Izaskun Bilbao was born in the coastal town of Bermeo in the Basque region of north west Spain. She is a member of the Basque Nationalist Party.
President of the Basque Parliament, 2005–2009
Izaskun Bilbao was the President of the Basque Parliament in the 2005–2009 term, being elected to the office as a "consensus candidate" among the nationalist majority in the legislature when the incumbent president and initial candidate of her party, Juan María Atutxa, failed to obtain the majority and the election deadlocked.[1] She has a degree in law.
In 2008, she was in the center of a controversy regarding the placement of the Spanish flag in the seat of the Basque Parliament: the Spanish Law on Flags requires that all public institutions place the Spanish flag on a prominent place wherever the regional or local flags fly. After years of not submitting to such law and flying only the Ikurriña (Basque flag), the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that the Basque Parliament would have to fly the Spanish flag too.[2] In the Bureau meeting that studied the ruling, Izaskun Bilbao sided with the non-nationalist minority in the Parliament ruling body to actually place the flag[3] against the official policy of her party. She defended this decision as simply obeying the final ruling of the Supreme Court, and thus having nothing to do with politics.
Bilbao contested the 2009 election as the leading candidate for Biscay in the Basque National Party's ticket, and was subsequently re-elected to parliament. She also sought re-election as speaker, but the election results allowed PSE and PP to form a majority, and Arantza Quiroga (PP) succeeded her in the post. Bilbao resigned as member of parliament during the summer of 2009, upon being elected by her party to contest the 2009 European Parliament election.