Ángeles González-Sinde - Minister for Culture
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By h.b. - Apr 20, 2009 - 4:27 PM
She was appointed by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in April 2009

The screenwriter and director, Ángeles González-Sinde, elected as the new President of the Spanish Film Academy in December 2006, left her three-year tenure in the position ahead of time, following her appointment as Spain’s new Minister for Culture in the Cabinet reshuffle which was announced by the Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in April 2009.

Taking over from Cesar Antonio Molina, her appointment was welcomed by the industry, but caused panic on the Internet, where users feared she would follow the example of an Internet piracy law planned in France to cut off Internet connections to users who use file sharing programs to download music and films from the Net; the concerns came from comments made by González-Sinde in the past that she believed such practices to be responsible for the decline of Spanish cinema.
In the event, the bill was rejected by the French parliament, but, so great were the concerns in Spain, that the Internet Users Association issued a statement challenging the Minister’s impartiality in the post. They argued a possible conflict of interests in many aspects of the job, and asked for her appointment to be reconsidered. González-Sinde responded by saying Internet users should not be ‘worried or scared’, describing the Net as ‘unstoppable’.

Born in Madrid in 1965, Ángeles González-Sinde is the daughter of the founder and first President of the Spanish Film Academy, José María González-Sinde, himself a noted director and scriptwriter, She studied Classical Languages at Madrid’s Complutense University, and worked as a translator and concert promoter before taking her Master’s degree in Film Screenwriting in 1991. The future Minister had also worked for the magazine Cosmopolitan during those years. She began her professional career writing scripts for television, and was in the United States for some time, where she worked on perfecting her writing and scriptwriting techniques.
Her first success back in Spain was the script for the award-winning Ricardo Franco film,‘La Buena Estrella’, starring Maribel Verdú and Antonio Resines. It brought her her first Goya for the script she wrote jointly with the film’s director. She also co-wrote with Franco on the last film he directed before his death, ‘Lágrimas Negras’.

Ángeles González-Sinde has also written for television in her career, and she was to receive more nominations for her work in film, but it was her debut as a director which was to bring her her second Goya, as Best New Director of the 2003 film ‘La Suerte Dormida’ in the 2004 Goyas. Her latest script was co-writing for the 2008 film ‘Mentiras y Gordas’.

She took over from the actress Mercedes Sampietro as President of the Spanish Film Academy on December 17th 2006, leaving the Academy in the hands of the Acting President, Eduardo Campoy, to become Spain’s new Minister for Culture on April 8th 2009.

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