José Luis Albiñana Olmos

Who is José Luis Albiñana Olmos?

José Luis Albiñana Olmos is a Spanish judge and former politician in the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party.

Married, with three children, Albiñana qualified as a lawyer. His first political involvement came in the late 1960s when he joined the Democratic Union of the Valencian Country. However he later left the UDPV when the party decided to follow a Christian Democratic route. He then joined the PSOE in 1975 and was later elected to the party's federal executive committee.

In 1977 he stood in the first democratic elections since the death of the dictator Francisco Franco as a candidate for the Spanish Congress of Deputies, heading the PSOE list in Valencia Province and was elected to Congress. In 1978, he became the first President of the Generalitat Valenciana, the Valencian regional administration. During his time in office, he pushed for full devolution of powers to the Valencian region and supported bilingualism, arguing that the Valencian language should be given equal status with Spanish in the Valencia region. He resigned the position in May 1979, feeling that he was failing to receive support from the local branch of the PSOE but was persuaded to resume his duties in June 1979. However from July 1979 onwards, the PSOE members gradually withdrew from the Valencian administration in protest at what they perceived to be stalling on the devolution issue by the Union of the Democratic Centre which at that point formed the Spanish government. Albiñana finally resigned the Valencian Presidency on 22 December 1979.