In her political career, Míriam Nogueras has given many interviews, but none like the one in Decatur, Indiana, almost three decades ago. The current candidate for Barcelona de Junts, 43, spent the summer in the United States, with a family of farmers, to learn English. And everything that she lived there is written down in her diary. “There was a welcome barbecue, with the whole town, and the press came to interview the foreign student. They asked me if in my country we had refrigerators! Another day we went to church to sing, and I helped on the farm … ”, she recalls.
Every summer, from the age of 12 to 16, her parents sent her to a different country to learn English. The eldest of three siblings, her family had a textile factory that closed years later, with the crisis in a sector that was an economic engine for Catalonia. She lived in Dosrius, a town of 5,000 inhabitants in the Maresme, Barcelona.
Nogueras studied in a Catalan and secular school, located in the middle of the forest, in Llinars. There he became fond of playing soccer, in the playground, and it is a sport that he continues to practice, with the veterans of Cardedeu, where he lives. “I played defense and now the coach puts me up front, to score goals!, but we had a good time”, he laughs.
She was determined to study law, although she also liked hairdressing, but in the end she enrolled in audiovisual communication and did not finish. She didn’t like it. She chained jobs as an administrator, a waitress, a butcher, a wardrobe, but also an entrepreneur, at the helm of a trade and technology business, and another in the textile sector, and there she was when Jordi Turull, today General Secretary of Junts, signed her up for the candidacy of the post-convergent space in the 2015 general elections. The list was led by Quico Homs and Nogueras entered Congress.
A couple of years ago, she had unknowingly started her path in politics, coming into contact with various parties to defend a school in Mataró and for the citizen campaign No vull pagar, against tolls. As a member of the Cercle Català de Negocis, an association of pro-independence businessmen, she began to attend television programs. A few months before Turull called her, Convergència de Cardedeu proposed that she go on the 2015 municipal list and she was elected councilor. She has been part of PDECat since its formation, but in 2020 she resigned as vice president and went to Junts.
This will be his third term in Congress. The former president Carles Puigdemont is her supporter and she remains loyal to the strategy of confrontation with the State. “We have maintained the position in Madrid, very coordinated with the exile, and the party and the bases are delighted with what we are doing,” she explains. “The president will always have me there,” she says.
He likes Queen about music, and when he reads he lets himself be advised by a trusted bookstore. Her husband is an emergency service helicopter pilot whom she has known since kindergarten, and they have two children, ages 12 and 14. In addition to playing soccer, she likes to go jogging with her two dogs.
