Ester Capella, Anna Simó and David Mascort have already taken office as the new Catalan ministers for territory, education and climate action in a blink-and-miss-it event at the Palau de la Generalitat this Monday afternoon. After announcing the cabinet reshuffle earlier in the day, the Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, did not speak for long in a ceremony that only lasted 15 minutes, encouraging the new ministers to "keep the country moving forward". The president asserted that these changes bring "renewed energy" into the government to be able to finish the remaining 2 years of the legislature and he thanked the outgoing ministers, Juli Fernàndez, Josep Gonzàlez Cambray and Teresa Jordà, for their work: "You have given everything, with an unerring will to transform".
"We are halfway through a legislature in which a lot of work has been done to transform inertia into new working dynamics and to build a basis for change. Now we need to crystallize all the transformations we have been promoting," the president said before his new ministers. In fact, these three ministries include some of the most challenging difficulties currently faced by the Catalan executive: the housing crisis, the Rodalies rail issue and the future of Barcelona airport (in the territorial portfolio), teachers' industrial action and the linguistic issue (in education), and the severe drought (climate action).
The changes had been foreshadowed by the president of the governing Republican Left (ERC), Oriol Junqueras, on Saturday when he announced that Teresa Jordà would be a candidate in the general elections of July 23rd in tandem with Gabriel Rufián on the Republican lists for Congress in Madrid. Jordà would thus leave behind the climate action ministry in Barcelona. Unlike the last cabinet reshuffle, in October, when several non-ERC ministers came into the cabinet to diversify it, following the departure of Together for Catalonia (Junts) from the executive, it was clear that this time the new ministers would come from within ERC.
The new ministers and their challenges
Ester Capella (La Seu d'Urgell, 1963) will assume the Catalan territorial ministry at a time when several issues - the debate on the Rodalies regional rail services, the future of Barcelona-El Prat airport and the agreement on the B-40 highway in the Vallès counties - are still open. The new minister will also have to lead the government's housing policies, a matter she already touched on as head of justice between 2018 and 2021, when she promoted the Catalan law on housing rental regulation. Capella, who until now has been a Catalan government delegate in Madrid, has a degree in law and has been an ERC deputy in Parliament and in Congress (2015-2018), where she worked with Teresa Jordà, who will now take the journey in the opposite direction to head the ERC list with Gabriel Rufián.
Anna Simó returns to the Catalan government after 18 years away, taking the Education portfolio. Simó was minister for social welfare and families between 2003 and 2006. Then as an MP after 2006, she was spokesperson for the parliamentary group and party, deputy speaker of the chamber between 2012 and 2015 and first secretary until 2017. Just days ago she was sentenced to a four month ban on office holding in the repeated trial of the 2017 parliamentary bureau under Carme Forcadell, but the court itself opened the way for the suspension of this sentence. Simó's last institutional position was as president of senior education body the Education Council between 2018 and 2021. Simó, with an image as a negotiator, comes to the education portfolio after a period of constant disputes between the ministry and the teaching unions. She is a language expert with qualifications from the University of Barcelona and worked in key Catalan language bodies from 1986 to her entry into the government in 2003.
David Mascort (Barcelona, 1969), former mayor of the Girona town of Vilablareix, will be the new minister for climate action, food and rural agenda in the Pere Aragonès government, taking the portfolio previously occupied by Teresa Jordà. Up till now, Mascort has held a senior position in the same department he now heads as minister. A graduate in economics and business studies, he was mayor of Vilablareix between 2011 and 2022, and has also held positions in the provincial government of Girona and in his party organization in that same region. High on the agenda for the new minister will be the management of Catalonia's ongoing severe drought, an area in which he has already been involved, taking part in the negotiations for the drought summit in March.
Below, the Catalan cabinet after this Monday's reshuffle, with the new members in boxes highlighted in yellow: