The Catalan government will appoint Francesc Castellana as director of the Catalan Employment Service this Tuesday.
The new manager, who replaces Juan José Torres, who is leaving for personal reasons, already held the position in Pasqual Maragall's executive.
BarcelonaThe Government will appoint Francesc Castellana today as director of the Catalan Employment Service (SOC), replacing Juan José Torres, who has held the position since September 2021. The replacement comes at the request of Torres, who cited personal and family reasons, according to ARA.
Castellana (Molins de Rei, 1957), an expert in the field of employment who previously held the position of secretary-director of the SOC in the tripartite executive chaired by Pasqual Maragall from 2004 to 2006, was president of the Economic Council until December of last year. He has spent his working life in the pharmaceutical and consulting sectors in recent years.
From the 1960s to the late 1980s, he held various positions of responsibility within the CCOO union, including that of general secretary of CCOO in Baix Llobregat. Castellana also held institutional responsibilities in local government, the Generalitat of Catalonia, and the State.
Tripartite Foundation
Among the institutional responsibilities he held, in addition to directing the SOC, is that of general coordinator of the Tripartite Foundation, dedicated to managing publicly funded worker training in Spain. Its board of trustees includes the central government and the major social stakeholders, namely the unions, UGT and CCOO, and the employers' associations CEOE and Cepyme. At that time, Castellana was a trusted figure of the then Minister of Labor, Valeriano Gómez. He also served as an advisor to the Barcelona Provincial Council on immigration and director of its Economic Promotion Service, as well as director of the Regional Employment Forum and the Regional Management Society of El Baix Llobregat.
The SOC is an autonomous administrative body of the Generalitat of Catalonia attached to the Department of Business and Employment of the Generalitat, headed by Miquel Sàmper. It was created by Law 17/2002, which regulated the employment system and established the Catalan Employment Service (SOC) on July 5, 2002.
Last December, the agency added a team of 225 job counselors to its seventy employment offices. The initiative, which has a budget of approximately nine million euros financed by the Sectoral Conference on Employment, is one of the measures included in the SOC's transformation plan to improve people's employability and facilitate their access to the labor market.
