José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero Board of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, a Berlin-based organization. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (; born 4 August 1960) is a Spanish politician and member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). He was the Prime Minister of Spain being elected for two terms, in the 2004 and 2008 general elections. On 2 April 2011 he announced he would not stand for re-election in the 2011 general election and left office on 20 December 2011. Among the main actions taken by the Zapatero administration were the withdrawal of Spanish troops from the Iraq war, the increase
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to be illegal and was opposed to the very concept of preemptive war. On 26 May 2003 a Yakovlev Yak-42 plane carrying Spanish soldiers home from Afghanistan crashed in Turkey. The plane had been hired by an agency of NATO. Zapatero blamed Aznar and his government for neglecting aspects like the plane insurance or safety. Further, Aznar had rejected calls for a full inquiry into the crash. After the 2004 March elections it was proven that there had been serious irregularities in the identification of the corpses resulting in a high number of mistakes. Concerning the European Constitution, Zapatero criticized