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The new French prime minister, Jean Castex, took part in an event held last October by the mayors of towns in Northern Catalonia - that is, in the Catalan part of the French state - against the repression of the Catalan political prisoners. Castex, mayor of the town of Prada de Conflent, appears in a photo of the event. 

The photograph was released by the Catalan government's delegate in Perpinyà, Josep Puigbert, after Castex was appointed to the top political job today in Emmanuel Macron's government reshuffle. Puigbert commented that Castex has had a very different political trajectory to that of another Catalan who was also French prime minister in his day, Manuel Valls.

Translation:
"The new prime minister of France @JeanCASTEX, in addition to expressing himself very well in Catalan, has a sensitivity towards #Catalonia very different from that of @manuelvalls. Eight months ago I took a photo of him with the mayors of #CatalunyaNord positioned against the repression." — Josep Puigbert

Castex, who is of Occitan origin, speaks Catalan fluently, and has positioned himself in favour of the Catalan political prisoners, jailed by Spain for their part in the 2017 referendum. The new prime minister did not sign the manifesto of the northern Catalan mayors at the time of the photo, but he did sign a text against police violence during the 1st October referendum in El Conflent, which called for international mediation in the crisis.

For years Castex has been the host of one of the most important Catalan cultural events held in Northern Catalonia: the annual Catalan Summer University, held in his town, which every year features major Catalan academic, cultural and political figures. Castex has given a welcome speech in Catalan every summer; below is his 2015 speech in which he spoke about the Catalan countries and showed his knowledge of figures ranging from cellist Pau Casals to philologist Pompeu Fabra, the great Catalan linguist who is, in fact, buried in the Northern Catalonia town's cemetery.

Jean Castex, politically close to former president Nicolas Sarkozy, combines this Catalan profile with a solid political background in Paris. He is regarded as an "interventionist" conservative.

The president of the Catalan National Assembly, Elisenda Paluzie, has recalled that in 2014, Jean Castex was listening as she delivered the inaugural lecture to that year's Catalan Summer University, on the independence of Catalonia. In the tweeted photo, Castex is seated beside Paluzie.