The UAB to award an honorary doctorate to journalist and diplomat Cristina Gallach

As Spanish citizen, Gallach is the woman to have reached the highest rank in the United Nations and the only one to have held such high positions within this institution and in the European Union and NATO. She graduated in Information Sciences (Journalism) at the UAB in 1982 and went on to enrol in a master's degree in International Relations at Columbia University, New York. Her career as a journalist began with the newspaper El 9 Nou and continued with El Noticiero Universal, TVE, Avui, Catalunya Ràdio, El Món and the EFE Agency, where she was a correspondent in the United States, in Central and Eastern Europe (she reported from Moscow during the fall of the Soviet Union), and in Brussels.

Since 1996, she has dedicated her professional career to information and communication tasks in international institutions. She first worked with Javier Solana as a communications consultant and then as deputy spokesperson of the Secretary-General of NATO, and also as head of communications of the High Representative of the European Union for Common Foreign and Security Policy. She then went on to occupy a variety of posts in the Council of the European Union: as spokesperson for the Spanish Presidency of the EU, head of public relations, and spokesperson and head of the Office of Equal Opportunities. In 2014 she formed part of the United Nations, where she was head of communications for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, deputy secretary general, special adviser and head of the Department of Public Information. Her latest positions have been as a member of the Spanish government: she was High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda and Secretary of State for Foregin Affairs and for Ibero-America and the Caribbean.

Cristina Gallach has received several awards from the Association of Journalists of Catalonia, the Press Association of Madrid, the Association of European Journalists of Catalonia and the Association of Diplomats in Economic Sciences of Catalonia. She is an Honour Member of the Association of Economists of Catalonia and in 2009, the Financial Times voted her one of the thirty most influential people in European institutions.