Manuel Valls

Valls' father was the Barcelona-born painter Xavier Valls (1923–2006).

In the late 1940s, Xavier Valls moved to Paris and met his future wife, Luisangela Galfetti, a Ticino-born Swiss citizen, the sister of architect Aurelio Galfetti.

In 1955, he won the prize for best still life in the third Spanish-American Art Biennial inaugurated by Franco.

Valls was born in Barcelona while his parents were there on holiday.

He grew up with them at their home in France and became naturalized as French.

(The Second left could be compared to the 1960s "New Left" – opposed to party lines and bureaucracy, anti-statist, supportive of anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist movements worldwide, favouring direct action politics.) While studying history at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Tolbiac campus, he was a member of the UNEF-ID, a progressive students' union.

Manuel Carlos Valls Galfetti (,, ; born 13 August 1962) is a French-Spanish politician who has served as a Barcelona city councillor from 2019 to 2021.

In 1980, aged 17, Valls joined the French Socialist Party (PS) to support Michel Rocard.

Within the PS, he defended the "Second Left" (La Deuxième gauche), rather than the more pragmatic left of François Mitterrand.

In 1980, he met two other student supporters of Rocard with whom he became close friends: Alain Bauer (Bauer is The Godfather of Valls' second son), and Stéphane Fouks.

From 1983 to 1986, Valls was a parliamentary attaché for the member for Ardèche, Robert Chapuis.

In 1986 he was elected to the regional Council for the Île-de-France and served until 1992.

In 1988, he became head of the Socialist Party in Argenteuil-Bezons and deputy mayor.

From 1988 to 1991 he was responsible for the functioning of the prime minister's cabinet.

From 1991 to 1993 he was an inter-ministerial delegate to the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville.

In 1995, he became the Secretary of Communications for the national Socialist Party and in 1997 communications and media relations chief for the prime minister's Cabinet.

In 1998 he was elected vice-president of the regional council for Île-de-France, a post which he held until 2002.

Born in Barcelona to a Spanish father and a Swiss mother, Valls was Mayor of Évry from 2001 to 2012 and was first elected to the National Assembly of France for Essonne in 2002.

He was regarded as belonging to the Socialist Party's social liberal wing, sharing common orientations with Blairism.

While vice-president of the regional Council, he was also elected mayor of Évry in 2001, a post he held until 2012.

In 2002, he became the deputy for the First Electoral District in Essonne and in 2008, the president of the tri-city jurisdiction of Évry-Centre-Essonne.

In the 2008 elections to choose the head of the Socialist Party, Valls supported the former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal over her former partner François Hollande; Hollande eventually won.

On 13 June 2009, Valls announced his intention to run in the Socialist presidential primary in 2011 for the 2012 election.

On 30 June 2009 he founded a political organisation with the slogan "The Left Needs Optimism," to provide legal and financial support the Socialist Primary candidates.

On 7 June 2011, he confirmed his candidacy for the Socialist primary.

On the evening of the first primary round, 9 October 2011, Valls achieved only 6% of the vote, just behind Ségolène Royal.

He was Minister of the Interior from 2012 to 2014 and Prime Minister from 2014 to 2016.

He served as Prime Minister of France from 2014 until 2016 under president François Hollande.

He was a candidate in the Socialist Party primary for the 2017 presidential election, losing the Socialist nomination in the second round to Benoît Hamon.

Following his defeat, he endorsed Emmanuel Macron despite having previously pledged to support the Socialist candidate.

In the 2017 legislative election, he was re-elected by a narrow margin as a Member of Parliament.

He then left the Socialist Party and joined La République En Marche group in the National Assembly though not formally joining the party.

In October 2018, he resigned from the National Assembly to run for mayor in the 2019 Barcelona municipal election supported by the centrist Ciudadanos party.

He came in fourth in the election.

Valls is also a past opponent of the Catalan independence movement.

In 2022 Valls attempted to return to the National Assembly as a member of LREM, for the Fifth constituency for French residents overseas.

However he was unsuccessful after coming third in the vote.

Valls' paternal grandfather was the editor-in-chief of a Republican newspaper in Spain.

During the Spanish Civil War, he sheltered priests who were fleeing from the Red Terror.

After Francisco Franco's victory, he was forced out of his job as editor.