Castells’ political journey: from anti-Franco militancy to minister of the commons and the photo with Illa on 12M

In it vast resume by Manuel Castells, an international eminence in the field of sociology and economics, there is an entire section dedicated to politics. His career as a researcher is marked by the intersection between academia and public policies, as proven by his texts on the social movements that emerged in 2011 in the heat of the so-called citizen indignation due to the economic crisis of those years. Consistent with that vocation, he was active underground from a young age, later he joined the Socialist Party and in a more recent stage accepted Ada Colau’s request to be Minister of Universities in the Government as part of the commons quota within Unidas Can. That’s why he was surprised by his recent article in The vanguard in which he asked for the vote for the PSC and his presence in the electoral bunker with Salvador Illa on the night of March 12.

“I do not vote for politicians but for people who are politicians and whom I trust, with the data in hand. And that is why I vote for Illa, because I have been with him in the trenches of the fight against covid and I was able to observe his dedication, his honesty and his decisions always based on analysis and recommendations from scientists,” he announced. Castells in The vanguard on April 20, in the middle of the campaign for the elections of May 12, in which the candidate of the Catalan socialists finally emerged victorious. A few days later, the former minister appeared in a photo next to Illa taken while monitoring the election results, at the PSC headquarters.