Overview
Fraga was one of the writers of the democratic constitution and spent part of his political career lessening the censorship law during dictatorship. However he had openly admitted admiration for General Franco and the regime in public, on several different occasions. He was renowned for his temper tantrums in public at not being referred to or addressed as Don Manuel. He most famously shouted during a television interview, completely unaware the camera was filming and the show was being broadcast live on air. Manuel Fraga Iribarne was probably one of the most important and yet controversial politicians in modern Spain.
To his supporters, Fraga was a Galician hero who throughout his rule, modernised Galicia and built up a fair level of tourism to the region. He built great roads and motorways and in 2000, he approved the Galician Plan to build Spain's first high speed bullet train. However to his opponents he was an authoritarian relic of the Franco era who failed to lift Galicia and its people out of poverty and unemployment.
Despite their political differences, he maintained a friendship with Fidel Castro, himself of Galician descent, who visited him in Galicia in 1992.
Fraga died on 15 January 2012 of a respiratory disease. His funeral was attended by Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia.
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