Carme Chacon

I've decided to write about another successful Catalan, but a female and very current one: Carme Chacon Piqueras.

Carme Chacon was born in Esplugues de Llobregat, a municipality just outside of Barcelona, in 1971. She studied Law at the University of Barcelona and graduated in 1994 with cum lauda honours for her thesis on 'Federalism and the 1982 Canadian Charter of Freedom and Rights'. Her fourth year studies were undertaken at Victoria University in Manchester (another link between the two cities). She went on to do many courses of Postgraduate Study, mainly in Canada, studying at 4 Universities including Osgoode Law School in Toronto and Montreal University.

Her political career began when she joined the Cataluna Young Socialists in 1989 and became a member of the Catalan Socialist Party in 1994. She was Deputy Mayor responsible for economic ad human resources and public safety and elected as Town Hall councillor in 1999. She was an international observer for the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania in 1996 and 1997. In 2000 she was elected Socialist MP for Barcelona and her career turned international when she became the PSOE spokesperson in 2003, the year before the party came into government.

After the party came into government, Chacon was appointed Secretary of Culture (2004) and New Housing Minister (2007). However, she made headlines when she became the first woman in Spanish government to be appointed head of the Ministry of Defence in 2008 as Zapatero came into power for a second term. She was one of the women who made up half of Zapatero's new equally gender-divided cabinet and was also pregnant at the time of her appointment, making it a slightly controversial appointment yet also showcasing the new equality and democracy that is coming into Spain over time.

Kat x