Born on 29 June 1945 in El Cerezal, in the Asturian municipality of
Mieres, to a family of miners, he began to work as builder at age 12, and at the coal mines at age 15, when he was already a member of the clandestine
Communist Party of Spain (PCE). and following the
June 1986 general election, he was elected member of the 3rd
Congress of Deputies in representation of
Madrid, running as candidate of the newly created
United Left (IU) coalition in which the PCE had subsumed. He resigned to the leadership of the PCE in March 1988, leaving the party in November 1988 over discrepancies with the new Secretary-General,
Julio Anguita. He briefly served as the first coordinator of IU (progressively becoming a full-fledged federation) before also giving the reins to Anguita and returning to the mine in 1989. He suffered a work accident at the mine shafts, and as he had not recovered from a surgical operation of
spinal disc herniation, he asked in 1990 for the accreditation of permanent incapacity benefits, which were granted in 1992. == References ==