François Asensi (born 1 June 1945) is a French politician who has served as the Mayor of Tremblay-en-France since 1991 and served as Member of the National Assembly for Seine-Saint-Denis' 11th constituency from 1988 to 2017.
Early life
François Asensi was born on 1 June 1945 in Santander, Spain to a French mother and Spanish father. His father had fought for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the International Brigades. Both parents were then communist activists in the underground resistance to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. In 1947, when François was two years old, the family secretly emigrated to France with their two children. François received the status of political refugee and would become a French citizen upon attaining the age of majority.
The Asensi family resided in Aubervilliers, La Plaine Saint-Denis, with François growing up in the Landy neighbourhood. He obtained a Certificate of Professional Competence in technical drawing and began working for a company manufacturing washing machines and clothes irons.
Political career
François Asensi joined the Mouvement Jeunes Communistes de France at the age of 15, protesting the Algerian War. Four years later, he became a member of the French Communist Party (PCF).
After serving in the military, Asensi worked as a secretary in the Aubervilliers chapter of the PCF and soon rose to the position of local secretary of the city. He was then appointed First Secretary of the Jeunes Communistes Federation of Seine-Saint-Denis and National Secretary of the Union of Jeunes Communistes of France after that. Asensi resigned from the Jeunesse Communiste due to disagreements with the organization and subsequently took part in reviving the Seine-Saint-Denis federation of the PCF in 1974.
At the end of 1975, Asensi became PCF secretary for Aulnay-sous-Bois. He helped prepare the Communist succession to Mayor Robert Ballanger of Aulnay-sous-Bois, who also served as a Member of the National Assembly for Seine-Saint-Denis and president of the Communist group in the National Assembly. Asensi was soon designated as Ballanger's successor and became a Member of the National Assembly after Ballanger's death in 1981. At the same time, Asensi also served as municipal councillor of Aulnay-sous-Bois, where he joined PSA Group workers in their demonstrations in 1982.
Asensi was elected federal first secretary of the PCF in Seine-Saint-Denis, serving from 1979 to 1985, whereupon he was dismissed from national party leadership and the Seine-Saint-Denis federation. This was because he had joined several Seine-Saint-Denis mayors in pushing for the transformation of the PCF into a "new revolutionary party," thereby breaking with the party's messaging surrounding worker identity. Asensi sought to reform and modernize the party's structure and create a new communist program taking into account recent societal developments. He also demanded that the PCF leadership seriously re-evaluate its ties with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Asensi was elected to the National Assembly in 1986 and then re-elected in 1988, 1993, 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2012.
After having been municipal councillor of Aubrevilliers, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Villepinte, Asensi was elected mayor of Tremblay-en-France in 1991, succeeding George Prudhomme. He was subsequently re-elected in 1995, 2001, 2008, 2014 and 2020.
In 1995, Asensi became president of SEAFPA, an inter-communal union founded in 1971 by Robert Ballanger. The union covered the communes of Tremblay-en-France, Villepinte, Aulnay-sous-Bois, Sevran and Le Blanc-Mesnil and aimed to develop public policy for people with disabilities. Asensi resigned from the presidency in 2014.
Drawing from his family history with the Spanish Civil War, Asensi co-founded the Friends of the Soldiers of Republican Spain (ACER) along with fellow sons of International Brigade soldiers José Fort, Jean-Claude Lefort and Pierre Renière in 1996. He serves as the association's co-president to this day.
Asensi called for a common candidate representing all the anti-liberal forces on the left in the 2007 French presidential election, motivated by what he saw as a left-wing desire for social transformation in France after the 2005 referendum on the European Constitution. The project failed and contributed to further divisions among anti-liberals in the country.