Pilar Rahola

Who is Pilar Rahola?

Pilar Rahola i Martínez is a Spanish journalist, writer, and former politician and MP.

Rahola studied Spanish and Catalan Philology at the Universitat de Barcelona. She has published several books in Spanish and Catalan, and she is a columnist at La Vanguardia in Spain, and colaborated with La Nación in Argentina; and Diario de América in the United States. She appears frequently on television and has taken part in several university lectures.

She comes from a republican and anti-fascist family, and several of her relatives have been politicians or writers: Pere Rahola, minister of the navy of the republic; Frederic Rahola, first Síndic de Greuges in the Generalitat de Catalunya; and Carles Rahola, a writer executed by Francoists. Rahola is married and has three children, two of them adopted: one from Barcelona, the other from Siberia.

From 1987 to 1990, Rahola was director of the Catalan publishing house Pòrtic, and as a journalist, she was involved in covering the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, the Balkan Wars, the Gulf War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

As a politician, she was the only member of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya in Spanish Congress of Deputies representing Barcelona Province in the 5th and 6th Spanish legislatures from 1993 to 2000, as well as serving as vice-mayor of Barcelona city. She also participated in several committees of investigation, especially those related to political corruption such as the comisión Roldán.