The Council of Ministers agreed this Tuesday on the appointment of the until now spokesperson for the Barcelona en Comú municipal group, Jordi Martí, as the new Secretary of State for Culture in the department led by Ernest Urtasun. He has also appointed Manuel Olmedo, who was already a senior official in this department, as the new Secretary of State for Justice, since he was appointed in 2021 as Secretary General for Innovation and Quality of the Public Justice Service at the proposal of the then Minister, Pilar. Llop.

The Official State Gazette (BOE) on November 21 published a royal decree by which the ministerial departments are restructured, which specifies that the Ministry of Culture would have a Secretary of State, whose head has been appointed at the meeting of the Council of Ministers today.

At the transfer of portfolios, the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, dedicated part of his speech to Jordi Martí, which suggested that he could be his ‘number two’ in Culture, a figure that did not exist in the previous Government coalition, as recalled by the outgoing minister, Miquel Iceta.

Jordi Martí has ??been linked to Barcelona City Council throughout his political career, first with the PSC and then with Ada Colau, with whom he became deputy mayor responsible for the Area of ??Culture, Education, Science and Community of the Barcelona city council.

He has been a municipal manager and has dedicated a large part of his professional life to public management, having coordinated two strategic cultural plans. He has also held the position of deputy director of the Contemporary Culture Center and has directed the Promotion and Management Department of the Higher School of Music of Catalonia.

Now he makes the leap into national politics with the help of Ernest Urtasun to become Secretary of State for Culture, a position that he will assume, as Barcelona en Comú reported at the time, with the intention of continuing with his “path of supporting culture and especially cultural rights with a perspective of social and gender inclusion”, as he did in the responsibilities he exercised in the city of Barcelona.

For their part, Justice sources reported that the Government has approved the appointment of Olmedo as number two in the ministry headed by Bolaños and will replace Tontxu Rodríguez in the position.

Olmedo has a degree in Law from the University of Valladolid and a doctorate in Law from the University of Salamanca. He has also completed graduate studies at Harvard University and Columbia University.

He was a lawyer of the General Council of the Judiciary from 2009 to 2015. Subsequently, from 2015 to 2021, he held a position as a territorial magistrate of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid.

The appointment of Sofía Puente as the new Secretary General for Innovation and Quality of the Public Justice Service has also been announced. Sofía Puente, career prosecutor and sister of the current Minister of Transportation, Oscar Puente, came to Justice in 2020 at the hands of Juan Carlos Campo as general director of Legal Security and Public Faith, a position in which she continued with the change of ministers.