1. Quim Torra served as President of the Government of Catalonia from 17 May 2018 to 28 September 2020, when the Supreme Court of Spain confirmed a court ruling by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia condemning him for disobeying the Central Electoral Board during the April 2019 general election, leading to his disqualification from office.
Quim Torra worked as executive for a multinational insurance company for twenty years before starting his own publishing company.
Quim Torra later held senior positions for the City of Barcelona and Generalitat de Catalunya.
Quim Torra has held senior positions in several pro-independence organisations including the Omnium Cultural and Assemblea Nacional Catalana.
Quim Torra was elected to the Parliament of Catalonia at the 2017 regional election as an independent candidate for the pro-independence Together for Catalonia electoral alliance.
Quim Torra was born on 28 December 1962 in Blanes, a town in the Province of Girona in north-eastern Catalonia.
Quim Torra's family were originally from Santa Coloma de Farners but moved to Blanes where his father, known as Quim Torra, worked as an engineer at the Sociedad Anonima de Fibras Artificiales plant.
The family then moved to Barcelona where Quim Torra's father worked as a manager for SAFA.
Quim Torra was educated at St Ignatius College, Barcelona, better known as Jesuites Sarria.
Quim Torra joined the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1980, graduating in 1985 with a degree in law.
Quim Torra's parents later returned to Santa Coloma de Farners where his father was a municipal councillor in 1991 and where his widowed mother still lives.
Quim Torra worked as an executive for Winterthur Group, a multinational insurance company, for nearly twenty years including two years at the company's offices in the Canton of Zurich in Switzerland.
In 2008 Quim Torra founded A Contra Vent Editors, a publisher specialising in literary and humorous journalism, focusing on the revival of Catalonia's literary and journalistic tradition during the 1920s and 1930s.
Quim Torra has written several books on the history of Catalonia, journalism and biographies and in 2009 he won the "Carles Rahola" award for "Viatge Involuntari a la Catalunya Impossible", an essay on the history of Catalan journalism that mixes fact and fiction to narrate the life of several Catalan journalists during the Second Spanish Republic, including Just Cabot, Lluis Capdevila, Angel Ferran, Manuel Fontdevila and Francisco Madrid.
Quim Torra has written articles for the Ara, El Punt Avui, El Temps and Nacio Digital.
From September 2011 to 2015, during the mayorship of Xavier Trias, Quim Torra was in charge of promoting the district of Ciutat Vella as director of Foment de Ciutat Vella, SA.
Quim Torra was appointed director of Revista de Catalunya in May 2015.
Quim Torra was director of the Generalitat's Center for Contemporary Subject Studies from March 2016 to October 2017.
Quim Torra is currently working as a lawyer and is a member of the Bar Association of Barcelona.
Quim Torra is a member of the pro-Catalan independence Omnium Cultural, of which he was vice-president from 2013 to 2015, and Assemblea Nacional Catalana.
Quim Torra was president of the pro-independence Sobirania i Justicia from 2010 to 2011 and a member of the permanent council of the ANC in 2012.
Quim Torra was associated with the Democratic Union of Catalonia, a regionalist center-right party, and later Reagrupament, a splinter group of the left-wing pro-independence Republican Left of Catalonia.
Quim Torra is not a member of any political party and is known to have reservations about certain policies of the Catalan European Democratic Party, the main constituent of the pro-independence Together for Catalonia electoral alliance.
Quim Torra is believed to be on good terms with the left-wing pro-independence Popular Unity Candidacy which is not a member of JuntsxCat.
Quim Torra contested the 2017 regional election as an independent JuntsxCat candidate in the Province of Barcelona and was elected to the Parliament of Catalonia.
At the investiture vote held on 12 May 2018 Quim Torra secured 66 votes with 65 votes against and four abstentions, failing to achieve the 68 votes necessary for an absolute majority.
In December 2018, Torra announced a 48-hour fast in solidarity with the prisoners of Lledoners who were carrying out a hunger strike, Jordi Sanchez, Jordi Turull, Joaquim Forn and Josep Rull.
Critics have accused Quim Torra of being xenophobic and a supremacist.
Quim Torra apologised for the tweets after being nominated to be president.
Quim Torra then vowed to appeal the sentence to a higher instance, the Supreme Court.
Quim Torra appealed again to the TS to clarify the JEC ruling, on whether the electoral authority actually had the authority to strip him of the parliamentary seat.
The second appeal before the TS by Quim Torra was turned down.
Quim Torra compelled then the House's Speaker, ERC's Roger Torrent to contempt unless he wanted to "put the institutions at risk", to no success.
The Parliament of Catalonia had interpreted the Statute of Catalonia in the sense that the President of the Generalitat could remain in the post, as the status of legislator would be necessary only at the moment of the investiture, so, for the time being and pending the resolution of his appeal before the TS, Quim Torra remains as president of the Catalan Government.
Quim Torra was married to teacher Carola Miro, who died on 4 May 2024 at the age of 58 from cancer.