Mossos' Head of Communications named new Government spokesperson
Journalist Patrícia Plaja will take on role traditionally associated with a minister
BarcelonaThe new spokesperson of the executive will be Patrícia Plaja, the current head of communication of the Catalan police, known as the Mossos d'Esquadra. This news, broken by RAC1 and confirm by ARA, is the latest detail on the structure of the new Government to be made public. The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, wanted the position to be taken over by a professional, rather than a minister. Plaja, a journalist by training, already has a long carrer as spokesperson for the Catalan police.
Born in Begur in 1981, Plaja has worked in communications for the Mossos since 2008. Before that, she worked in the editorial offices of El Punt and Cadena SER. He joined the police as a journalist -she is not a police officer- and her name became visible as head of communications of the Mossos during the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in August 2017. Her work won her a Blanquerna award for Best Communicator in 2017, shared with the head of Communication of the Directorate General of Civil Protection of the Generalitat, Marc Homedes.
Plaja, who accompanied Commissioner Ferran López in one of the coordination meetings for the Spanish government's police operation against the Independence Referendum, could also be seen next to Major Josep Lluís Trapero during the trial in Spain's High Court. On April 2018, when the Generalitat was intervened by the State, she was dismissed as head of communication of the Mossos for a tweet she made about the 'wolfpack' gang rape trial: "The problem is not a judge or a dissenting vote. We are wrong if we focus everything on this. What is failing is the judiciary. Again," he wrote.
The headquarters of the Mossos considered it inappropriate considering that the body acts as judicial police, but when self-rule was reinstated, after a few months without anyone assuming the function of head of communication - which was vacant - Plaja returned to the position. The journalist, who will now be the new voice of the Government, has combined her role with other responsibilities: she is an associate professor at Blanquerna - Universitat Ramon Llull and collaborates as a lecturer at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.
