Francisco de Paula Polo, nuevo Secretario de Estado para la Sociedad de la Información y Agenda Digital

The Council of Ministers has appointed, at the proposal of the Minister of Economy and Business, Nadia Calvino, to Francisco de Paula Polo, creator of Actionable, the Spanish startup that later merged with Change.org.

Francisco de Paula Polo Llavata as new Secretary of State for the Information Society and the Digital Agenda.

This Secretary, on which issues such as 5G depend, the development of broadband, telecommunications, broadcasting or spectrum management, goes from depending on the defunct Ministry of Energy, Tourism and Digital Agenda to the portfolio Economy and Business.

Born in Valencia on 9 April 1981, Francisco de Paula Polo has a degree in Law and a master's degree in Law from ESADE Business School, (Ramon Llul University). He has a Postgraduate Degree in International Studies and Diplomacy at the Center for International Studies, from the University of Barcelona.

In 2009 starts working in the PSOE as an advisor in the Secretariat of International Politics. Later, and until October 2010, He worked in the Organization Secretariat, where he outlined the online strategy within the PSOE Internet Observatory project. He is currently the Secretary of Entrepreneurship, Science and Innovation of the PSOE.

He was the creator of Actuable, the Spanish startup with the fastest growth in users than in just 18 months passed 40 users to two and a half million. Its success led to the merger with Change.org, the largest petition platform in the world, with hundreds of millions of users, where he served as director for Spain until last year. In 2016 was recognized with the Entrepreneur of the Year award.

One of the first tasks that the new Secretary of State will face is to carry out the frequency band auction of 3,6-3,8 GHz, launched by the previous Executive, on which the new 5G mobile communications technology will be developed.

A total will be tendered 200 MHz distributed in 40 blocks of 5 MHz each, all of them national. The starting price of each block has been set at 2,5 million euros, in total 100 million euros for the 200MHz that are being tendered.