Since October 2021, the Barcelona Ombudsman has been David Bondia. He took on the role on 6 October 2021.
David Bondia has been president of the Institute of Human Rights of Catalonia, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Fundació Solidaritat UB and a member of the work team of the Catalan Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture. He has also been a member of the Executive Committee of the EUROMED-Rights Network and has been vice president of the Estructura de Drets Humans de Catalunya [Structure of Human Rights of Catalonia] (responsible for drafting the first Plan of Human Rights of Catalonia) and a member of the Consell Català de Foment de la Pau [Catalan Council for the Promotion of Peace]. He has participated as an expert in various international missions with the EU, the AECID, the Council of Europe and the UNDP.
He also works as an associate professor of International Public Law and International Relations at the University of Barcelona. As an academic specialising in human rights, he has been invited to participate at various universities in Europe, America, Africa and Asia.
His research work has focused on international protection and the national and local mechanisms for guaranteeing human rights. As a jurist specialising in human rights at a local level, he has been involved since the outset in drafting and applying the European Charter for Safeguarding Human Rights in the City, participating in working groups and advising local ombudsman’s offices, in the local ombudsman forum, FòrumSD, and in various municipalities.
To undertake his duties, the ombudsman works alongside a deputy and a multidisciplinary team of advisers and technical officers. The city of Barcelona has had two previous ombudsmen: Pilar Malla (2005-2010) and Maria Assumpció Vilà (2010-2021).
Deputy ombudsman
On 28 February 2022, the Full Municipal Council approved the appointment of Eva García Chueca as the new deputy of the Barcelona Ombudsman’s Office.
Eva Garcia Chueca is a jurist with a degree in Law from the University of Barcelona (2004). She has a European Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation from the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (2005) and a Master’s Degree in Citizenship and Human Rights: Ethics and Politics from the University of Barcelona (2010). She also has a PhD in Postcolonialism and Global Citizenship from the University of Coimbra.
With regard to her professional career, she has been a senior researcher with the Global Cities programme at the CIDOB since 2017. From 2011 to 2018, she worked as a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra. For ten years, she was part of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), from where she advised cities all over the world on matters relating to human rights, social policy and citizen participation. Previously, she had worked for Barcelona Provincial Council on human rights projects.
During her career, she has combined her professional and research work with teaching at a number of universities. Her main areas of work include human rights, the right to the city, urban policy, social inclusion, citizen participation, post-colonial studies and feminism.