Verónica Alonso


Verónica Alonso is an Uruguayan politician and senator.

Life

Alonso was born in Montevideo in 1973. She had five brothers and she was brought up as a Catholic.
She studied International relations at the Universidad ORT Uruguay She went on to study at Universidad de Montevideo at masters level, but she failed to submit a thesis. She has a postgraduate Diploma in International Relations and Latin American Political Development from the Miguel de Cervantes University in Santiago.
In 2009 she supported the election of the former president Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera. That same year, she was elected deputy for the department of Montevideo, a position she held from 15 February 2010. Her first legislation was to propose to the House of Representatives that exempted private companies from paying employer contributions after they employed workers who were over forty years old.
She was a member of the National Party aka the "White Party" and they elected her as a senator.

Coronavirus

During the coronavirus pandemic in Uruguay a hotel owned by her family let rooms at $7 a day. The fees were paid by the state and allowed homeless people to find a place to stay. The Hotel Urban Express is owned by her husband's family and is normally charged at $45 a night. It was pointed out that other hotels had refused to allow street people to use their facilities and at $7 a night the hotel would fail to cover the hotel's costs. Critics were told that $7 dollars a night was not a charge, but virtually a donation.

Private life

She married and her husband, Marcel Gerwer, is apolitical and Jewish by faith. In 2012 they were expecting their third child. Alonso was brought up a catholic but converted to Judaism at the time of her marriage.