Federico Trillo

Federico Trillo-Figueroa Martínez-Conde (Spanish pronunciation: [feðeˈɾiko ˈtɾiʝo fiɣeˈɾoa maɾˈtineθ ˈkonde]; born 23 May 1952) is a former Spanish Politician of the People's Party, who has served as President of the Congress of Deputies, Minister of Defense and Ambassador of Spain to the United Kingdom. The son of a governor in Francoist Spain, Trillo graduated with a bachelor's degree in law from the University of Salamanca and a PhD from the Complutense University of Madrid. Trillo entered into the Navy's Legal Corps as first of his class in 1974 where he was posted in the naval prosecutor's office of the Maritime Zone of the Mediterranean, later he was posted in the Directorship of Military Naval Construction. In 1979, he passed the competitive examination for Counsel of the Council of State. He retired from the navy as a Judge-Advocate Mayor in 1989 in order to enter politics. In 1983 he entered the legal staff of the Alianza Popular (People's Alliance), then headed by Manuel Fraga Iribarne, where he actively participated in the restructuring of the party, refashioning it as the People's Party. He has been a member of the national executive since 1986. Trillo has been elected deputy for the province of Alicante since 1989. From 1989 and 1996, he was vice-president of the Congress of Deputies. On 27 March 1996 he was elected president of the Congress of Deputies, a position he maintained until the end of the sixth legislature in 2000. On 27 April 2000 Prime Minister José María Aznar named him Minister of Defense for Aznar's second government. In July 2002, he ordered an attack on Perejil Island, which had been occupied for days by Moroccan soldiers. The Yakovlev 42 crash in Turkey on 26 May 2003, in which 62 Spanish soldiers died while returning from Afghanistan marked the...