One of the President of the Basque Government’s favourite sayings is that if someone gives his word, then he must keep it; otherwise no one will believe in his commitments. This conviction is a legacy of his origins, his parents, the farmstead and industrialization. Juan José Ibarreche Markuartu was born on 15 March 1957 in Llodio, a country town in Álava that has managed to reconcile the accumulated knowledge of a rural society with a laborious, decades-long process of industrialization. Indeed, his childhood and youth were a constant process of learning about what the Basque Autonomous Community is today: a region in which coexistence between the local people and arrivals from other parts of Spain has been and continues to be the basis for its ongoing success and development.

A tenacious negotiator and tireless worker, Ibarretxe is the third Basque president since the introduction of democracy in Spain and the fourth in the history of the region. His career in Administration is worth reading. Mayor of Llodio for four years, Ibarretxe was a member of the Juntas Generales, or General Provincial Assembly, of Álava between 1983 and 1994, doubling for five years as its president. He was elected a Member of the Basque Parliament in 1984.

His degree in Economics from the University of the Basque Country immediately singled him out as a good candidate for the Parliamentary Commission for Economy & Budgets, which he presided from 1986 to 1994. A year later he was appointed Vice-President of the Basque Government and Regional Minister of the Treasury, Revenues & Public Administrations Department by the then President José Antonio Ardanza until the end of the 5th legislature in 1998. In that year, he took on the enormous responsibility of substituting the outgoing Ardanza as President of the autonomous government.

Throughout his two legislatures as President of the Basque Autonomous Community, Juan José Ibarretxe has worked ceaselessly to promote development and social stability in the region. At the same time, he has sought, with unflagging determination, peace in the Basque Country, an objective that, in his words, “will in the end be achieved by the Basques, all of them together, with no exclusions.”

An unassuming and straightforward man, Ibarretxe’s ruling passion outside of politics is cycling. He bikes as often as circumstances permit, preferably with his family. Married, with two daughters to whom he is devoted, the President usually spends his weekends hill-walking or reading historical novels at home.

In such a methodical and ordered man, the remarkable interest he takes in dialogue might seem surprising. Those who know him best say that he always listens before putting forward his views and that he never dismisses out of hand a reasonable and reasoned doubt. For Ibarretxe, things are not always how they seem. “You get on with some people better than others”, he says, this being of his father’s phrases he most often repeats, “but there’s one thing you should never lose, and that’s respect.” And there we have it. Respect. Keeping your word. Two primordial values for Juan José Ibarretxe Markuartu.