FACTBOX: Spain's Gonzalez picked for panel on EU future

(Reuters) - European Union leaders chose former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez on Friday to chair a reflection group to discuss the long-term future of the 27-nation bloc.

The group will report to EU leaders on how to proceed on issues ranging from future expansion to how to deal with climate change and immigration.

Here are some key facts about Spain's longest serving prime minister and the one who led it into the now 27-member EU.

* Gonzalez, the son of a dairy farmer, was born on March 5, 1942 in a working-class neighborhood of Seville and went on to read law at Seville before joining the Socialist party in 1964 -- then banned under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

* He won the leadership of the party in 1974, and after losing Spain's first post-Franco election in 1979 -- rejected by an electorate suspicious of the party's Marxist origins -- he cultivated a more moderate image and won by a landslide in 1982.

* Gonzalez threw open Spain's doors to the outside world after 36 years of dictatorship, traveling widely to promote the country and leading it into what is now the European Union in 1986. In the same year the former anti-NATO activist backed Spain remaining a member of the alliance in a referendum.

* Wearied by corruption scandals and charges his government ran death squads against violent Basque separatists, Gonzalez, lost the 1996 election to conservative Jose Maria Aznar after 14 years in power.

* After his surprise resignation as party leader in 1997, the articulate, extrovert Andalusian, whose hobbies include growing bonsai trees and designing jewelry, stood down as a deputy in the Spanish Parliament in 2004.

(Reporting by Ben Harding)