BIOGRAPHY OF MANUEL GIMÉNEZ ABAD
Manuel Giménez Abad was born on the 4th of December 1948 in Pamplona (Navarra) and spent his childhood and youth in Jaca (Aragón).
After obtaining the university degree in Law by the University of Navarra, he entered at the Higher Corps for Civil Servants of the State.
He held distinguished positions at the former School for Public Administration (now National Institute for Public Administration), among them he was named Secretary of the Institute for Administrative Studies and Director of the Department for Recruitment and Training of Senior civil servants.
In January 1979 Manuel Giménez Abad was appointed Director of the General Secretary for Regions of the Ministry of the Presidency. This General Secretary was later incorporated to the Ministry for Territorial Administration.
He served as Technical Secretary at the General Secretary (1981-1982) and as Secretary General (1982-1986) at the Government of Aragon before being appointed Head legal Counsel of the Parliament of Aragón. He held this position until he was named Minister of the Presidency and Inter-institutional Relations of the Government of Aragon in July 1995.
In the regional elections of 1999 Manuel Giménez Abad was elected as member of the regional parliament for the People’s Party (Partido Popular) and, afterwards, was appointed as Senator for the Spanish Senate.
In February 2001, he was elected President of the People’s Party (Partido Popular) of Aragon, position which he also held until he was killed by the terrorist group ETA, in May 2001.
Manuel Giménez Abad lectured at the University of Navarra, at the Aragones Institute for Public Administration and at the University of Granada, where he gave seminars on the reform of the public administration for several years.
His reflections on the public administration were published in numerous journals, among them distinguished publications as the Revista Española de Derecho Administrativo, Documentación Administrativa, Revista Vasca de Administración Pública, Autonomies (Revista Catalana de Derecho Público) or the Revista Aragonesa de Administración Pública, where he was a member of the board of editors.
Furthermore he, togehter with José Tudela Aranda, was coordinator of the publication: Derecho de las Instituciones Públicas Aragonesas, where he also published two important chapters: “El Presidente y el Gobierno de Aragón” and “La Administración de la Comunidad Autónoma de Aragón”.
