The new president of the Higher Sports Council (CSD) will be José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, replacing Víctor Francos, who resigned last week for “professional reasons” after just over a year in office. As confirmed by La Vanguardia, the appointment will be made official this Tuesday after the meeting of the Council of Ministers.

Uribes (Valencia, 1968) has held different political positions. With a degree in law from the University of Valencia and a doctorate in the same discipline from the Carlos III University of Madrid, the new Secretary of State for Sports is a member of the Federal Executive Commission of the PSOE and in recent years has been a Government Delegate in the Community of Madrid (2018-2019), deputy of the Madrid Assembly (2019-2020) and Minister of Culture and Sports (2020-2021), a portfolio that Miquel Iceta later took charge of.

While he served as minister, he chaired, among other cultural organizations, the boards of the Prado Museum, the Reina Sofía Museum, the Teatro Real, the National Library, the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Thyssen Museum. For the last two years he has been Permanent Delegate Ambassador of UNESCO in Spain, a position that Iceta will now hold.

Beyond his political career, Uribes has served as a university professor. In addition to his doctoral thesis, directed in 1998 by one of the ‘fathers of the Constitution’ such as Gregorio Peces Barba, he has published various works in the last two decades, most of them related to politics and law.

He was also general director of the government body Support for Victims of Terrorism between 2006 and December 2011, at which time the terrorist group ETA announced the end of arms. In 2021 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Carlos III.