Who is Carles Puigdemont?

Carles Puigdemont Casamajó was born Born on December 29th 1962 in Amer (la Selva) and currently lives in Girona. He is married and has two children. He studied for degree in Catalan philology at the University College of Girona and developed his professional career as journalist at El Punt, where he would later become the editor-in-chief and the general director of Catalonia Today, a daily newspaper in English which he helped launch.

With the exception of his time as director of Girona’s Casa de Cultura (2002-2004), his professional activity, which spans almost three decades, has always been related with the communication industry. He has been actively engaged in politics since his first nomination as a candidate for the CiU party in November 2006, when he was elected as a member of the Parliament of Catalonia in representation of the Girona region. As a Member of Parliament, he chaired the Culture and Language Commission and was member of the Foreign and EU Action and Youth Policy commissions.

Puigdemont would go on to lead Girona’s mayoral candidate list for the nationalist federation in both the 2007 and 2011 local elections. Subsequently, after his success in the polls, he was elected Mayor of Girona in the 2011 elections, becoming the first non-socialist mayor in the country’s democratic era. During his term in office he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI), chairman for the Committee of Cultural-Historical Heritage, president of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) and vice president of the Catalan Association of Municipalities.

In the local elections held in May 2015, he retained the results of 2011, keeping the 10 councillors he previously had and was re-elected as Mayor of Girona. From July 2015 until January 2016 he has was the president of the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI).

Despite his full dedication to politics, the media remains an activity he attempts to combine with his public duties. He follows closely the development of this sector and is especially interested in the cultural and social changes triggered by the ICT industry in the field of communication, while ensuring these technologies also help him in his political work. As a result of his professional contacts and this interest in the internet throughout the mid-nineties, in 1998 he designed the project for the creation of the Catalan News Agency

He is also interested in the projection of Catalonia in the foreign media and has followed it closely since the late eighties. In 1994 he published the book Cata…què. Catalunya vista per la premsa internacional [Catalonia as seen by the foreign media] (Ed. La Campana, Barcelona). He then went on to write a weekly column on the topic in the magazine Presència.

On January 12th 2016 he was officially sworn in as the 130th President of the Government of Catalonia.