Hermann Leopold Tertsch del Valle-Lersundi (; born 9 April 1958) is a Spanish journalist, lawyer and politician. He has been a

member of the European Parliament A member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been Election, elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and S ...

for the Vox party since

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

Biography

Tertsch was born in

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

on 9 April 1958, the son of Ekkehard Tertsch (1906–1989), an Austrian-German diplomat and journalist who was a close collaborator of , also an Austrian diplomat and journalist and the chief Nazi propagandist in Spain during World War II. Through his mother Felisa del Valle-Lersundi he is a cousin of

Loyola de Palacio Ignacia de Loyola de Palacio y del Valle Lersundi (16 September 1950 – 13 December 2006) was a Spanish politician. She was among the first women to rise to political prominence in Spain during the early years of reconstituted democracy. She ...

and

Ana de Palacio Ana Isabel de Palacio y del Valle Lersundi (born 22 July 1948) in Madrid, daughter of Luis María de Palacio y de Palacio, 4th Marqués de Matonte, and wife Luisa Mariana del Valle Lersundi y del Valle, was Spain's minister for foreign affairs ...

. He was a member of the

Communist Party of the Basque Country The Communist Party of the Basque Country (, ) is the federation of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) in Basque Country and Navarre. PCE-EPK publishes ''Hemen eta Orain''. The general secretary of PCE-EPK is Jon Hernández. The youth organizatio ...

in his youth. Based in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, Tertsch became a correspondent for the

Agencia EFE Agencia EFE, S.A. () is a Spanish international news agency, the major Spanish-language multimedia news agency and the world's fourth largest wire service after the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse. EFE was created in 1939 ...

in 1982, covering Central and Eastern Europe. Soon after, in 1983, he began to work for the newspaper ''

El País (; ) is a Spanish-language daily newspaper in Spain. is based in the capital city of Madrid and it is owned by the Spanish media conglomerate PRISA. It is the second-most circulated daily newspaper in Spain . is the most read newspaper in ...

'' as correspondent to

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

. He chronicled the

Yugoslav Wars The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related#Naimark, Naimark (2003), p. xvii. ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and Insurgency, insurgencies that took place from 1991 to 2001 in what had been the Socialist Federal Republic of ...

, featuring a marked anti-Serbian point of view. He became a regular columnist and served for a time as the newspaper's op-ed editor. During the years he became a regular radio guest for the

Cadena SER La Cadena SER (the SER Network) is a Spanish radio network established in 1924, with a regular listenership of 4,139,000 reported in 2018. The acronym SER stands for Sociedad Española de Radiodifusión (Spanish Broadcasting Company). Cadena SE ...

Radio Nacional de España Radio Nacional de España (acronym RNE, branded rne, "National Radio of Spain") is the national Government-owned corporation, state-owned public service broadcasting, public service radio broadcaster in Spain. RNE is the radio division and T ...

and

Onda Cero Onda Cero is a Spanish national generalist radio station, a part of Atresmedia media group. It is Spain's third-largest radio station by number of listeners as of 2024. Among its programs are ''Más de Uno,'' ''Julia en la Onda,'' ''La Brújula ...

. He left ''El País'' in 2007, becoming a political opinion writer for the conservative newspaper ''ABC'' soon after. He was also hired by

Telemadrid Telemadrid is a public television station in the Community of Madrid, Spain, the flagship channel of the regional public broadcaster Radio Televisión Madrid (RTVM). It began its broadcast on 2 May 1989. History First years Telemadrid was cr ...

, and became the host of the early-morning in 2008, replacing

Fernando Sánchez Dragó Fernando Sánchez Dragó (2 October 1936 – 10 April 2023) was a Spanish writer and television host. Biography Fernando Sánchez Dragó was born in the Salamanca district of Madrid, the posthumous son of Fernando Sánchez Monreal, a journal ...

. After some weeks of convalescence, as he suffered wounds in what the policial investigation termed as a "bar fight" in a piano-bar in Madrid (the Toni 2) in December 2009, he left the role of host. In April 2019, Tertsch announced his intention to run for the

2019 European Parliament election in Spain The 2019 European Parliament election in Spain was held on Sunday, 26 May 2019, as part of the 2019 European Parliament election, EU-wide election to elect the Ninth European Parliament, 9th European Parliament. All 54 seats allocated to Spain ( ...

with the Vox party. As the party won 3 seats in the election, he was elected MEP. He joined the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), as well as the Delegation to the EU-Mexico Joint Parliamentary Committee (D-MX) and the Delegation to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (DLAT), serving as vice-chair in the later body. Tertsch was re-elected in June 2024 for another five-year term. After the announcement of the prospective government formation in Spain under

Pedro Sánchez Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón (; born 29 February 1972) is a Spanish politician who has served as Prime Minister of Spain since 2018. He has also been Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) since July 2017, having p ...

in January 2020 after the November 2019 general election, Terstch, just returned from Bolivia, asked for a

military coup A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

in the country to abort what he framed as an "obvious putschist process seeking the demolition of Spain as a nation". He is a signer of the ''

Madrid Charter The Madrid Forum (Spanish: ''Foro Madrid'') is an anti-communist organization created on 26 October 2020 by the Disenso Foundation think tank of the conservative Spanish political party Vox. Background According to ''The Rio Times'', the aim ...

'', joining an alliance of

conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

and

right-wing Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property ...

personalities organized by Vox.

Decorations

Cirilo Rodríguez Journalism Award The Cirilo Rodríguez Journalism Award () is an award given annually by the Segovia Press Association (APS), in collaboration with the (FAPE). It "is destined to publicly recognize the best work of a correspondent or special envoy of a Spanish me ...

(1989) * Golden Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (2019) *

Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland The Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland () is a Polish order of merit created in 1974, awarded to persons who have rendered great service to Poland. It is granted to foreigners or Poles resident abroad. As such, it is sometimes referred to as ...

(2022)

References

;Informational notes ;Citations {{DEFAULTSORT:Tertsch, Hermann Living people MEPs for Spain 2019–2024 Vox (political party) MEPs El País op-ed editors ABC (newspaper) people 1958 births Politicians from Madrid Spanish people of Austrian descent Spanish people of German descent Spanish people of Irish descent Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary Spanish opinion journalists Spanish journalists MEPs for Spain 2024–2029