When at the beginning of the century Mauricio Macri began the political adventure that led to the creation of the PRO,
Ignacio Agustín Torres
was 12 years old and lived in the Los Olmos neighborhood, in Trelew.
He was far from imagining that a little more than two decades later he would become the youngest governor of all those his party and also Together for Change had in these years, in his province, Chubut, which Peronism had governed since 2003.
And much less that he would be the first president to openly challenge the government of Javier Milei by cutting off the shipment of oil and gas if he does not send them in a timely manner the co-shareable funds that correspond to his province.
The tension between Torres and Mileism had already been noted since the beginning of the year.
In an interview with
Clarín
on January 28, the man from Chubut declared that "the Government has to be able to dissociate between the political carrion that wants the mandate not to end and those of us who want to collaborate." And he also maintained that La Rosada poses "an epic that there is a caste that does not let Milei govern.
At 35 years old and with two and a half months in office,
"Nacho" has already been installed in Chubut politics for more than a decade
, in different local positions, but also with a national presence, especially during the Macri government.
Graduated in Business Administration from the UADE, in 2015 he took charge of the Pensar Foundation, the party's think tank, but in his province.
It was that same year when, upon Macri's arrival to the Government, he was appointed to the PAMI board, representing Chubut, where he remained until 2017. In 2019 he had his first electoral experience, being elected national deputy for his province with his list finishing second and achieving 32.3% of the votes.
Previously that year, the Minister of the Interior Rogelio Frigerio had appointed him as coordinator of the Patagonian Development Board.
Torres, along with Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich.
Photo: Juano Tesone / special envoy.
His big leap in politics, however, occurred in 2021, with a very high performance in the legislative elections, becoming a
national senator after widely winning the election, obtaining 38% of the votes
, almost 10 points above his rivals. .
In each of his campaign speeches, Torres constantly emphasized the need to recover education as a central value of provincial management.
Chubut lived for years immersed in a constant conflict between the teaching unions and the government of Mariano Arcioni, which led to almost no week of the year being full of classes.
The governor
is the son of a teacher
, precisely,
and of a businessman in the oil industry
in Chubut, like his grandfather, who accompanied him to vote in the July 2023 election, when he became governor of Chubut after
winning by barely 5,000 votes for the Peronist Juan Pablo Luque
.
His interest in politics aroused as a student at school, in the student center.
Although between his studies and the work he did within the family business he had an impasse with the public, after the age of 20
he began to get closer to Graciela Ocaña and to build himself as a reference for the Public Confidence party
at the provincial level.
Over time, they ended up working together in Congress, as deputies.
The governor of Chubut, Ignacio Torres.
It was after that that he became the
leader of the PRO of the province
and took charge of the Pensar Foundation until 2020. In 2017 he wanted to be a candidate, but finally an agreement with radicalism ended up postponing it.
In 2019 he reached the Lower House and in 2021 after agreeing with the radicals, PASO won them, which guaranteed him to be a candidate for governor in 2023, with Gustavo Menna, the leader of the UCR who competed for the governorship in 2019, as Vice .
Torres, in the last campaign, had a peculiarity that few enjoyed within Together for Change, both those who competed for provincial and legislative positions.
He was supported indiscriminately by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich
, the two presidential candidates of the party, who traveled to Chubut to support him in the election that he won, just two weeks before the PASO.
He also
maintains good dialogue with Mauricio Macri
.
After his narrow victory, he became the first non-Peronist leader to govern Chubut since 2003, when the term of the radical José Luis Lizurume ended.
Before, from '91 to '99, his coreligionist Carlos Maestro had governed, and from '83 to '87 the also radical Atilio Viglione.