Artur Mas

Juan Mas Roig, great-great-grandfather of the former president of the Generalitat Artur Mas, was a slave ship captain who in 1844 moved 825 slaves from Africa to Brazil.

Before acquiring political responsibilities in Catalonia, Mas held different posts in both the private and public sectors, especially relating to the internationalization of Catalan enterprises.

Artur Mas i Gavarró (born 31 January 1956) is a Catalan politician.

Mas is a long time member of Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC by its Catalan acronym) which used to be the bigger of the two component members –along with Unió Democràtica de Catalunya– of what at the time was a long-standing electoral coalition, Convergència i Unió (CiU), a liberal nationalist coalition which had dominated Catalan regional politics since the 1980s.

His first high responsibilities in the Catalan government came during the presidency of Jordi Pujol, President of the Generalitat de Catalunya from 1980 to 2003.

He was a member of the Barcelona City Council from 1987 to 1995, representing the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia.

Artur Mas served as Catalan Minister of Public Works from 1995 to 1997, as Minister of Economy and Finance from 1997 to 2001, and Deputy Prime Minister (conseller en cap) from 2001 to 2003, as well as being the government's official spokesman from 2000 to 2003.

In 2001 Mas was named general secretary of CDC, then, in 2012 he was named president of the party until the party was refounded in July 2016 as PDeCAT, which he presided between July 2016 and January 2018.

From 2003 to 2015, Mas has run five times for the Catalan presidency, four heading the –nowadays defunct– CiU ticket and one running for the novel Junts pel Sí coalition.

Artur Mas ran for the 2003 elections to the Catalan government and won a plurality of seats in the parliament, with four more than PSC.

However, the latter obtained a slightly larger number of votes (this discrepancy between votes and seats obtained is explained by the electoral law and the way seats are assigned).

Finally PSC's Pasqual Maragall was elected President, having forged a coalition with two other left-wing parties, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Initiative for Catalonia – Greens (ICV).

Surveys had indicated that this time his party would obtain enough seats to govern without being heavily dependent on third parties and with no risk of a repetition of left-wing coalitions like those of 2003 and 2006.

In the event, CiU won 62 of the 135 seats in the Catalan Parliament, short of an absolute majority.

Mas ran again for president in the 2006 elections.

Though his party CiU won these both in number of votes and seats —unlike in the previous election– it did not reach the absolute majority of seats in the parliament, allowing PSC's new candidate, José Montilla, to reach an absolute majority by repeating the coalition government with the same left-wing partners (ERC and ICV).

Since 2007, he has put special emphasis on initiating a process, known as the Refoundation of Catalanism (in Catalan, Refundació del catalanisme), to build upon the principles and values of the Catalanist movement, in order to enlarge the majority of society in Catalonia that expresses a nationalist feeling, and not merely inside his own party, CDC.

The 'Refoundation of Catalanism' that Mas is actively leading calls for Catalonia to obtain the so-called 'Right to decide' on matters that affect it.

This implicitly includes the possibility of putting independence from Spain to a hypothetical referendum.

He attained the presidency in two elections, 2010 and 2012 (both running for CiU) but neither with an absolute majority.

In the absence of single party majorities, both tenures were marked by political instability and ended with Mas calling a snap election.

Mas is an economist who obtained his degree from the University of Barcelona, and is fluent in English and French, in addition to Catalan and Spanish.

His ideology tends to be considered liberal from the economic point of view and supportive of Catalan independence.

From the social point of view, he has mostly supported a moderate agenda in numerous issues, such as gay rights, but not same-sex marriage and free debate on his party concerning abortion.

In 2010, for the first time, Mas indicated he would vote "Yes" on a hypothetical referendum to secede from Spain.

Since then, sovereignty and Catalan independence have become the central part of his political agenda, with Mas being instrumental in CDC's novel turn towards separatism.

Mas was born in Barcelona as one of the four children of a wealthy industrialist family.

His mother was originally from Sabadell and his father from Poblenou.

He studied at the Aula escola europea, and is thereby fluent in French, English, Catalan and Spanish.

Later he graduated in Economics from the University of Barcelona and married Helena Rakòsnik.

This point is significantly closer to the traditionally more separatist positions of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and has gained momentum since the issue of the verdict on the Catalan Statute—the Estatut—in July 2010 by the Spanish Constitutional Court, which invalidates certain parts of this law although they were backed by a large majority of Catalan voters by referendum back in 2006 (73.9 Yes, 20.7% No, 49.4% Turnout).

The Catalan elections that took place on 28 November 2010 were to finally determine the political future of Mas, who was for the third time CiU's candidate to the presidency.

During the campaign Mas had promised to put into place the government of 'the best' people, including the possibility of appointing ministers ('Consellers') from outside his political coalition, Convergència i Unió, if their talent justified doing so.

He was eventually invested as president of the Generalitat on 23 December 2010 thanks to an agreement to get the Socialists' Party of Catalonia (PSC) abstention in the vote In the investiture speech, Mas claimed a new funding model for Catalonia inspired by the Economic Agreement and proclaimed the Catalonia national transition based on the "right to decide".

The agreement with the PSC proved fragile, which forced Mas to seek new allies in the regional parliament, this time engaging in talks with the Popular Party (PP).

Moreover, he also engaged in a process which would culminate in full powers over taxation for Catalonia—significantly reducing the so-called 'fiscal deficit' between Catalonia and the whole of Spain—by putting this issue to referendum to the Catalans and as a condition for giving any support to Spanish governments after the Spanish elections scheduled for 2012.

By negotiating PP's abstention, Mas was eventually able to pass the 2012 public budget.

He was president of the Government of Catalonia from 2010 to 2015 and acting president from September 2015 to 12 January 2016.

On January 9, 2018, he resigned as president of the PDeCAT, decision that he had made months previously but postponed because of the political crisis.

According to what he said, this did not mean his abandoning politics, but that it was taking a back seat.