Deputy general

Jaume Saura Estapà is the Deputy General of the Catalan Ombudswoman (síndica de greuges) since June 2015. He assists and represents the Síndica in her absence. He has been associated with the institution since 2010, as a member of the Task Force and Coordinator of the Advisory Council of the Catalan Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture (formerly the Catalan Authority for the Prevention of Torture).

He holds a Doctorate in Law from the University of Barcelona (UB) and was awarded the Extraordinary Doctorate Prize in 1993-1994. He is also Professor of Public International Law and International Relations at the University of Barcelona and has combined teaching and research in the field of international human rights protection. He has been a visiting professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, and at other European and Latin American universities.

He has an extensive career as an international election observer, beginning in 1994 as a United Nations observer to the South African elections. Since then, he has served in this role in many other elections around the world (Palestine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Togo, East Timor, Peru and Guatemala).

From 2004 to 2015 he was president of the Human Rights Institute of Catalonia, and from 2000 to 2007 he was deputy director of the Centre for International Studies at the UB.

Jaume Saura has been a member of the International Criminal Justice Commission (2010-2015) and of several social and academic bodies (Association for the United Nations in Spain, American Society of International Law, International Association of Jurists for Western Sahara, among others). He was also academic coordinator of the UB’s "Right to Law" programme (2007-2015), and of the UB’s official PhD programme in Law and Political Science (2011-2015).

He is also the author of several books and articles on human rights, international humanitarian law and the use of force in international relations.

Contact details

Phone: 933 040 108 
E-mail: adgeneral@sindic.cat  

Appointment as Deputy General (in Catalan)

Deputy for the Defence of Children's and Adolescents' Rights

Aida C. Rodríguez the Catalan Ombudsman’s Deputy for the Defence of Children's and Adolescents' Rights of since 18 April 2023. She assists the Catalan Ombudswoman and exercises the delegated powers for the protection of children and adolescents in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Before taking up the position of Deputy, she was Director of the Social Rights Area of the institution.

She holds a Doctorate in Educational Sciences (cum laude), a Degree in Philosophy from the Ramon Llull University (URL), and a Master’s Degree in Citizenship and Human Rights from the University of Barcelona (UB).

Her doctoral thesis La justícia restaurativa: una transformació ètica de la justícia penal tradicional (Restorative Justice: an ethical transformation of traditional criminal justice) was awarded the ADR Justice Awards 2022 by the Department of Justice of the Catalan Government, through the Mediation Centre of Catalonia.

In the academic field, she has been Associate Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at La Salle, URL (2014-2022) and Professor of the Master’s Degree in Models and Strategies of Social and Educational Action in Childhood and Adolescence at the Faculty of Social Education and Social Work Pere Tarrés of the URL. She has also been a collaborating researcher at the Research Group on Innovation and Social Analysis (GIAS) of the same faculty (2015-2022), where she has worked mainly on issues related to human rights, restorative justice, criminal justice, education and ethics.

She has been the project manager of the Pere Tarrés Chair in Social and Restorative Justice (2016-2022), and previously she was the coordinator of activities of the Restorative Justice Group at ESADE Law School, URL (2014-2016).

She has also been a trainer at the Department of Education for management teams and teachers on restorative practices and the global restorative approach in primary and secondary education (2020-2022); she has a secondary school teaching qualification from the UB (2003) and has been a secondary school and baccalaureate teacher, mainly in the subjects of Catalan language, history and philosophy (2008-2013).

In 2007/2008 she was awarded a Leonardo da Vinci scholarship and spent time in Berlin, where she worked on issues related to political philosophy, American neo-conservatism and its reception of Platonism.

She was a founding member of the association Informa't Bcn! – Movement for Citizen Information (2011-2014), an association dedicated to the analysis of social issues through the organisation of conferences and the publication of articles.

Contact details

Phone: 935 538 458
E-mail: infancia@sindic.cat

Appointment as Deputy for the Defence of Children's and Adolescents' Rights (in Catalan)