Pedro Zerolo, councillor who convinced Zapatero over equal marriage law, dies aged 54
Wednesday, June 10, 2015 @ 11:24 AM
A SOCIALIST councillor who 'got Zapatero thinking' on equal marriage and led to Spain being only the third country in the world to legalise it has passed away at the age of 54.
Pedro Zerolo, who was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1960 but grew up in the Canary Islands and graduated in law from La Laguna University in Tenerife, was number three on the candidate list for the PSOE in Madrid during the regional elections and would have become a minister, given that the party won 37 seats.
Until then, he had been a councillor in Madrid, ever since Trinidad Jiménez - who would become health minister under president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero - offered him seat number six on the party in January 2003.
Zerolo had until then been an active campaigner with the State Lesbian and Gay Federation (FELG) and, in that year, he and his partner Jesús Santos pointedly applied for a marriage licence from the Civil Registrar in the capital, only for it to be denied.
Last year, Zapatero admitted it had been Zerolo who had 'convinced' him to put in place the law reform which would allow same-sex couples to marry on exactly the same legal footing as mixed-sex couples - a reform which came into force in 2005, allowing Zerolo and Santos to wed at last.
Although he described himself as 'feminist and atheist', Zerolo had worked closely with the priest, Father Enrique de Castro, in helping residents in extreme need and poverty in the Madrid district of Entrevías.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com