Madrid airport will be named after Adolfo Suárez in memory of a president who created democracy in Spain
Tuesday, March 25, 2014 @ 11:47 PM
MADRID-BARAJAS will soon be renamed Adolfo Suárez Airport in honour of the first president of Spain's post-dictatorship democracy who passed away on Sunday after suffering from Alzheimer's.
The idea came from current Spanish president Mariano Rajoy, and his minister for public works Ana Pastor agreed immediately.
She said Adolfo Suárez 'played a fundamental role in Spain's history', that his 'moral stature and patriotism' were what successfully brought the country through the transition to democracy after the death of General Franco, the dictator who had held the nation in the iron grip of fascism for more than 40 years.
“Adolfo Suárez's work was crucial to the nation's greatest achievement – the creation of the Spanish Constitution in 1978,” said Sra Pastor.
“Because of this, and in his memory, expressions of recognition and respect for his greatness, his efforts and his historic role as the first president of our democracy are not just important, but obligatory.”
Adolfo Suárez who, among his many major achievements managed to thwart a coup d'état when his successor Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo was sworn in after he resigned, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2003 aged 71, but his children say signs of it were beginning to appear in the 1990s.
Within less than two years, Suárez went from giving public speeches to not even remembering he had ever been president of Spain, let alone the first one elected by public vote in 1977.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com