Iñaki Mirena Anasagasti Olabeaga
Iñaki Anasagasti Olabeaga, born 16 November 1947 in Cumaná (Venezuela), is a Venezuelan Spanish politician, belonging to the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). He is a Spanish senator for the province of Vizcaya, Basque Country, for the 10th Congress of Deputies.
Political Career
In 1980 Anasagasti Olabeaga was elected to the Basque Parliament where he was an MP between 1980 and 1986. In 1986 he was elected to the Congress of Deputies, representing Vizcaya, where he served until 2004 as leader for the Basque Nationalist Parliament Group. In 2004 he was elected senator for the Spanish province of Vizcaya in the Basque Country, and he was reelected in 2008, in the 8th legislature, in the position of First Secretary.
Education
Anasagasti was born in an exiled Spanish family. His father was a Basque nationalist and a member of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), who had fled the country after the Spanish Civil War. In the mid 1950s, his parents decided that Iñaki and his three brothers had to be educated in the Basque Country of Spain, therfore they sent their children to San Sebastián in the care of their grandparents. Anasagasti Olabeaga studied at the Marianist School Sociedad de María, San Sebastián, from 1955 to 1961 and from this date to 1965 in Santiago Apóstol of Bilbao. It was in 1965 when his father died and he decided to return to Venezuela, where he remained for ten years. He became acquainted with the exiled Basque Nationalist Party in Caracas, and studied Journalism and Sociology at the Universidad Católica Andres Bello run by Jesuits. It is there where he met his future wife Maria Esther Solabarrieta, whom he married in 1976. In the early 1970s, Anasagasti was named president of Euzko Gaztedi Indarra a youth wing of the Basque Nationalist Party, in Caracas. Furthermore, he became involved with Radio Euzkadi, broadcast daily in Venezuela and he also collaborated in the resistance magazine Gudari.
In August 1975, he returned again to San Sebastián and directed the publication of the PNV, Euzkadi. He was detained on 1 April 1976 with Joseba Goikoetxea (who was assassinated later by the terrorist group ETA) and Bingen Zubiri, and by order of the Minister of the Interior Manuel Fraga, he was in jail for three days. He was chosen in 1977 as a member of the regional council of the PNV in Biscay (Bizkai Buru Batzar), a position that he occupied until 1980 under the Presidency of Carlos Garaikoetxea.
Personal Achievements
Anasagasti has received several honors and awards. Among others, he was awarded as "Scourge of Government" in 1999, 2001 and 2003 by the Association of Parliamentary Journalists, and was named a finalist in the "Scourge of the Government" award in 1998, "Better Relationship with the Press" in 1995 and finally "Senator revelation" in 2004.
