Concepción Méndez Gándara, Mayor of Sandiás for 36 Years
Concepción Méndez Gándara (Sandiás) was a teacher and mayor of Sandiás from the first democratic elections until 2015, one of the 99 women elected mayor in Spain on 3 April 1979.
María Concepción Méndez Gándara was born in Sandiás and is a teacher and politician. She was mayor of Sandiás for 36 years, from the first democratic elections (April 1979) until 2015. She was one of the 99 women elected mayor in Spain on 3 April 1979; of all of them, in Galicia only seven reached the mayoralty, six of them in the province of Ourense [1].
Education and work
She completed her secondary schooling with the Josephine nuns in Ourense and trained as a teacher; she passed the public examinations in 1966. She taught in Requeixo (Chandrexa de Queixa) and San Cristovo (Monterrei) and later worked mainly in Xinzo de Limia and in Adult Education in Ourense [1].
Municipal politics
She entered politics in 1979 under the sponsorship of Eulogio Gómez Franqueira and Pío Cabanillas, on the UCD list in Sandiás, and won with an absolute majority. After the UCD fell apart she passed through Centristas de Ourense, Coalición Galega (relative majority in 1983) and Centristas de Galicia; in 1987 she retained the mayoralty in the AP coalition with Centristas de Galicia, in 1991 with the Convergencia Centristas and CDS and, from that year, in the PPdeG, with an absolute majority until 2015 [1]. From 1994 to 1998 she was an adviser at the Ourense Provincial Council; she chaired the Special Accounts Committee and represented the Council on various bodies, and served as vice-president, president and treasurer of the A Limia Regional Fire and Rescue Consortium [1].
She was president and chief driving force of the local Red Cross branch in Sandiás and promoted the first-aid post, which opened in 1982; she received the Silver Medal of the Spanish Red Cross in 1996 [1]. In the elections of 24 May 2015 she lost to an independent list and withdrew from local politics [1]. She had married Agapito Feijoo Vázquez, who died in May 1980 [1].
Links
- Parish: Sandiás
- People of A Limia
- Sandiás
- Luis Otero Bobillo, mayor of Sandiás until 1979
Sources
- «Concepción Méndez Gándara», Galician Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepción_Méndez_Gándara
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