Pilar Rahola i Martínez (Catalan pronunciation: [piˈɫa rəˈɔɫə]) (Barcelona, October 21, 1958) is a Catalan journalist, writer, and former politician and MP.
Rahola studied Spanish and Catalan Philology at the Universitat de Barcelona. She has published several books in Spanish and Catalan, and she is a columnist at La Vanguardia in Spain; La Nación in Argentina; and Diario de América in the United States. She appears frequently on television and has taken part in several university lectures.
She comes from a republican and anti-fascist family, and several of her relatives have been politicians or writers: Pere Rahola, minister of the navy of the republic; Frederic Rahola, first Síndic de Greuges (public defender) in the Generalitat de Catalunya; and Carles Rahola, a writer executed by Francoists. Rahola is married and has three children, two of them adopted: one from Barcelona, the other from Siberia.[1]
From 1987 to 1990, Rahola was director of the Catalan publishing house Pòrtic, and as a journalist, she was involved in covering the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, the Balkan Wars, the Gulf War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
As a politician, she was the only member of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya in Spanish Congress of Deputies representing Barcelona Province in the 5th and 6th Spanish legislatures from 1993 to 2000, as well as serving as vice-mayor of Barcelona city. She also participated in several committees of investigation, especially those related to political corruption such as the comisión Roldán.[1]
In 1996, Rahola left Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya to join Àngel Colom and Joan Laporta in a new political group, the "Partit per la Independència," but after this failed she decided to concentrate on journalism and writing. Her areas of interest include women's rights, international human rights, and animal rights. In recent years she has spoken out about what she considers to be the hypocrisy of left wing politicians with regards to Israel and Zionism.[2]
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Morris Abram Human Rights Award, given by UN Watch for her defense of Human Rights . Geneva, 2011.
La República Islámica de España. Editorial RBA libros (2011). ISBN 978-84-9867-986-1
Conference Chamberlain versus Sendler: from darkness to light. http://www.pilarrahola.com/3_0/CONFERENCIAS/default.cfm?ID=1914