Pablo Casado

His words were used by some Catalan nationalists 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.

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.

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.

Pablo Casado Blanco (born 1 February 1981) is a Spanish former politician.

He was a member of the Congress of Deputies representing Madrid until 4 April 2022, having previously represented Ávila between 2011 and 2019.

Casado was born on 1 February 1981 in Palencia.

His father, Miguel Casado González, was a doctor and his mother, Esther Blanco Ruiz, a nursing university professor.

His family owns an ophthalmologic clinic in his native city.

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

in the United Kingdom.

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, 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).

Casado entered politics and joined the People's Party (PP) in 2003 when he was still a student.

He presided over the regional branch of the PP's youth organization in the Community of Madrid, known as the New Generations (NNGG), between 2005 and 2013.

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.

The centre issued a statement where they denied accusations of impropriety or preferential treatment regarding the student Casado.

He also has a BA in Business Administration and Management and an MA in Administrative Law from the King Juan Carlos University (URJC).

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.

An internal investigation by the URJC confirmed that the degrees were legitimate and uncovered no impropriety.

He made an initiation journey to Cuba in early 2007 (similar to the 2012 travel by his right-hand in the Madrilenian NNGG Ángel Carromero), where he met with Cuban dissidents such as Oswaldo Payá.

He left written testimony of it in pieces published in Libertad Digital and El Mundo.

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), 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.

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.

He resigned as regional legislator in July 2009.

In June 2009 Casado married Isabel Torres Orts; the couple have a daughter Paloma and a son Pablo.

Isabel Torres is from a wealthy industrial family in Elche, and works as a psychologist in a private clinic in Madrid.

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.

He was included as candidate in the PP list for the constituency of Ávila in the November 2011 general election and became a member of the Congress of Deputies.

From 2015 to 2018, he also served as vice secretary general of communication of the People's Party (PP).

He was subsequently re-elected in the 2015 and 2016 general elections.

He was designated spokesman of the Campaign Committee of the PP for the local and regional elections of May 2015.

Later, in June 2015, he was appointed vice secretary general of communication of the PP by the party president Mariano Rajoy.

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.

From July 2018 until April 2022, he was the president of the PP.

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.

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.

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."