Iñaki Anasagasti

Iñaki Anasagasti (born November 16 1947) is a Venezuelan Spanish politician, belonging to the Basque Nationalist Party.

Biography

Anasagasti was born on November 16 of 1947 to exiled Spanish parents in Cumaná, Venezuela. His father was a Basque nationalist and a militant of the PNV), who had feld the country after the Spanish Civil War. In the mid 1950s, his parents decided that Iñaki and its three brothers had to be educated in the Basque Country of Spain, so sent their children to return to San Sebastián in charge of their grandparents. Iñaki studied at the Sociedad de María of San Sebastián from 1955 to 1961 and from this date to 1965 in Santiago Apóstol of Bilbao.

Venezuela

In 1965 his father died and he returned to Venezuela, where he remained for ten years. He became acquainted with the exiled Basque national party in Caracas, and studied Journalism and Sociology at the Universidad Católica Andres Bello de Caracas run by Jesuits. There he met his future wife Maria Esther Solabarrieta, whom he married in 1976. In the early 1970s he was named president of Euzko Gaztedi Indarra a younger branch of the EGI, in the Basque center of Caracas. He became involved with Radio Euzkadi, broadcast daily in Venezuela and collaborated in the resistance magazine "Gudari".

Return to Spain

In August of 1975, he returned again to San Sebastián and directed the publication of the PNV, Euzkadi. He was detained on April 1 1976 with Joseba Goikoetxea (assassinated later by the ETA) and Bingen Zubiri, and by order of the minister of the Interior Manuel Fraga, he was jailed 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.

Congress of Deputies

He was deputy in the Parlamento del País Vasco (Parliament of the Basque Country) between 1980 and 1986, and became a deputy of Spain's Congress of Deputies and spokesman for the PNV between 1986 and 2004, and in the 8th Legislature of Spain (2004 - 2008) he became a senator. In addition, he is First Secretary to the Senate.