Spanish teacher and politician. Rivas Fontán did secondary studies and studied Teacher Training in Pontevedra, where he performed the compulsory Military service to work at the military government. There, he passed the public exams to the National Teacher Training Body in 1963, being sent to adult education.

Married with María Gloria Lis Corral, with whom he had four children.

Rivas Fontán applied for a special post in the Ministry of Education, specifically at the Organization of School Services of the Education Inspectorate of Pontevedra, where he was in charge of one of the first Centre of Audiovisual Resources applied to teaching in Spain.

In the very first elections in democracy, Rivas Fontán was elected deputy of UCD for Pontevedra during the Constituent Legislature. In 1979, he was elected Mayor of Pontevedra with UCD, post in which he stayed until 1983, when he renewed his term of office as an independent for Popular Alliance, and in 1987 for "Independents from Galicia", until 1991, when he decided not to run the local elections and to leave politics due to the court proceedings with Luciano Varela, being acquitted at Courts of the Provincial Audience of Pontevedra and of the Supreme Court of Madrid.

In 1978, being Antonio Rosón Pérez the President of the Pre-autonomous Government of Galicia, Rivas Fontán worked there as the Secretary General. HE was also the Secretary of the Parliamentarian Assembly of Galicia, in which all the elected parliamentarians participated, as well as the Senators elected by the Royal House, the Nobleman Camilo José Cela and Domingo García Sabell. He was the constituent secretary of the Commission in charge of the draft of the Galician Statute. In 1996 and 2000 he was re-elected as Deputy in Courts, taking part in the VI and VII Legislatures, and being a member of the Commissions of Education, Public Administration, Infrastructures and Defense.

Currently, he's retired and has withdrawn from the public life since 2004.