Pilar del Castillo

María Pilar del Castillo Vera ( born July 31, 1952 in Nador, Morocco) is a Spanish politician of the conservative party PP and Member of the European Parliament.

Del Castillo studied law at the Complutense University in Madrid, where she graduated in 1974. Then she was 1981-1982 Fulbright scholar at Ohio State University, where she completed a master's in political science. In 1983, she holds a doctorate in Madrid in law. From 1986, she was at the Spanish National Distance University professor of constitutional law, as of 1994 she took a chair in Political Science a.

From 1995 to 1996, del Castillo editor of the magazine Nueva Revista de Política, Cultura y Arte; 1996 to 2000 she headed the Spanish public opinion research institute Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas.

In 2000 she was appointed Spanish Minister of Education, Culture and Sports in the second cabinet under José María Aznar (PP). In the parliamentary elections in March 2004, in which the PP underwent a total defeat, she was elected for the province of Granada in the Spanish Congress of Deputies. However, she waived a few months later back to their mandate after they had been elected in the European election in June 2004 in the European Parliament, to which it belongs since then. It belongs to the Group of the European People's Party and is a member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.

Del Castillo has published several books, among other things, voting behavior and on the financing of political parties. She is married and has two children.