Josep Quitet Torner (Manresa, 1955) has been appointed for a second term as president of the Red Cross in Catalonia, a position he has held since May 2019, when he replaced Antoni Aguilera y RodrÃguez. Quitet has been renewed in the presidency of the Red Cross in Catalonia by the recently appointed president of the Spanish Red Cross, MarÃa del Mar Pageo Giménez, following the proposal of the autonomous committee in Catalonia.
His first term has had the pandemic and the war in Ukraine as protagonists. Regarding the first, and according to the same humanitarian organization, the Red Cross in Catalonia has had to “carry out the largest mobilization in modern history of resources, people and capacities to respond to the socio-sanitary needs derived from the pandemic”.
In this period, and through the Red Cross Responds plan, the organization ensures that it assisted nearly 5.5 million people in Spain, some 775,000 of them in Catalonia.
In relation to the conflict in Ukraine, the International Movement of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent have assisted nearly 15 million people in this international emergency.
In Catalonia, the organization explains, they have helped more than 46,000 refugees -125,000 throughout Spain- and urgently housed more than 20,700 within the framework of the reception and integration program of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations.
Today -they continue- some 2,000 refugees are still in emergency reception and more than 400 are already in the autonomy phase in Catalonia.
They explain that in parallel, at the end of 2022 they launched the Red Cross Reacts plan, “a direct, immediate and close response to the crisis left by the pandemic, climate change and the Ukrainian conflict, which aims to meet the needs of more than 2,500 homes in Catalonia in the first phase”.
They affirm that the fight against the growing inequalities and against the degradation of the environment and the need to act against the scourge of unwanted loneliness “are now some of the priorities to be addressed from the humanitarian entity.”
Another of its lines of intervention -they underline- is the fight against climate change “through prevention and awareness actions, but also training communities in intervention to minimize the impact of adverse weather events, migrations…”.
Quitet has been linked to volunteering with the humanitarian organization since 1978, when he joined the local assembly of Sant Celoni as a volunteer, where he performed various management tasks. From 1992 to 2015 he assumed the presidency of the regional assembly of Sant Celoni and Baix Montseny. In 2006 he was appointed vice president of the Red Cross in Catalonia, a voluntary position that, from 2007 to 2019, he combined with that of president of the Barcelona provincial committee.
He is also a member of the national committee of the Spanish Red Cross and a member of the general assembly. He has worked in the banking sector for more than 35 years and also as a correspondent for the local press for five years.