Iñaki Azkuna

Iñaki Azkuna
Iñaki Azkuna in 2005
Mayor of Bilbao
In office July 4, 1999 – March 20, 2014
Preceded by	Josu Ortuondo
Succeeded by	Ibon Areso
Personal details
Born	Iñaki Azkuna Urreta (1943-02-14)February 14, 1943 Durango, Spain
Died	March 20, 2014(2014-03-20) (aged 71) Bilbao, Spain
Political party	Basque Nationalist Party

Iñaki Azkuna Urreta (14 February 1943 – 20 March 2014) was a Spanish politician of the Basque Nationalist Party. He was mayor of the city of Bilbao, Biscay in the Basque Country, from 1999 until his death. In 2012, Azkuna won the World Mayor Prize, honoring the most outstanding mayors in the world, for his transformation of industrial Bilbao into a cultural centre.

Azkuna died from prostate cancer on 20 March 2014 in Bilbao, Biscay. He was 71 years old.

Son of a metallurgical and a seamstress, Iñaki Azkuna was born in Durango in 1943. Although met Bilbao from small, study at Salamanca, where he graduated in Medicine in 1966, specializing in cardiology and radiology. After receiving his doctorate cum laude from the University of Salamanca, moved to France to work as an assistant in the Hospital abroad Broussais, of the University of Paris, between 1971 and 1972. There he met Anabella Dominguez, a Mexican student of French philology with who later would marry and have a son. Since 1973, he was professor of Physical Medicine and Radiology at the University of the Basque Country and work in the Hospital of Las Cruces (Baracaldo, Vizcaya), first as a physician assistant and from 1976 as head of the Radiology Department. In 1981, he was appointed Director of the Hospital of Cruces. The following year he was appointed Director of hospitals of the Basque Government. From 1983 to 1987 he served as Director-general of Osakidetza-Servicio Basque Health.

In July 1989 he was appointed Secretary general of the Presidency of the Basque Government, performing such work for two years, and assuming the post of Advisor in the Department of health of the Basque Government in 1991, responsibility that held local elections on 13 June 1999 until 1999. He was also elected Mayor of Bilbao as head of the list of the coalition between the PNV and Eusko Alkartasuna (EA), thanks to the votes of the Basque Country councilors; and later formed a Pact of Government with Basque citizen initiative, party led by the former Mayor of Bilbao José María Gorordo, who had been expelled from the PNV. Was re-elected to the post after the municipal elections of 2003, again in coalition with EA, and 2007, already in solitary, without obtaining absolute majority in any of them; in 2003, it received support from Ezker Batua, who joined the Government team, and in 2007 the Coalition Ezker Batua-Aralar.