execution by Franco's regime in 1940, although Casado stated he was referring to his imprisonment by the democratic Second Republic.[n 3]
19th PP National Congress
After the
motion of no confidence,
Mariano Rajoy resigned from the leadership of the PP, Pablo Casado ran as pre-candidate to the primary election to the presidency of the party. He introduced himself as a (potential) leader intending to "recover" voters from
Citizens and
Vox.[45]
He obtained the second most votes out of 6 candidates after
Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, former
Deputy Prime Minister of Spain, who received the most votes among the party members with a margin of 1,500 votes. On July 21, 2018, during the 19th Extraordinary National Congress of the PP, a final vote among 3,082 party delegates was held in order to decide the new leader of the PP between Sáenz de Santamaría and Casado.[46][47]
He won the voting among the delegates with 1,701 votes (57,2%) versus 1,250 (42%) votes to Sáenz de Santamaría out of 2,973 votes, being proclaimed as the new president, in what was considered a party swing towards the right.[48][49][50][51]
2019 election
In response to a budget defeat, Prime Minister
Pedro Sánchez dissolved the Cortes Generales,[52] giving Casado an early test of his leadership, which was also in the aftermath of the first right-of-centre government in Andalucia.[53]
The election results proved disappointing for Casado, his party losing over half of their seats in the Cortes Generales, with Albert Rivera's Citizens, overtaking them as the foremost party of the centre-right in many regions of Spain, and the new far-right Vox also taking a significant number of voters.[54][55] This major loss was devastating for Casado and for the 2019 election campaign manager,
Javier Maroto, who not only lost his seat in the Basque country to
EH Bildu, but was fired by PP.[56] Casado refused to resign, but many members' worries of the "suicide" that was his controversial leadership,[57] have been confirmed in light of the defeat, as he has now U-turned back to the political centre,[58][59] placing much of the blame of the loss on Cs and Vox, for splintering the vote.[60][61]
Casado adopted an active role during the COVID-19 lockdown, refraining from restricting public activities, visiting disparate locations such as
Mercamadrid, a hotel, a sheep farm and the headquarters of the association of vehicle producers; he proceeded to criticise the Government of Spain from those platforms.[62] In May 2020 he established abstention on the vote on the extension of the
State of Alarm as the party line.[63]
Leadership challenges
His leadership of the PP was challenged in 2022 by
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the popular president of the community of Madrid, leading to a dramatic internal conflict. Ayuso went so far as to accuse Casado of maneuvering to "destroy" her. A large number of PP leaders and activists demanded Casado resign, but he refused. The president of Galicia,
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, considered the most respected figure in the PP, said that "the situation is unsustainable. Pablo Casado's reign is coming to an end. We have to make difficult decisions."[64] Casado resigned as PP leader and an MP on 4 April, and was replaced as party leader by Feijóo.[65]
He has been described as
neoconservative, as well as close to
José María Aznar and
Esperanza Aguirre.[66][67] He describes himself as
liberal-conservative.[68] According to
José Luis Villacañas, Casado's discourse incorporates several of the core tenets of the Spanish right, including an emphasis on
Catholicism, the secondary role of women, a stress on the unity of the Spanish nation,
anti-abortion views, and
Atlanticism.[69] According to Antonio Elorza, Casado's ascension represents the comeback of the reactionary PP in the name of principles and fidelity to
political lineage: the family as a totem, a fiscal counterreform, a heavy hand in Catalonia, a preventively repressive legislation and
Franco's corpse remaining at
Valle de los Caídos.[70]
In October 2017, he vouched (on a personal basis) for a potential reform of the
Organic Law of Political Parties which would include the illegalization of political parties promoting the independence (of a part of Spain).[72]
Annoyed by the decision of a German court to grant the extradition of Puigdemont to Spain solely for the charge of embezzlement in July 2018 (which he branded as "humiliation"), he raised the possibility of abolishing the
Schengen Area.[73] In September 2018 he directly ordered the PP members of the
European Parliament to abstain in the voting of the
Sargentini report calling for triggering
Article 7 proceedings against the Hungarian government of
Viktor Orbán.[74]
Also in July 2018, he inveighed against "
gender ideology", which he described as a form of "social collectivism the centre-right must fight against".[75] He is also critical of the
right of abortion as well as
euthanasia.[76]
On 21 July 2018, in the National Congress of the PP, he vowed to "reconquer the Catalan people". Referencing
Tabarnia, a hypothetical anti-independentist breakaway from Catalonia, he said that he would be "turning the hypothetical Tabarnia into a real Tabarnia".[77][78]
He has declared the "
Hispanidad" to be the mankind's greatest feat, only comparable to
romanization.[79] According to Elorza, in his message, void of any criticism, Casado recovers the formulation of the concept of Hispanidad of the 1930s and reaffirms a particular idea of Spain, in which history, turned into a mechanism of exaltation, is used to propel a nationalist mobilization.[80]
He also said that action for the historical memory of
Francisco Franco's crimes should be brought about by consensus, and that Spain should concentrate on problems of the present, not the past.[83]
A
monarchist,[84] he vocally defended the institution and proclaimed "I will always defend the King of Spain" in 2018 while he announced his opposition to opening a parliamentary commission aiming to investigate the irregularities allegedly committed by King emeritusJuan Carlos I that
Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein revealed.[85] He has also considered as good move forward getting used to include praises to the King of Spain in everyday conversations[n 5] and deemed acts such as paying the pensions as a figurated way of saying Viva el Rey ("Long live the King").[87][86]
On 20 November 2021, he attended a special
mass in Granada in the honour of the former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco on the anniversary of his death. The Francisco Franco National Foundation publicly thanked Casado's attendance.[88] The only explanation given by his political party was that he did not know what the mass was about, despite Franco flags and symbols being present in the church.[88]
On the economic front, he promised to eliminate taxes on wealth, inheritance and gifts, and to lower income and corporate taxes.[89]
^In 2000, at age 19, Casado authored "Lupus Ahujus", a piece in El búho, the journal of the
residential college he was enrolled in, the Colegio Mayor Elías Ahúja,[11] purposely describing in an humouristic way the pattern of behaviour of the (male) contingent of residents of the Colegio Mayor Elías Ahúja that he was part of. Through the metaphorical identification of the members of the Colegio Mayor Elías Ahúja with a fictional species of wolf, the Lupus Ahujus, Casado boasts about the Lupus Ahujus being a "rather evolved" species with superior craneal mass compared to other species, and encouraged to go out in pack preying (female) "wolves" (the most cherished prey) or, in a situation of shortage also (female) pigs, foxes or hens.[12] This has been identified with elements of the
rape culture.[13] The text also labelled Romanian and Polish wolf subspecies as a "marginal chaste".[13][14]
^Casado, who was the first member of the PP (along
Esperanza Aguirre) to visit Carromero in prison after the car crash in which Payá died, was accused by the Cuban media of allegedly instigating the 2012 journey of Carromero and of being in the service of the Cuban opposition in
Miami.[27]
^Companys declared the Catalan state within the Spanish Republic in 1934 and was sentenced by the
Court of Constitutional Guarantees of the Spanish Republic to 30 years of prison for rebellion;[40][41] later, in 1936, he was amnestied by the government of the
Popular Front and returned to the
Generalitat. After the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), in 1940, Companys, while in exile, was captured in France by the Nazi police and sent back to Spain where he was tortured and later executed by
Franco's authorities. Casado later stated that his remarks were referring to only the 1934 imprisonment of Companys, not to his execution in 1940.[42][43][44]
^In July 2018 Consuelo Rumí, the Spanish Secretary of State for Migrations, also compared Casado to Salvini for he is also been critical of Spain's immigration policy.[82]
^Be in the "street", in the "pub", in the "marketplace", in the "office" or in the "university".[86]