Spanish congress' first-ever member of Egyptian origin
Zeinab El-Gundy , Thursday 14 Jan 2016
The 25-year-old parliamentarian Nagua Alba, who is of Egyptian origin, led the first procedural session of Spain's Congress of Deputies on Wednesday


Spanish MP Nagua Alba, who is of Egyptian origins, headed the first procedural session in the Spanish Congress of Deputies on Wednesday in Madrid.

Born to an Egyptian Nubian father and a Spanish mother, the 25-year-old member of the newly-founded ultra-leftist party Podemos is the youngest Spanish MP in the Spanish Congress of Deputies as well its first of Egyptian descent.

Alba, a graduate of psychology from the University of Madrid, headed the first procedural session in the Spanish parliament according to the Spanish constitution as its youngest member.

Representing Gipuzkoa province in northern Spain, Alba – born Nagua Goueli – received 97,000 votes in the general elections in December in a surprise for the newcomer to politics and her party Podemos.

"Nagua's Arab roots were not a problem because Spain is not a racist country like other European countries,” Ahmed Goueli, the MP's father, told Ahram Online via email. “The true surprise for everybody is that Nagua managed to get that huge number of votes."

Goueli believes that his daughter managed to deliver her message in an effective way so as to secure such a large number of votes in the Spanish general elections.

Goueli left Egypt for Spain to study Spanish in the 1990s, where he settled down and worked in the country’stourism sector. He is the co-founder of a number of Spanish tourism websites.

Goueli posted photos online of his daughter leading the procedural session in parliament, with Arabic captions saying, "I am proud that my daughter Nagua, the daughter of [Egypt’s 25 January revolution], is supervising the elections of the speaker of the Spanish Congress of Deputies."

On Wednesday, Spanish MPs elected Patxi Lopez of the Socialists Party as the speaker of the parliament.

Podemos won 69 seats in the Spanish general elections in December to become the third party in the Congress of Deputies.

https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/180938.aspx