Loyola de Palacio

A memorial service was being held in Madrid’s Almudena cathedral today (21 December) to celebrate the life of Loyola de Palacio, the Spanish conservative politician, farm minister and European commissioner, who died last week of cancer at the age of 56.

The untimeliness of her death was only one reason for the strength of the tributes that flowed from around Europe. Another was her special ability to command affection even from her opponents. She successfully combined fierce political argument with warmth and humour.

Even in death she could make personal relations triumph over politics. The Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who had not been speaking to opposition leader Mariano Rajoy because of their differences over the Basque peace process, broke his silence to offer his condolences.

De Palacio had been a prominent figure in the Partido Popular (PP) and its predecessor, the Alianza Popular (AP), for almost three decades. It was in 1977 that she began her political career as founder and first president of the AP’s youth wing, becoming a member of parliament in 1986. But it was the 1996 decision by then prime minister José-Maria Aznar to make her Spain’s minister of agriculture, fisheries and food that launched her into the orbit of Brussels.

She clashed repeatedly with then farm commissioner Franz Fischler as she took a fiercely nationalist line on some aspects of reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. Her populist approach - on occasion she joined farmers’ protests - won her support and the PP put her at the top of its list for the 1999 European Parliament elections. When Aznar put forward her name as a European commissioner to Romano Prodi her nomination hearings were beset by controversy about how much she and her ministry had known about abuse of EU subsidies for growing flax, but she weathered the storm.

As commissioner for transport and energy she struck up a fruitful working relationship with her director-general François Lamoureux. Pascal Lamy, who had worked with Lamoureux in the cabinet of Commission president Jacques Delors and then with de Palacio as a fellow commissioner, described the French Socialist and Spanish Conservative as "an improbable couple". It helped that she had been educated in a French Lycée near Madrid and spoke excellent French. Unlike Lamoureux, she was no European federalist, although she did believe in a strong Union, albeit tempered by the nation states. Both of them believed in getting results and they took advantage of favourable circumstances.

In the wake of the sinking of the Erika oil-tanker off the French coast, they pushed through legislation on maritime safety - not all of which was in place by the time another tanker, Prestige, broke up. It was a subject close to her heart: her family came from the Basque region of northern Spain, where she was buried on Thursday (14 December). On airline safety and security, too, she pushed through legislative proposals, which were helped by a greater sense of urgency in the wake of terrorist attacks. She advanced the Commission’s ambition to break down national jealousies and create a single European sky and fought for greater compensation rights for passengers. She took a hard line on state aid, arguing that there had to be corporate consolidation. She pushed through the Galileo navigation satellite project. In general, she achieved more on the transport dossiers than on the energy ones, although the groundwork was laid for some of the energy proposals that are now coming to the fore. She was frequently accused of taking too narrowly Spanish a line in Commission discussions, most notably in opposing Fischler’s proposals to reform the Common Fisheries Policy, but also on golden shares. On energy, greens were suspicious of her support for nuclear energy, even if she did advocate more support for renewables.

But she was unapologetic in pressing her case. She trusted too her political instincts as to what citizens would support - Prodi had made her responsible for relations with the European Parliament.

The defeat of the Aznar government (in which her sister Ana had served as foreign minister) gave her no possibility of ministerial office or staying on as a commissioner. She did though do some work for the Commission as a co-ordinator for the Lyon-Turin Trans-European Network. In August, ironically just when Lamoureux was dying of cancer, she discovered that she too had the same illness. Cancer had delayed the start of her career - her mother had died when she was 22, leaving her to bring up her younger siblings - now it was accelerating the end. But in the years in between, as many politicians testified last week, she made an impact.

A memorial service was being held in Madrid’s Almudena cathedral today (21 December) to celebrate the life of Loyola de Palacio, the Spanish conservative politician, farm minister and European commissioner, who died last week of cancer at the age of 56.