Adolfo Suárez

Spanish lawyer and politician who served as his country's first democratically elected prime minister (1976-1981) since the Second Spanish Republic. He oversaw the end of the Francoist Cortes, and the legalisation of all political parties (including the Communist Party, a particularly difficult move).

The son of a lawyer, he came from a bourgeois family. He began studying law at the University of Salamanca and did his doctorate at the Complutense University of Madrid.

In January 1981, he announced his resignation as prime minister. A month later, he and other parliamentarians were held hostage for 22 hours. (Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero and around 200 Civil Guards stormed the chamber in an attempted coup). One week after his resignation as head of government, Suarez also resigned as party leader and became a business lawyer. In 1991, he retired from politics for political and family reasons.

In 2005, his son announced that Adolfo Suarez had been suffering from dementia for two years and that the disease had already reached an advanced stage. On 17 March 2014, Suarez was taken to a Madrid hospital for a respiratory infection. He finally succumbed to the disease on 23 March 2014, aged 81. He received a state funeral and was buried in the cloister of Avila Cathedral after three days of state mourning. He was widowed with five adult children.