This month on the Metropolitan Culture Corner, we interview Chris Reilly, former chair of the Barcelona chapter of Democrats Abroad.
If you’ve seen previous installments of this monthly interview series, then you know that we usually go behind the scenes with someone from the world of the arts. However, culture is multifaceted, and we wanted to speak with someone who is deeply involved in a different facet of local culture: social and political activism.
Born in the UK, Chris Reilly’s professional life has taken him all over the world, working in business development and senior sales roles, specifically in the fields of new technologies and media. Chris became a green card holder while working in the United States, and became a naturalized American citizen in 2001. While living in New York he worked on the presidential campaigns for John Kerry and Barak Obama. Later, his love of his adopted country led him to want to continue to stay involved even from afar. In 2009, his work brought him and his family to Barcelona, where he became heavily involved in non-profit organization Democrats Abroad, which—among other things—works to encourage American citizens living abroad to register to vote.
Last month, we featured Esther Gimeno Miró on the Metropolitan Culture Corner. She is a computational linguist, conversational AI specialist, technology project manager, and educator who has worked for multinational tech companies on the development of projects such as conversational assistants like Siri and Alexa, and Large Language Models, or the AI programming that makes programs like ChatGPT possible.
Esther is also an independent musician, and the co-founder and President of CABE, a non-profit organization that works to support emerging artists all across Spain. The non-profit organization is run by musicians, for musicians, with the goal of creating a space where artists can support on another and share their musical and management skills.
Stay tuned to Barcelona Metropolitan’s YouTube channel and social media to make sure you don’t miss a single episode of our monthly interview series! We’ve got a great lineup in store for you in 2025. You can also watch the full archive of previous interviews on our official YouTube channel, or listen to all the MCC interviews as free podcasts on Soundcloud. Be sure to follow Metropolitan on Facebook: @BCNMetropolitan, Twitter: @bcnmetropolitan and Instagram: @barcelonametropolitan.
Note: The opinions expressed in this interview are Chris Reilly’s personal views, and are not meant to represent the views of Democrats Abroad, the United States Democratic party, or any other organization. For more information on Democrats Abroad, registering to vote abroad, or to participate in any of their upcoming events, go to DemocratsAbroad.org.