page_title: Carmen Calvo
section_title: Minister of Culture
hierarchical_section_title: Carmen Calvo / Political career / Minister of Culture
caption_attribution_description: Español: La ex ministra de Cultura española Carmen Calvo en el Festival Internacional de Cine de San Sebastián 2006
context_page_description: María del Carmen Calvo Poyato is a Spanish politician and author serving as Deputy Prime Minister of Spain since June 2018 and Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Cortes and Equality since January 2020.
  Born and raised in Cabra, Spain, she attended the University of Seville and the University of Córdoba; she holds a doctorate in constitutional law from the latter institution. She was Regional Minister of Culture of Andalusia between 1996 and 2004. She also served between 2004 and 2007 as Minister of Culture in the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Since June 2017, she has served as Secretary of Equality of the Socialist Party. She has published several books about feminism and gender equality.
context_section_description: In January 2004, she made the leap to national politics when the Secretary-General of the Socialist Workers' Party, Zapatero, created a "committee of notables" to advise him on his run to the premiership and appointed her a member of that committee. In the Spanish general election in March 2004, she was elected to the Congress of Deputies, representing Córdoba. She was subsequently appointed Minister of Culture in April by the new Prime Minister of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
  As Minister of Culture, Calvo was an outspoken opponent of copyright piracy, and in 2005 her department spent around one million euros on a campaign to educate the public about the importance of intellectual property. However, she was criticised by music industry officials for her statement that intellectual property is "not an absolute right". Her decision to transfer documents from the General Archive of the Spanish Civil War to the Autonomous community of Catalonia even when most of that documents never belonged to the region, hurt her electoral popularity.
  Because of the bad results of the previous year in the Spanish cinema, in 2007 Calvo presented a draft law that forces the movie theaters to shown European films (at least a 25%). This was rejected by most of the film industry and they went to strike on June 18, 2007, a strike followed by a 93% of the industry. Minister Calvo was replaced in July 2007 and his successor approved this law with big modifications in late 2007.
  She was one of the ministers with worst approval ratings and was replaced in July 2007 by César Antonio Molina.
caption: Minister Calvo in the 2006 San Sebastián International Film Festival
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