Ramon Espinar Gallego

Ramon Espinar Gallego (Spanish: Ramón Espinar Gallego) was a Spanish socialist politician and lawyer who helped stand up the first democratic institutions of the Community of Madrid. He was the first mayor of Leganes chosen in the municipal elections of April 1979, and in June 1983 he became the first president of the new Assembly of Madrid. He later served in the regional governments of Joaquin Leguina as minister of culture and government spokesman, then as minister of finance. He died at home on 3 September 2026, aged 72, after a long degenerative illness. His son, the former Podemos leader Ramon Espinar Merino, announced the death that morning. This memorial is for the father. It is not a page for the living son, and it does not use the son's photographs or accounts. (Spanish Wikipedia; Cadena SER, 3 September 2026; eldiario.es, son, 5 September 2026.)

He was born on 3 April 1954 in Ubeda, in the province of Jaen. Spanish Wikipedia, La Voz del Sur, and the Fundacion Pablo Iglesias biographical file all give that date. An older infobox cache once said 3 March. That March date is not used here. His parents were migrants from Membrilla, in Ciudad Real, who had come to Ubeda to make a living. Their given names were not made public. After a few hard years they moved to Madrid, first to the Usera neighbourhood and later to a flat in Zarzaquemada, Leganes. He grew up there with his sisters, Joaquina and Pepa. His father worked in construction. His mother worked at home. The son's tribute describes a family that worked themselves to the bone to raise their children. (eldiario.es, 5 September 2026; Fundacion Pablo Iglesias entry, cited in Europa Press, 3 September 2026.)

The early years were hard, and so was the end. The son later called his father's life a palindrome: hard at the start, hard at the finish. Espinar Gallego had to start work at 14. From 1968 to 1979 he worked as an office clerk at La Veneciana SA. He joined the socialist trade union UGT and the then-clandestine PSOE in 1973, while Spain was still under Franco. At the law faculty of the Complutense University of Madrid he met the party through his teachers. He admired the jurist Gregorio Peces-Barba and treated him as a reference. He took a law degree, a licenciado en Derecho. No further degrees are named in the obituaries used here. (eldiario.es, 5 September 2026; Spanish Wikipedia; Fundacion Pablo Iglesias via Europa Press.)

His only time deprived of liberty, his son wrote, came during military service in Segovia. He and other left-wing conscripts were found in activity the authorities called subversive. He spent months in prison until the first amnesty of King Juan Carlos I in 1976. Soon after, he married Mar, the mother of his son. Her surname was not given in the tribute. (eldiario.es, 5 September 2026.)

In the first democratic local elections, on 19 April 1979, the PSOE candidate won Leganes with more than 50 percent of the vote. Espinar Gallego, then 25, became mayor. Contemporary accounts and later obituaries call him the second-youngest mayor in Spain in that first round of democratic town halls. He sat on the executive of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces. English Wikipedia says that as mayor he set aside land for a university, later used by a campus of the Charles III University of Madrid, and that a hospital was built. He was re-elected in May 1983 with more than 70 percent of the vote, then resigned the mayoralty on 6 September 1983 so he could sit in the new regional parliament. Fernando Abad Becquer succeeded him in Leganes. (Spanish Wikipedia; El Pais, 4 September 2026; English Wikipedia.)

The Assembly of Madrid had just been created under the Statute of Autonomy. Espinar Gallego was a deputy from 8 June 1983 and was elected the chamber's first president the same day, serving until 10 June 1987. Rosa Maria Posada succeeded him as president. He was one of the people who had to make the new chamber work. Some later wire reports, citing the Fundacion Pablo Iglesias, extend his time as a regional deputy to 1999. Spanish Wikipedia's office table and Joaquin Leguina's El Pais note both end the deputy mandate on 22 June 1995, the year he left elective office at 41. This profile prefers the 1983-1995 dates unless a parliamentary roll shows otherwise. (Spanish Wikipedia; El Pais, 4 September 2026; Europa Press, 3 September 2026.)

From 31 July 1987 to 23 July 1991 he was Leguina's minister of culture and spokesman of the regional government. From 23 July 1991 to 1 July 1995 he was minister of finance, succeeding Luis Alejandro Cendrero and followed by Antonio Beteta. He sat on the regional executive of the Madrid socialist federation, the provincial committee of UGT, and the federal committee of the PSOE, representing the Madrid federation. Leguina, writing in El Pais the day after the death, placed him in the renovated PSOE of Felipe Gonzalez and Alfonso Guerra and remembered an intelligent person who had a great sense of humour. (El Pais, 4 September 2026; Spanish Wikipedia.)

In 1995 he left active politics for private legal practice. English Wikipedia says he was named an adviser at Caja Madrid in 1995. The Fundacion Pablo Iglesias, Europa Press, and El Mundo date a later board seat and vice-presidency to 2007-2010. Those two accounts are kept separate here and are not collapsed into one appointment. In the board years he sat on the social council of the Complutense University and was a trustee of the Fundacion Caja Madrid. He also presided over the cultural association Las Ideas, from 2003 in the Pablo Iglesias file. (Spanish Wikipedia; Europa Press, 3 September 2026; English Wikipedia.)

That bank role became the documented controversy of his public life, the tarjetas black case that Spanish searchers still ask about, along with the word condena. As a director he held one of the opaque black cards issued to Caja Madrid directors. Spanish Wikipedia records 178,400 euros spent on shop purchases and cash withdrawals. He was charged in 2016. In February 2017 the Audiencia Nacional sentenced him to one year in prison. El Debate also reports a fine of 3,600 euros. Obituaries do not say whether the prison term was served. His son later wrote that he did not want to take responsibility for decisions that were not his own, that there were absences and failures, and that some people kept company with his father without approving what he had done. (Spanish Wikipedia; El Debate, 3 September 2026; eldiario.es, 5 September 2026.)

In 1992 he and Mar divorced. The son called the later friendship between his parents one of the landmarks of his own life. Mar and her partner, Manolo, remained near Espinar Gallego until his death. Manolo is named in the son's tribute as part of that circle. He was not a spouse of Espinar Gallego, and he is not listed here as one. In later years his partner was Begona, who, the son wrote, cared for him with affection and generous dedication until the last day. Her surname was not given. He liked classical music, bullfighting, Zinedine Zidane more than football as a sport, reading, and getting away to the mountains. A degenerative illness kept him out of public life. The specific diagnosis was not made public. He died at home on the morning of 3 September 2026, having sat in his wing chair almost until the end. The son wrote that the illness was cruel, that it made a self-sufficient man dependent, and that he hoped the care had not humiliated him. Resting place and funeral arrangements were not made public in the notices used here. Leganes declared a day of mourning. The Assembly of Madrid said the next plenary would open with a minute of silence. (eldiario.es, 5 September 2026; Heraldo de Aragon, 3 September 2026; Europa Press, 3 September 2026.)

Isabel Diaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, wrote that Madrid politics had lost the first president of the Assembly of Madrid, mayor of Leganes and minister to President Leguina. The PSOE of Madrid called him a historic Madrid socialist. The Leganes council sent condolences as a corporation. He is survived by the family his son named in public: sisters Joaquina and Pepa, former wife Mar, partner Begona, and son Ramon Espinar Merino, born 1986. Other children were not named in the sources used here. People asking about his hijos find one documented son only.

He is often mentioned in Spanish news as the father of the better-known Podemos politician. That is a fact about public attention, not an identity. He was not Ramon Espinar of Podemos. The English Wikipedia page used here is Ramon Espinar Gallego. The son's article is a different page and is not this profile's wikipediaUrl. The portrait is the 20minutos archive photograph credited to the Ayuntamiento de Leganes, captioned as the first president of the Assembly and mayor of Leganes. No Wikimedia Commons file is used. Commons images filed under Ramon Espinar, including 2014 Ganemos Madrid photographs, show the son, Ramon Espinar Merino. They were not attached.

No official personal social homepage was found for the father. The death was announced on the son's X account, which is not his. No verified youtube.com/watch URL of Espinar Gallego himself speaking was found. The three clips listed here are third-party death recaps that name the father, aged 72, first president of the Assembly of Madrid. They are not interviews of the son.