Popular Party

Popular Party (Partido Popular, Spain) Spain's major centre-right party. Founded in 1989, it was created from a number of parties that emerged from conservative and centre-right groups of the late Franco era. The most important of these had been the Popular Alliance, itself an amalgamation of 1977 of conservative parties that included the Democratic Reformation movement of Manuel Fraga Iribane. Whereas throughout the 1980s the Popular Alliance had been eclipsed by the Socialists under Gonzalez, under the patient leadership of Aznar from 1990 the PP embraced more centrist social, cultural and economic policies. In this way, the PP reconciled many of the dictatorship's adherents who remained sceptical under Gonzalez to the democratic political system. In 1996, Aznar was able to form a coalition government, and in the 2000 elections the PP gained an absolute majority of seats in parliament. Aznar's early announcement that he would not seek a third term in office left the party with the difficult task of finding a successor by 2004.

http://www.pp.es