People's Party

The People's Party ( ; known mostly by its acronym, PP ) is a conservative and Christian-democratic political party in Spain. The People's Party was a 1989 re-foundation of People's Alliance (AP), a party led by former minister of the Francoist dictatorship Manuel Fraga. It was founded in 1976 as alliance of post-Francoist proto-parties. The new party combined the conservative AP with several small Christian democratic and liberal parties (the party call this fusion of views "the Reformist Centre"). In 2002, Manuel Fraga received the honorary title of "Founding Chairman". The party's youth organization is New Generations of the People's Party of Spain (NNGG). The PP is a member of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), and in the European Parliament its 16 MEPs sit in the EPP Group. The PP is also a member of the Centrist Democrat International and the International Democrat Union. The PP was also one of the founding organizations of the Budapest-based Robert Schuman Institute for Developing Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. On 24 May 2018, the National Court found that the PP profited from the illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme of the Gürtel case, confirming the existence of an illegal accounting and financing structure that ran in parallel with the party's official one since the party's foundation in 1989; the court ruled that the PP helped establish "a genuine and effective system of institutional corruption through the manipulation of central, autonomous and local public procurement". This prompted a no confidence vote on Mariano Rajoy's government, which was brought down on 1 June 2018 in the first successful motion since the Spanish transition to democracy. On 5 June 2018, Rajoy announced his resignation as PP leader.