Alberto Oliart, president of RTVE between 2009 and 2011, dies

Who was also Minister of Defence, Health and Industry and Energy, between 1977 and 1982 in the successive UCD governments, dies in Madrid at the age of 92.

This morning he died in Madrid at the age of 92. Alberto Oliart. Born in Mérida in 1928, Oliart is an example of a late political vocation, since until the arrival of democracy he had dedicated himself to advocacy work in banking entities such as Hispano Americano or Urquijo.

At the age of 49, he ran for deputy for UCD in the 1977 elections and President Adolfo Suárez entrusted him with the Ministry of Industry and Energy, a responsibility that he would abandon in February 1978.

In 1980 he regained the ministerial portfolio, with responsibility for Health. Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo counted on Oliart to take over the Ministry of Defense at the most delicate moment for the Armed Forces in recent history, after the coup attempt in February 1981. Later, he served as State lawyer.

In November 2009, President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero entrusted him with the presidency of the Spanish Radio Television Corporation, replacing Luis Fernández in the position. Oliart was the third president of RTVE to hold this position since Rodríguez Zapatero became President of the Government in April 2004, and the second to do so by agreement between PSOE and PP.

Just two years later, in July 2011, he would present his resignation to the then president of Congress, José Bono.

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