Inés Arrimadas

The Most Excellent Inés Arrimadas MP
Inés Arrimadas in May 2017
Leader of the Citizens Party
Incumbent
Assumed office 14 March 2020
Preceded by	Albert Rivera
Spokesperson of the Citizens Group in the Congress of Deputies
Incumbent
Assumed office 21 May 2019
Preceded by	Juan Carlos Girauta
Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament of Catalonia
In office 2 October 2015 – 20 May 2019
Preceded by	Oriol Junqueras
Succeeded by	Carlos Carrizosa
Member of the Congress of Deputies
Incumbent
Assumed office 21 May 2019
Constituency	Barcelona
Member of the Catalan Parliament for the Province of Barcelona
In office 25 November 2012 – 20 May 2019
Constituency	Barcelona
Personal details
Born	(1981-07-03) 3 July 1981 Jerez de la Frontera, Andalusia, Spain
Political party	Citizens
Spouse(s)	Xavier Cima ​ (m. 2016)​
Alma mater	Pablo de Olavide University

Inés Arrimadas García (Spanish: [iˈnes ariˈmaðas]; born 3 July 1981) is a Spanish lawyer and politician. She has been a member of the Congress of Deputies since 2019 and Spokesperson of Citizens party in the Congress. In 2020, she was elected party leader.

Early life and career

Arrimadas is the youngest of five children. She was born to Rufino Arrimadas García and Inés García López. They were from a town called Salmoral, in the Province of Salamanca. She moved to Barcelona in 2008.

She went to a Catholic school called Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Jerez de la Frontera. She became interested in Catalonia because she liked FC Barcelona. She started learning Catalan from a classmate in 7th and 8th grade and learned the team's song. When she moved to Barcelona, her work paid for her to take Catalan classes. She speaks Spanish, Catalan, English, and French.

At 18, she began studying law at Pablo de Olavide University. She also studied international business at IPAG Business School in Nice through the Erasmus programme.

When she was 24, she worked for a year and a half in the petrochemical industry. Then she worked as a consultant at D'Aleph in Barcelona for six years, after moving there in 2008.

Politics

Parliament of Catalonia

In 2010, a coworker invited Arrimadas to a Citizens event at the Romea Theatre. She went to the event and then started attending more meetings of the political party. In one of these meetings, Albert Rivera, the leader of Citizens, saw her potential. In 2011, he asked her to join the Youth Commission of the Parliament of Catalonia and offered her a job in the party’s leadership.

Arrimadas was elected to the Parliament of Catalonia in the 2012 election. In 2015, she became the spokeswoman for the party, replacing Jordi Cañas. That same year, she became the leader of the party for the September 27 elections. Citizens won 17.9% of the vote, increasing their seats from 9 to 25. She became the Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament of Catalonia.

In 2017, a woman threatened Arrimadas with violence for her views on Catalan independence. The woman was given a suspended jail sentence.

In the 2017 elections, Citizens won the most seats, but pro-independence parties still had more seats in the parliament. There were false rumors that Arrimadas' father was a secret agent for the Francoist regime, but this was not true. Arrimadas also said that Lluís Companys was not executed by the Spanish state, but by the Francoist regime.

Congress of Deputies

In 2019, after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez dissolved the Cortes Generales, Arrimadas decided to run for a seat in the Spanish Parliament. In the April 2019 election, Citizens won 12% of the vote, gaining 4 seats, one of which was Arrimadas'. In the November 2019 election, Citizens' vote dropped to 6%, and they won 2 seats, but Arrimadas kept her seat.

On March 8, 2020, Arrimadas was chosen as the leader of Citizens, winning 77% of the vote in a race with two other candidates.