Cristina Garmendia Cristina Garmendia Dr. Cristina Garmendia y Mendizábal (San Sebastian, 1962) is a Spanish biologist and businesswoman. With no previous political career, she was appointed as Minister of Science and Innovation in April 2008 by the President of the Government of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. With a PhD in Biology from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, before her election as a minister, she was the president of the Inbiomed Foundation and the Spanish Society of Bio enterprises. In 2000, she founded Genetrix., a biotechnology company and in 2008 YSIOS, a venture capital firm, specialized in health and biotechnology. She was
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero other hand, defended the theory that the anger of the two Socialist AMs was caused by Zapatero's broken promise about the referred distribution of power within the Madrid section of the Socialist Party. That promise would have been made some months before the crisis in exchange of support for one of his more immediate collaborators (Trinidad Jiménez), who wanted to become the Socialist candidate for mayor of Madrid (the Spanish capital). Zapatero's team had entered into contact with José Luis Balbás through Enrique Martínez and Jesús Caldera (then Minister of Labor) In April 2000, Zapatero, Caldera and José Blanco had