Carme Chacón

Who is Carme Chacón?

Carme Chacón Piqueras is a Spanish politician who was Minister of Defence from 2008 to 2011 in the cabinet led by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

She was born in Esplugues de Llobregat in the Catalan county of Baix Llobregat. She holds a bachelor in Law from the University of Barcelona, and she conducted her postgraduate study at Osgoode Hall Law School, the University of Kingston and Laval University in Quebec City. She worked as a lecturer of Constitutional Law at the University of Girona. She is married and gave birth to her first child, a son named Miquel on 19 May 2008.

Chacón is a member of the Socialists' Party of Catalonia and Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. She has been a PSOE member of parliament for Barcelona since the 2000 election, the vice-president of the Spanish Congress of Deputies in José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's legislature and she was later named minister of Housing after María Antonia Trujillo before becoming Minister of Defence in April 2008. She was the first female Minister of Defence in Spain, which, together with the fact that she was seven months pregnant at the time, was considered a significant development by the press.