Madrid (EFE).- The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday, at the proposal of the Minister of Culture and Sports, Miquel Iceta, the appointment of Víctor Francos Díaz, until now Secretary General of said ministry, as Secretary of State for Sport and President of the Higher Sports Council (CSD).
Francos will replace José Manuel Franco, who leaves office by his own decision and who will lead the list of the Socialist Party to the Senate for Madrid in the elections on July 23. He presided over the CSD since March 30, 2021.
The new president of the CSD was born in Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, in 1979.
He has a degree in Law from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, with an extraordinary degree, training that he expanded with a postgraduate degree in Legal Studies at that same center.
He carried out university research (2002-2004) and practiced law from the Fides Abogados y Consultores law firm, of which he was a founding partner and in which he was active between 2017 and 2019.
Iceta’s right hand
In mid-December 2003, he was elected first secretary of the Socialist Youth of Catalonia (JSC), a position that led him as a born member of the PSC executive led by José Montilla and Pasqual Maragall. He headed the JSC until April 2006 and then he was elected first secretary of the PSC of Cerdanyola del Vallès. In July 2011 he joined the renewal current within the party.
In his hometown he was a councilor for the PSC (May 2011 to September 2020) and held the position of second deputy mayor and delegate councilor for Public Space, Urban Services and Local Maintenance, Heritage, Legal Services, Secretariat and Relations with the Decentralized Municipal Entity (EMD) of Bellaterra (2019-20).
He has a long career in directive, managerial and coordination tasks of cabinets and teams in different areas of public administration related mostly to the PSC, a party of which he was director of the Cabinet of the Deputy Secretary of the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya PSC- PSOE (2004-2006), director of Parliamentary Relations of the Presidency of the Generalitat (2006-2010), parliamentary adviser of the Socialist Group in the Parliament of Catalonia (2011), general coordinator of the PSC-PSOE (2011-2013), director Cabinet of the First Secretariat of the PSC Pere Navarro (2013-2014) and director of the Legal Services of the PSC-PSOE (2017-2018).
With the election of Salvador Illa as first secretary of the PSC in December 2021, he joined his team in the party as secretary of Electoral Analysis.
Regarding his activity in institutions, he was an advisor to the Barcelona Provincial Council (2015-2016), director of the Vallès Technology Park (2018-2019) and director of Institutional Relations of the Barcelona International Free Zone Consortium (2019-2020 ).
He made the leap into national politics in September 2020 when he was appointed by the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, director of the Cabinet of his Ministry, a position he held until January 2021, when he accompanied Illa in his race for the Presidency of the Generalitat of Catalonia in the elections of February 14 of that year, in which Francos was co-director of the campaign.
Days after these elections he returned to Madrid to occupy, since February 23, the position of Secretary of State for Territorial Policy and Public Function as number two of the ministry directed by Miquel Iceta.
Right hand of the minister, when he was appointed in July 2021 as the new head of the Culture and Sports portfolio, Francos became his secretary general.
Franco says goodbye with two laws approved, new scholarships and European funds for sport
José Manuel Franco, president of the CSD since March 30, 2021, says goodbye to this position to run as socialist number one in the Senate for Madrid, after a period that includes the approval of anti-doping and sports laws, the professionalization of football and a new scholarship program to help prepare for the Paris 2024 Games.
With the aim of equaling or exceeding the 22 medals from Barcelona’92, the CSD has approved a call for multi-year subsidies worth €173 million for 2022, 2023 and 2024 -57 million oor year- and has created the “TEAM ESPAÑA” programs Elite” and “Strategic Interest”, endowed with €16 million per year in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
The promotion of women’s sport and the allocation of €300 million from European recovery funds for sport, a measure that only Spain has adopted for the ecological transition (146.5 million), digitization (75.6 million) and the plan social (77.8 million), are other measures of Franco’s mandate.