Manuel Fraga - Telegraph In 1951 he was appointed to the post of General Secretary at the Institute of Hispanic Culture, and in 1955 to an equivalent position at the National Education Ministry. He was briefly director of the Institute of Political Studies before his appointment as Minister of Information and Tourism in 1962. Though an authoritarian conservative - he approved the execution by firing squad of a communist militant in 1963 - Fraga was seen as one of the principal "aperturistas" of the 1960s, responsible for the gradual opening up of political and cultural life in Spain. He played a major role in the revitalisation of the Spanish tourist industry, leading a campaign under the slogan "Spain is different!" (which recently entered common parlance as an ironic joke about Spain's inability to get to grips with its economic problems). While his Press Law of 1966 may not have allowed journalists to comment freely on the Franco regime, it brought about a degree of sexual liberality popularly encapsulated in the expression "Con Fraga hasta la braga" ("With Fraga [you can see] even the knickers"). In 1969 the collapse of the textile firm Matesa, involving three technocrat ministers who belonged to Opus Dei, and whose influence Fraga resented, led to his dismissal for having encouraged press reporting of the scandal. Many franquistas were happy to see the back of the man they held responsible for allowing pornography to be distributed in Spain. Meanwhile, his relationship with Franco was said to have become strained after a partridge shoot when Fraga, aiming at a bird, hit Franco's only daughter, Carmen, in the backside. Two years after his dismissal Fraga published a pamphlet, El Desarollo Politico ("Political Development"), urging the need to continue the process of reform in order to maintain the stability of the Franco government. Subsequently he spent two years as Spain's ambassador in Britain, an appointment which ended with Franco's death in 1975. After the Generalissimo's demise, Fraga's reforming ideals seemed to go abruptly into reverse. As minister of the interior in the immediate post-Franco government of Carlos Arias, Fraga took drastic measures against pro-democracy street protesters, treating them as enemies of the state to be rounded up by the police and held in custody. The phrase "La calle es mía!" ("The streets are mine!") was attributed to him. His arrogant, hectoring manner did not endear him to King Juan Carlos, the country's head of state, and few were surprised that he failed to come close to being selected to succeed Arias. Fraga went off in a huff and instead formed an unreconstructed Francoist party (the Alianza Popular) with some of his former ministerial colleagues who had opposed his political reforms of the previous decade. During the 1977 general election campaign, those attending his Popular Alliance rallies chanted "Franco!" as well as "Fraga!" But after his party's dismal showing in the election, Fraga moved it towards the political centre and took a hand in drafting a constitution for the new democratic Spain. The old Francoists departed and at the next election, in 1979, he put the party into a Coalicion Democratica. But it received even less support from the electorate. By 1982, however, when the Socialists led by Felipe Gonzalez came to power, Fraga's party was in the ascendant. He had steered it astutely towards a modern conservative position, and he became leader of the opposition in the Cortes. He later represented the party in the European Parliament, and in 1989 was elected first president of the reconstituted Popular Party, which won the 1996 general election under the leadership of José Maria Aznar. Throughout the 1990s, Fraga was president of Galicia, and was re-elected for a fourth term in October 2001. He was especially proud of the region's improved communications (in 2000, he approved the Galician Plan to build Spain's first high speed train line), and its flourishing fishing industry during his presidency. When asked about the most important changes in Spain since Franco's day, Fraga would cite the ending of mass emigration from Galicia. To his opponents, however, he was an authoritarian relic of the Franco era who failed to lift Galicia and its people out of poverty. Fraga remained in charge for almost 15 years until his party lost its overall majority in the Galician election of 2005. Appointed a senator by the Parliament of Galicia, he continued to serve until 2011. An irascible man renowned for throwing tantrums in public if he was not referred to or addressed as "Don Manuel," Fraga's attitude to King Juan Carlos, who had refused to consider him for prime minister, never mellowed. When he was invited to comment on the success of the restored monarchy, Fraga usually omitted to mention the king, saying instead that his son Felipe, Prince of Asturias, would make a good king. Fraga published some 80 books and essays on politics and the constitution. He married, in 1948, Maria del Carmen Estevez, who died in 1996; they had five children. Manuel Fraga, born November 23 1922, died January 15 2012