He had been a bishop since 1988 and was made a cardinal in 2015, when he was described as "a theological moderate and perennial counterweight to Spain's more doctrinally conservative and socially combative prelates".

[1] Ricardo Blázquez Pérez was born in Villanueva del Campillo (Ávila) on 13 April 1942.

[2] He was named an auxiliary bishop of Santiago de Compostela and assigned the titular see of Germa di Galazia on 8 April 1988.

[3] In 2009, he was one of five bishops charged with conducting an investigation of the Legionaries of Christ, with responsibility for the order's branches in Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Holland, Poland, Austria and Hungary.

He was elected three times to a three-year term as president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference in 2005, 2014, and 2017.

[20] In November 2015, the Spanish Episcopal Conference elected him grand chancellor of the Pontifical University of Salamanca, a post he had held once before.

[10] He was one of three prelates the Spanish Episcopal Conference elected to participate in the Synod of Bishops on Youth in October 2018.