The former Minister of Social Affairs with the Government of Felipe González and former member of the General Council of the Judiciary Cristina Alberdi died this Thursday at the age of 78, as confirmed to EFE by sources close to her and confirmed by the Madrid Bar Association.
Born in the Sevillian municipality of Los Rosales in February 1946, Alberdi studied law at the Complutense University of Madrid. She stood out at the beginning of her professional career as a lawyer for her defense of women’s rights, going so far as to found the Feminist Legal Collective in Madrid.
Later, she would be an advisor on the preparatory work for the 1978 Constitution and the reforms of the Civil Code and the Penal Code. Furthermore, in 1985 she was the first woman to form part of the General Council of the Judiciary, a position she held until 1990.
In 1993 Cristina Alberdi was appointed Minister of Social Affairs and was a member of the PSOE from 1995 to 2003. Furthermore, when Spain held the presidency of the Council of the European Union, Alberdi was spokesperson for the EU at the IV World Conference on Women in Beijing. , in September 1995.
Alberdi was elected as a deputy for the province of Malaga after the 1996 elections and remained in Congress after the 2000 elections, but this time for the province of Madrid.
Between October 1997 and the end of 2000 she was president of the Madrid Socialist Federation (FSM), with Jaime Lissavetzky as Secretary General, replacing José Acosta. In 2000 he even considered running for the post of general secretary of the PSOE, something that never materialised.
In 2003, he decided to leave the Socialist Party after delivering a letter to its general secretary, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in which he questioned the pact with Esquerra Republicana in Catalonia, calling it a “political scam” and adding that it had gone “very far.” ”.
His disagreements with the Madrid Socialists had already begun a few months earlier, when he did not consider the way the case known as ‘tamayazo’ had been dealt with to be appropriate and he did not like the accusation that the PP was behind the operation. At that time he resigned from his position as head of Studies and Programmes of the Madrid Socialist Federation.
The Federal Executive Commission of the PSOE opened a disciplinary file against him that year “for his continuous and repeated public demonstrations against the political decisions adopted by the management bodies” of the party.
Shortly afterwards, in February 2004, she was appointed President of the Advisory Board of the Observatory against Gender Violence of the Community of Madrid and since July she was a member of the Consultative Council of the Community of Madrid.
In 2023, she was awarded the Women in a Legal World Association’s Values Award, in recognition of her advocacy for the approval of divorce in Spain and the legal recognition of abortion.
