Early life and education Casado was born on 1 February 1981 in
Palencia; he has five brothers. His father, Miguel Casado González, was a doctor and his mother, Esther Blanco Ruiz, Casado 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 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. However, the Supreme Court closed its review in September 2018, finding no evidence of criminal wrongdoing and concluding that any preferential treatment did not constitute a crime. 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. 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."
Start of political career 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 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. (No. 2 numbered shirt) next to
Esperanza Aguirre during a summer event of the Madrilenian "New Generations" in 2010 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 resigned as regional legislator in July 2009. In June 2009, he 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, Casado 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.
National MP Casado 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. 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.
19th PP National Congress 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. Casado 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. 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, as well as a hardline conservative.
2019 election In response to a budget defeat, Prime Minister
Pedro Sánchez dissolved the Cortes Generales, giving Casado an early test of his leadership, which was also in the aftermath of the first right-of-centre government in Andalucia. The election results proved disappointing for Casado, his party losing over half of their seats in the Cortes Generales, with Albert Rivera's Citizens, overtaking them as the foremost party of the centre-right in many regions of Spain, and the new far-right Vox also taking a significant number of voters. This major loss was devastating for Casado and for the 2019 election campaign manager,
Javier Maroto, who not only lost his seat in the Basque country to
EH Bildu, but was fired by PP. Casado refused to resign; many members' worries about his controversial leadership, described as "a suicide", were confirmed in light of the defeat, as he has now U-turned back to the political centre, placing much of the blame of the loss on Cs and Vox for splintering the vote. Casado adopted an active role during the COVID-19 lockdown, refraining from restricting public activities, visiting disparate locations such as
Mercamadrid, a hotel, a sheep farm and the headquarters of the association of vehicle producers; he proceeded to criticise the Government of Spain from those platforms. Nevertheless, under Casado’s leadership, the PP made a significant recovery in the November 2019 general election, increasing its representation from 66 to 89 seats and reasserting itself as the main opposition force. In May 2020, he established abstention on the vote on the extension of the
State of Alarm as the party line.
Leadership challenges His leadership of the PP was challenged in 2022 by
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the popular president of the community of Madrid, leading to a dramatic internal conflict. Ayuso went so far as to accuse Casado of maneuvering to "destroy" her. A large number of PP leaders and activists demanded Casado resign, but he refused. The president of Galicia,
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, considered the most respected figure in the PP, said that "the situation is unsustainable. Pablo Casado's reign is coming to an end. We have to make difficult decisions." Casado resigned as PP leader and an MP on 4 April, and was replaced as party leader by Feijóo. Despite the public feud, Casado presided over an orderly transition at the April 2022 extraordinary congress, where delegates elected Alberto Núñez Feijóo as his successor with 98.35% of the vote. In his farewell address to party members, Casado emphasized his loyalty to the PP and appealed for unity, expressing hope that the organization would continue to serve as a credible alternative in Spanish politics. == Political positions ==