Manuela Carmena

Manuela Carmena
Mayor of Madrid
Incumbent
Assumed office 13 June 2015
Preceded by	Ana Botella
Personal details
Born	Manuela Carmena Castrillo 9 February 1944 Madrid, Spain
Political party	PCE (c.1977–c.1981) Ahora Madrid (2015–)
Alma mater	Complutense University of Madrid

Manuela Carmena Castrillo (born 9 February 1944) is a retired Spanish lawyer, emeritus judge of the Spanish Supreme Court and the current Mayor of Madrid since 13 June 2015.

Biography

After graduating law school in 1965 from the Complutense University of Madrid, she became a defender of the workers and detainees during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and co-founder of a labor law office where the 1977 Massacre of Atocha took place.^[1] She was also a member of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE).^[2] She had left the Communist Party by 1981.^[3] As a judge she began an almost solitary fight to prevent corruption in existing courts.^[4] In 1986 she received the National Human Rights Award.^[5] She was a member of the General Council of the Judiciary, proposed by United Left, and a founder of the progressive association Judges for Democracy.

Judge of Penitentiary Vigilance and head of the Penitentiary Vigilance Court No. 1 of Madrid, she was elected senior judge of Madrid in 1993.^[6] Retired from the judiciary since 2010, Carmena became a member of the Patronato de la Fundación Alternativas, a think tank correlated to the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), with members such as the former Socialist prime ministers Felipe González and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Carmena Castrillo was Chair-Rapporteur of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and as such, she visited Equatorial Guinea, Honduras, Nicaragua and South Africa, among other countries.^[7] In September 2011, Carmena Castrillo was named advisor to the Patxi López cabinet of the Basque Government in the area of assistance to victims of police abuse.^[8]

Carmena Castrillo founded the supportive cooperative "Yayos emprendedores" (lit. entrepreneur grannies), which sponsors a small retail business that sells children's games and clothing and shoes made by prisoners at the Alcalá de Guadaira jail in Seville.^[9][10]

She ran as the candidate of the Ahora Madrid coalition in the 2015 Madrid mayoral election. On 13 June 2015, Manuela Carmena was declared Mayor of Madrid. She is known for reducing Madrid's debt of 5,6 bln by 38% in a year and a half of her mayorship.^[11]

References

1. "Manuela Carmena, elected Podemos' candidate to lead the Ahora Madrid list" (in Spanish). The Huffington Post. 2015-03-10.
2. "The "visionary" story of Manuela Carmena" (in Spanish). La Marea. 2015-04-01.
3. "Important drop of communist party membership". El País. 1981-05-10.
4. "First legal agreements to prevent corruption in the courts" (in Spanish). El País. 1985-05-16.
5. "Judge Manuela Carmena, National Human Rights Award 1986" (in Spanish). El País. 1986-12-06.
6. "A progressive judge, new senior of Madrid" (in Spanish). El País. 1993-02-11.
7. "Manuela Carmena, chosen as Podemos' candidate for leader of Ahora Madrid's list" (in Spanish). El Huffington Post. 2015-03-10.
8. "Manuela Carmena: "I was menaced by ETA myself"" (in Spanish). El País. 2015-05-20.
9. Yayos Emprendedores, una empresa con beneficio social (in Spanish)
10. Zapatelas: Quiénes Somos (in Spanish)
11. http://www.lasexta.com/noticias/economia/ayuntamiento-carmena-reduce-deuda-madrid-menos-dos-anos-robar-ayuda_20161104581c32680cf2d6cc9ccc69c4.html