José Montilla

José Montilla Aguilera [ Xose montiʎa agileɾa ] (born January 15, 1955 in Iznajar, Córdoba Province) is a Catalan politician who belongs to the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC). From November 28 2006 to 27 December 2010, he was president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the autonomous government of Catalonia. He was the first immigrant from another Spanish region in this office.

Career

Montilla came in 1971 at the age of 16 with his family to Catalonia; at this time attracted many residents of poor regions in the south and center of Spain in the economic centers in Madrid, Catalonia and the Basque Country. In 1978 he joined the PSC, 1983, he was mayor of Cornella de Llobregat, a town near Barcelona. In the elections of 1999 and 2003, he was confirmed in each case by an absolute majority in office, and exercised it until he was appointed in April 2004 to the Spanish Industry Minister in the Zapatero government, after he had been a month earlier elected members of the Spanish Parliament. The PSC had elected him in 2000 for the first secretary, and so in the most important position of the party leadership.

In September 2006, Montilla resigned from his ministerial position to compete as a top candidate in elections to the Catalan Parliament. On 28 November, he was appointed to head a coalition of the PSC, Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (IC -V) and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya ( ERC) head of government of the Autonomous Community.

After all three parties had partly suffered massive losses mandate in the regional elections in November 2010, the coalition could not be continued and Montilla lost his job as president of the Generalitat de Catalunya. His successor, Artur Mas.