Julio Anguita - Biography

Biography

A member of a military family, he broke with familiar tradition doing teaching studies and, after that, licencing in History in the University of Barcelona. Working as a teacher, in 1972 he joined the clandestine Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and five years later he was already a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Andalusia (PCA).

In 1979, he was elected as Mayor of Córdoba with a clear majority in the first municipal elections of the current democracy. There, he distinguished as the first capital governed by communists from the Second Spanish Republic so he had to deal with the reticences it came with. His managemen aid to the democratic normality and gave him appreciation as a leader in his party. He was reelected in 1983 but in 1986 he renounced to go in for again becoming the new candidate from United Left to the regional government (Junta de Andalucía). In these elections the coalition obtained the 17.91% of the votes. In February 1988 he was elected as general secretary of the PCE and in the next year he became the leader of IU, gaining a seat in Congress in the same year.

He was also elected Congress Member and spokesman of the parliamentary group of United Left in the Congress in 1993 and 1996, the years when IU had his better electoral results. He advocate for a political way for United Left based in the two shores theory, the setting of the differences between, by one side, the People's Party and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, and in the other United Left. Also he said that pacts with PSOE may be established under programmatic single agreements, not as a system (conception expressed in his well known motto programa, programa, programa).

After a third cardiovascular problem in the end of 1999 he left the candidacy to the Presidence in the 2000 elections to Francisco Frutos by health reasons (in an interview in 2004 he said the main reason was the dissatisfaction about the political agenda of IU. Likewise he was relieved as general secretary of the PCE by Francisco Frutos. In the VI Assembly of United Left, in October of that same year, he was replaced as General Coordinator by Gaspar Llamazares.

Under his leadership, United Left defined their politics contents and reached their best electoral results in their history.

His son Julio Anguita Parrado was one of the two Spanish journalists who died in Iraq during the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, in his case under Iraqi fire. At receiving the news of his death during an act for the Third Spanish Republic he said: "It was an Iraqi missile but it doesn't matter, the only thing I can say is that I will come again some other time and I will keep fighting for the third Republic. Damned be the wars and the scoundrels that support them" ("Ha sido un misil iraquí, pero es igual, lo único que puedo decir es que vendré en otra ocasión y seguiré combatiendo por la tercera república. Malditas sean las guerras y los canallas que las apoyan"). This last phrase was heavily used by demonstrators in the different calls against the war in Iraq.