Carlos Manuel Soares Miguel (born in 1957) is a Portuguese lawyer and politician serving as Deputy Minister for Regional Development in Prime Minister

António Costa António Luís Santos da Costa GCIH (; born 17 July 1961) is a Portuguese lawyer and politician serving as the 119th and current prime minister of Portugal since 26 November 2015, presiding over the XXI (2015–2019), XXII (2019–2022) and ...

's second cabinet. Previously he was Secretary of State for Local Administration in Costa's first cabinet and Mayor of

Torres Vedras Torres Vedras () is a municipality in the Portuguese district of Lisbon, approximately north of the capital Lisbon in the Oeste region, in the Centro of Portugal. The population was 83,075, in an area of . History In 1148, Afonso I took th ...

. He is the first person of Romani ethnicity to become a cabinet member in Portugal.

Education and career

Miguel was born in

in 1957 to an ethnically

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

father and a non-Romani mother. He graduated in Law at the

University of Lisbon The University of Lisbon (ULisboa; pt, Universidade de Lisboa, ) is a public research university in Lisbon, and the largest university in Portugal. It was founded in 2013, from the merger of two previous public universities located in Lisbon, th ...

in 1982, having specialised in Legal-Economic Sciences. He worked as a lawyer for seventeen years, until 2001. In his hometown of Torres Vedras, he was alderman, president of the Municipal Assembly, deputy mayor and, finally, mayor, having held this position from 2004 to 2015. Miguel was chairman of the Board of Administration of the Water and Sanitation Municipal Services company, member of the Board of Administration of Águas do Oeste SA, chairman of the general assembly of Valorsul SA, president of the Oeste Region Intermunicipal Community and member of the Advisory Body for the Integration of Romani Communities of the Portuguese High Commission for Migrations (''Grupo Consultivo para a Integração das Comunidades Ciganas do Alto Comissariado para as Migrações'').

References

1957 births Living people 20th-century Portuguese lawyers People from Torres Vedras Portuguese people of Romani descent Portuguese Romani people Socialist Party (Portugal) politicians {{Portugal-politician-stub