SPANISH national president Pedro Sánchez is one in five million – literally.
This year, he turns 50, but unlike the other more than 6.5 billion inhabitants of planet earth, will not actually have a birthday at all.
Spain's president cannot take the day off work for his birthday - because there's no such day this year
Whether or not he plans to celebrate his five decades of life is another matter, but Sánchez has only had 12 birthdays, not counting the year he was born – and his last one was just a fortnight before Spain went into lockdown.
Sánchez's date of birth is February 29, 1972, meaning his milestone 'zero' birthday does not actually exist.
He was able to celebrate turning 20, and also his 40th, on the right dates – in 1992 and 2012 – but for obvious reasons, namely that leap years are always even-numbered, he did not get a 21st birthday; or an 18th, for that matter.
Pedro Sánchez will have to wait until his 60th to celebrate a milestone birthday on the actual date – in 2032, which will be a leap year – and will also be able to blow out 80 candles on the right day, in 2052.
Should he live to be 100 – not at all uncommon in Spain, which has one of the top five longest life expectancies on earth – Sánchez will be able to celebrate his entry into treble figures on the exact centenary of when he was born, in 2072.
Effectively, anyone born on February 29 only gets a 'zero' birthday every 20 years, and only when the first digit is an even number.
And with the exception of the recent Games in Tokyo, the Olympics always fall in a leap year - as do the UEFA Euros which, again, happened in a 365-day year for the first time ever last summer.
Sánchez in presidential hotseat, aged 11
Head of the centre-left Spanish Socialist Labour Party (PSOE), in power since summer 2018 when a cross-party no-confidence vote ousted his main rival, the right-wing PP, ending its leader Mariano Rajoy's nearly seven years in office, Pedro Sánchez was then elected as president in November 2019, but in a minority.
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