Florencio Galleguillos

Florencio Galleguillos Vera (11 January 1913 – 22 February 2000) was a Chilean lawyer, criminologist, and politician who served as Deputy of the Republic for the 7th Departmental Grouping – Santiago, 2nd District – during three consecutive legislative periods between 1953 and 1965.

He was a founder and later national president of the Social Democratic Party.

Born in Ovalle on 11 January 1913, he was the son of Juan Antonio Galleguillos Pizarro and Blanca Vera Carvajal. He married María Dolores Martínez Escobar in 1935, with whom he had four children: Norma, Juan Antonio, Florencio, and Jorge. After her death, he married Nora Iris del Carmen Cisternas Rotta in Santiago on 21 July 1982, and they had one daughter, Nora Florencia.^[1]

He studied at the Primary School No. 7 of Ovalle, at the local Liceo de Ovalle, and later at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, graduating in 1930. He pursued law at the University of Chile, earning his degree and being admitted to the bar on 17 May 1938. His thesis, “Vagrancy and Beggary as a Social Problem and as a Crime”, reflected his early interest in criminology.^[2]

He practiced law primarily in criminal matters and participated as delegate of the Santiago Bar Association in several international congresses on criminology. Between 1938 and 1943 he served as municipal employee and night school teacher in Conchalí, and from 1943 to 1953 he was Judge of the Local Police Court of the same municipality.

Galleguillos’s political trajectory was marked by his participation in various parties: initially Independent (1953), then Socialist (1959), later Social Democratic Party (1960–1973), and finally president of the re-established Social Democracy in 1991.^[3]

He was elected Deputy for the 7th Departmental Grouping “Santiago,” 2nd District, for the periods 1953–1957, 1957–1961, and 1961–1965. During his tenure he served as Second Vice President of the Chamber of Deputies from 27 January to 18 August 1959.

Throughout his parliamentary career he sat on numerous commissions, including: – Foreign Affairs; – Constitution, Legislation and Justice; – Physical Education and Sports; – Budget Committee; – Interior and Regulations; – Housing; and several Special Investigative Commissions, notably those addressing dictatorship infiltration in the Americas (1954–1955), social security administration (1962), and constitutional issues (1963–1964).

Together with other parliamentarians, he co-sponsored the reform to Electoral Law No. 12,891 on political propaganda, which became Law No. 16,094 on 6 January 1965.

He was director and president of the Santiago Bar Association, honorary member of the Institute of Criminal Sciences (1955), and elected to the General Council of the Chilean Bar Association (1960). A founder and president of the Alumni Association of the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, he was also decorated by the governments of Greece, Yugoslavia, and Paraguay for his parliamentary service.

Internationally, he participated in the 1958 Plenary Conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Rio de Janeiro and was elected president of the American Parliament in Lima in 1959. In 1962, he joined the Executive Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Brasilia.

Galleguillos passed away in Santiago on 22 February 2000.

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