Manuela Carmena Castrillo (; born in 1944) is a retired Spanish
lawyer and
judge who served as
Mayor of Madrid
The Mayor of Madrid presides over the Madrid City Council, the government body of the capital city of Spain. The mayor has the duty of boosting the local policies, it directs the action of the other executive bodies, leads the Local Executive Admi ...
from June 2015 to June 2019. She was a member of the
General Council of the Judiciary
The General Council of the Judiciary ( es, Consejo General del Poder Judicial, CGPJ) is the national council of the judiciary of Spain. It is the constitutional body that governs all the Judiciary of Spain, such as courts, and judges, as it i ...
.
Biography
Early life
She was born on 9 February 1944 in
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...
, in the area near the
Dehesa de la Villa. Both sides of her family had a background in small business: her father Carmelo (a native of
Toledo) ran a shirt shop at the corner of
Gran Vía and Chinchilla Street in central Madrid. Her mother, meanwhile, worked as a cashier. She attended the French School of the Black Ladies. During her time as a student, Carmena served as voluntary worker in a preserves factory run by the
Servicio Universitario del Trabajo.
After graduating in
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
in 1965 from the
University of Valencia
The University of Valencia ( ca-valencia, Universitat de València ; also known as UV) is a public research university located in the city of Valencia, Spain. It is one of the oldest surviving universities in Spain, and the oldest in the Vale ...
,
she became a legal representative of workers and detainees during the
Francoist State and was
co-founder
An organizational founder is a person who has undertaken some or all of the formational work needed to create a new organization, whether it is a business, a charitable organization, a governing body, a school, a group of entertainers, or any othe ...
of the labour law office where the
1977 Atocha massacre
The 1977 Atocha massacre was an attack by right-wing extremists in the center of Madrid on January 24, 1977, which saw the assassination of five labor activists from the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and the workers' federation ''Comisiones ...
took place.
Carmena, who joined the
Communist Party of Spain
The Communist Party of Spain ( es, Partido Comunista de España; PCE) is a Marxist-Leninist party that, since 1986, has been part of the United Left coalition, which is part of Unidas Podemos. It currently has two of its politicians serving a ...
(PCE) in 1965, married architect Eduardo Leira in 1967;
they have had two children: Eva and Manuel. She ran as a candidate in the PCE list for the
1977 general election in the constituency of
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...
. She had left the party by 1981.
Judicial career
After passing public examinations to become a judge, she started her judicial career in January 1981.
As a judge she began an almost solitary fight to prevent
corruption in existing courts. In 1986 she received the National Human Rights Award. She was a founding member 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. She was appointed as member of the
General Council of the Judiciary
The General Council of the Judiciary ( es, Consejo General del Poder Judicial, CGPJ) is the national council of the judiciary of Spain. It is the constitutional body that governs all the Judiciary of Spain, such as courts, and judges, as it i ...
(proposed by
United Left) and served from 1996 to 2001.
Activity after retirement
After retiring from the judiciary in 2010, Carmena moved on to become a member of the ''Patronato de la Fundación Alternativas'', a think tank with ties to the
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party ( es, Partido Socialista Obrero Español ; PSOE ) is a social-democraticThe PSOE is described as a social-democratic party by numerous sources:
*
*
*
* political party in Spain. The PSOE has been in gove ...
(PSOE), and whose members included the former Socialist prime ministers
Felipe González
Felipe González Márquez (; born 5 March 1942) is a Spanish lawyer, professor, and politician, who was the Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from 1974 to 1997, and the 3rd Prime Minister of Spain since the ...
and
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Carmena was Chair-Rapporteur of the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and as such, she has visited
Equatorial Guinea,
Honduras,
Nicaragua
Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the countr ...
and
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
, among other countries. In September 2011, Carmena was appointed advisor to the
Patxi López
Francisco Javier "Patxi" López Álvarez (; born 4 October 1959) is a Spanish politician serving as Member of the Congress of Deputies and chair of the Constitutional Committee.
Previously, he has served as President of the Autonomous Communi ...
cabinet of the
Basque Government
The Basque Government ( eu, Eusko Jaurlaritza, es, Gobierno Vasco) is the governing body of the Basque Autonomous Community of Spain. The head of the Basque government is known as the ''Lehendakari''. The Lehendakari is appointed by the Basque P ...
in the area of assistance to victims of police abuse.
Carmena Castrillo founded the supportive cooperative "Yayos emprendedores" (literally, "entrepreneur grannies"), which manages a small retail business selling children's games, clothing and shoes made by prisoners at the Alcalá de Guadaira jail in
Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...
.
Mayor of Madrid
Carmena headed
Ahora Madrid's ticket in the
Madrid local election held on 24 May 2015. After Ahora Madrid made a coalition deal with the PSOE, Carmena was elected as Mayor on 13 June 2015, obtaining the votes of 29 out of 57 councillors and thereby winning a narrow majority.
Carmena reduced Madrid's municipal debt by €5.6 billion (or 38%) in the first 18 months of her mayorship. In this same time period, Carmena also managed to increase social spending by 26%, which led to an investigation by the opposing People Party's Treasury minister
in order to examine Madrid's compliance with
Cristóbal Montoro's national spending regulations. This feud between the national Ministry and the municipal Department of Economy and Finance forced Carmena to sack
Carlos Sánchez Mato from his position as councillor in December 2017. Also in the first half of her mandate, the
ayuntamiento
''Ayuntamiento'' ()In other languages of Spain:
* ca, ajuntament ().
* gl, concello ().
* eu, udaletxea (). is the general term for the town council, or ''cabildo'', of a municipality or, sometimes, as is often the case in Spain and Latin Amer ...
organised several public consultations in order to decide on issues, opening up public input on part of the municipal budget as well as on a project for the revitalisation of the
Plaza de España Plaza de España (Square of Spain) may refer to:
In Spain
* Plaça d'Espanya, Barcelona in Barcelona
* Plaça d'Espanya (Palma) in Palma, Mallorca
* Plaza de España, Madrid in Madrid
* Plaza de España (Pontevedra) in Pontevedra
* Plaza de Es ...
.
The council's executive board also changed 52 street and place names hanging over from the
Francoist dictatorship
Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Sp ...
which did not comply with the 2007
Law of Historical Memory.
Carmena ran for re-election in the
2019 municipal election, but stated that she would retire from the City Council should she not be re-elected as Mayor. In November 2018, the political platform for
Más Madrid was unveiled, with Carmena at its centre. In the municipal election held on 26 May 2019, Más Madrid was the most-voted party, obtaining 19 seats in the plenary assembly, but on 15 June 2019, the
People's Party's mayoral candidate
José Luis Martínez-Almeida
José Luis Martínez-Almeida Navasqüés (born 17 April 1975) is a Spanish state lawyer and politician. A member of the People's Party (PP), he has been a member of the Madrid City Council since 2015 and has been Mayor of Madrid since 2019.
...
, with the support of
Citizens and
Vox, earned the vote of an absolute majority of councillors (29 out of 57 councillors) and was elected as Mayor. On 17 June 2019, Carmena resigned from her councillor seat.
Since June 2019
In January 2021, she complained that, "We are infected with lies regarding reality. It is very difficult to develop correct policies for a deformed reality. One of the issues we must consider is how to combat the systematic lies that deform the social reality."
Electoral history
Books
*
*
*
Decorations
*
Great Cross of the
Order of St. Raymond of Peñafort (2002)
* Great Cross of the
Order of the Sun of Peru (2015)
* Great Cross of the
Order of Merit (2018)
[. Result of searching: "Manuela Carmena Castrillo"]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carmena, Manuela
1944 births
Living people
Madrid city councillors (2015–2019)
Madrid city councillors (2019–2023)
Más Madrid politicians
Mayors of Madrid
Members of the General Council of the Judiciary
Spanish women judges
20th-century Spanish judges
Women mayors of places in Spain
21st-century Spanish judges
20th-century women judges
21st-century women judges