Joan Saura

He became town councillor in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat for the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC) in the first democratic local elections in 1979, where he participated in the formation of the government, and remained a councillor until 1991.

He also chaired (from 1983 to 1987) the Public Transport commission in Barcelona.

He was elected for the third and fourth Legislatures (1988 to 1995) as deputy for Barcelona in the Catalan Parliament for the Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (ICV) party. He was the spokesperson of his party's group and became its president in 1993.

In this Parliament he has held several positions, including membership in the Economy, Finances and Budget commission, in the Industry commission, Territorial Politics as well as various others.

On 3 March 1996 he was elected to the Spanish Congress of Deputies representing Barcelona Province and was re-elected at the subsequent election on 12 March 2000, where he was involved in several Parliamentary Commissions (such as Environment and Defense).[2]

As a deputy, Joan Saura promoted several initiatives, such as a rise in the minimum wage, a fight against workplace abuses by employers, same-sex marriage and the Tobin tax. Additionally, he was strongly opposed to other ones: the Plan Hidrológico Nacional (PHN), the reform of the labour market law, the quality in teaching law, the political parties' law, the tax reform, the Prestige affair and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Within ICV, he served as vice-president from 1993 as well as the head of political relations with Spain.

At the 6th Assembly of the party in November 2000, he was elected as ICV President. In June 2002 the party formed an electoral pact with United Left, and Els Verds-Esquerra Ecologista.

On 25 May 2002 he was chosen as the candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat de Catalunya by the ICV-EUiA coalition. For that reason, he set up in 2002 a Participative Process and the "What do you think?" campaign, to define the axis of the party's program based on civil participation.

In the elections of 2003, his party won 9 seats in the Catalan Parliament and he, after few months of negotiation, became Minister of Institutional Relations and Participation.