Jesús Sancho Rof (December 16, 1940 in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

) is a Spanish politician and university professor who was a minister in the UCD governments during the presidencies of

Adolfo Suárez Adolfo Suárez González, 1st Duke of Suárez (; 25 September 1932 – 23 March 2014) was a Spanish lawyer and politician. Suárez was Spain's first democratically elected prime minister since the Second Spanish Republic and a key figure in th ...

and

Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo Leopoldo Ramón Pedro Calvo-Sotelo y Bustelo, 1st Marquess of Ría de Ribadeo (; 14 April 1926 – 3 May 2008), usually known as Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, was Prime Minister of Spain between 1981 and 1982. Early life and career Calvo-Sotelo was b ...

. He is also Doctor in Physical Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid, on which he was Professor of Optics and Structure of Matter. In the last years of the

Francoist Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spani ...

regime, he was general director of Radio Televisión Española (RTVE), replacing

Juan José Rosón Juan José Rosón (25 September 1932 – 19 August 1986) was a Spanish politician and a member of the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD). He served as the minister of interior from 1980 to 1982. Early life and education Rosón was born i ...

. In democracy he was director of the DGPI, an organ of

Ministry of the Interior An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs. Lists of current ministries of internal affairs Named "ministry" * Ministry ...

. He was the founder and leader of the Independent Social Federation, a group of social democratic courts that Sancho Rof defined as "humanist socialism", which would end up being part of the Union of the Democratic Centre and in the

1977 Spanish general election The 1977 Spanish general election was held on Wednesday, 15 June 1977, to elect the Spanish Cortes of the Kingdom of Spain. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as all 207 seats in the Senate. It was the first ...

he was elected deputy with said party for the province of Pontevedra, repeating in the 1982 and 1986 elections, this time with People's Alliance. In 1979 he was appointed Minister of Public Works and Urbanism where he promised the construction of a million floors of official protection and undertakes a plan to eradicate slums on the basis of the provision of single-family homes. He repeatedly defended the need for combining development policies with the respect for the environment. With the coming to power of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo in 1981, he was appointed Minister of Labor, Health and Social Security., In 1981, he made controversial declarations about the health crisis of

toxic oil syndrome Toxic oil syndrome (TOS) or simply toxic syndrome (Spanish: ''síndrome del aceite tóxico'' or ''síndrome tóxico'') is a musculoskeletal disease. A 1981 outbreak in Spain which affected about 20,000 people, with over 300 dying within a few mo ...

weeks after the death of the first victim. He said: "(The syndrome) is less serious than the flu. It is caused by a little bug whose proper name and first name we know. We only miss the second one. It is so small that, if it falls off the table, it kills itself". He left the office after that.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sancho Rof, Jesus 1940 births Living people Health ministers of Spain Spanish physicists Union of the Democratic Centre (Spain) politicians Members of the constituent Congress of Deputies (Spain)