Background and career
Manuel Carlos Valls Galfetti (born 13 August 1962) is a French–Spanish politician who served as Minister of the Overseas in the Bayrou government and first Lecornu government from 2024 to 2025. He served as Prime Minister of France from 2014 until 2016 under President François Hollande and was also involved in Spanish politics from 2018 to 2021. Born in Barcelona to a Spanish father and a Swiss mother, Valls grew up in France. He was Mayor of Évry from 2001 to 2012 and was first elected to the National Assembly of France for Essonne in 2002. He was regarded as belonging to the Socialist Party's social liberal wing, sharing common orientations with Blairism. He was Minister of the Interior from 2012 to 2014 and Prime Minister from 2014 to 2016. He was a candidate in the Socialist Party primary for the 2017 French presidential election, losing the Socialist nomination in the second round to Benoît Hamon. Following his defeat, he endorsed Emmanuel Macron despite having previously pledged to support the Socialist candidate. In the 2017 French legislative election, Valls was re-elected by a narrow margin as a Member of Parliament. He then left the Socialist Party and joined La République En Marche group (LREM) in the National Assembly, although he did not formally join the party. In October 2018, he resigned from the National Assembly to run for mayor of Barcelona in the 2019 election. Valls failed to be elected mayor, coming in fourth in the election. He served as a Barcelona city councillor until 2021. In 2022, Valls attempted to return to the French National Assembly as a member of LREM for the fifth constituency for French citizens abroad but was unsuccessful, coming third in the vote. In December 2024, he returned to the French Government as Minister in charge of Overseas France.
Valls' paternal grandfather was the editor-in-chief of a Republican newspaper in Spain. During the Spanish Civil War, he sheltered priests who were fleeing from the Red Terror. After Francisco Franco's victory, he was forced out of his job as editor. Valls' father was the Barcelona-born painter Xavier Valls (1923–2006). In the late 1940s, Xavier Valls moved to Paris and met his future wife, Luisangela Galfetti, a Ticino-born Swiss citizen, the sister of architect Aurelio Galfetti. In 1955, he won the prize for best still life in the third Spanish-American Art Biennial inaugurated by Franco. Valls was born in Barcelona while his parents were there on holiday. He grew up with them at their home in France and became naturalized as French.
In 1980, aged 17, Valls joined the French Socialist Party (PS) to support Michel Rocard. Within the PS, he defended the "Second Left" (La Deuxième gauche), rather than the more pragmatic left of François Mitterrand. (The Second left could be compared to the 1960s "New Left" – opposed to party lines and bureaucracy, anti-statist, supportive of anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist movements worldwide, favouring direct action politics.) While studying history at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Tolbiac campus, he was a member of the UNEF-ID, a progressive students' union. In 1980, he met two other student supporters of Rocard with whom he became close friends: Alain Bauer (Bauer is the godfather of Valls' second son), and Stéphane Fouks. From 1983 to 1986, Valls was a parliamentary attaché for the member for Ardèche, Robert Chapuis. In 1986 he was elected to the regional Council for the Île-de-France and served until 1992. In 1988, he became head of the Socialist Party in Argenteuil-Bezons and deputy mayor. From 1988 to 1991 he was responsible for the functioning of the prime minister's cabinet. From 1991 to 1993 he was an inter-ministerial delegate to the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville. In 1995, he became the Secretary of Communications for the national Socialist Party and in 1997 communications and media relations chief for the prime minister's Cabinet. In 1998 he was elected vice-president of the regional council for Île-de-France, a post which he held until 2002. While vice-president of the regional Council, he was also elected mayor of Évry in 2001, a post he held until 2012. In 2002, he became the deputy for the First Electoral District in Essonne and in 2008, the president of the tri-city jurisdiction of Évry-Centre-Essonne. In the 2008 elections to choose the head of the Socialist Party, Valls supported the former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal over her former partner François Hollande; Hollande eventually won. On 13 June 2009, Valls announced his intention to run in the Socialist presidential primary in 2011 for the 2012 election. On 30 June 2009 he founded a political organisation with the slogan "The Left Needs Optimism," to provide legal and financial support the Socialist Primary candidates. On 7 June 2011, he confirmed his candidacy for the Socialist primary. On the evening of the first primary round, 9 October 2011, Valls achieved only 6% of the vote, just behind Ségolène Royal. He was therefore eliminated. On the night of his defeat, he endorsed François Hollande for the second round.
Valls was appointed Minister of the Interior in the Ayrault Cabinet in May 2012. Ahead of the Socialist Party's 2012 convention in Toulouse, Valls endorsed Harlem Désir as candidate to succeed Martine Aubry at the party's leadership.
In March 2014, following major losses to centre-right and extreme-right political parties in French municipal elections, President François Hollande appointed Valls to the post of Prime Minister. He replaced Jean-Marc Ayrault who had resigned earlier that day. The Valls Cabinet was formed on 2 April 2014, consisting of 15 ministers from the Socialist Party and two ministers from the Radical Party of the Left. After the 2016 Nice truck attack, he was criticised for saying that "France will have to live with terrorism." French citizens booed him when he joined the memorial for the victims, yelling "murderer" and "resign" at him before the minute of silence for the dead began.
Valls left office on 6 December 2016 to run in the 2017 French Socialist Party presidential primary ahead of the 2017 French presidential election. He was replaced by Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve. He came in second during the first round of the primary on 22 January, behind his ex-Minister of National Education Benoît Hamon. The two candidates advanced to the second round, which was held 29 January. Valls was unexpectedly defeated in the second round, garnering 41% of the vote to Hamon's 58%. Despite subsequently promising to support Hamon's candidature, Valls later declared his support for Emmanuel Macron of En Marche!. After his loss in the Socialist Party primary, Valls refused to endorse Benoît Hamon, citing the difference in views. In March, Valls announced on BFMTV that he was endorsing Emmanuel Macron. After Macron's win in the second round of the presidential election, Valls announced that he wanted to run for reelection to the National Assembly under the En Marche! banner, declaring that the Socialist Party was "dead". The Socialist Party has started disciplinary proceedings against Valls, perhaps resulting in his expulsion. En Marche! rejected Valls's application to join but said it would not oppose him in the 2017 French legislative election. Valls won reelection as an independent with 50.3% of the vote in the second round, but the result was challenged by his opponent, Farida Amrani of La France Insoumise.
