As she bid to become the first female mayor of Paris, Spanish-born Socialist Anne Hidalgo had to endure taunts from her opponents about her modest origins and lack of Parisian roots.

But in the end, voters in the French capital brushed such snobbery aside and defied the national trend by electing the 54-year-old by a convincing margin.

An old-school feminist socialist, Hidalgo has spent the last 13 years as a low-profile deputy to current mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

Born near Cadiz in the southwestern corner of Spain in 1959, Hidalgo moved to France as an infant and grew up in a working class suburb of Lyon.

As a child, she spoke Spanish to her parents and French to her sister. She became a French citizen at the age of 14, dropping her native Christian name Ana in favor of the more traditionally French Anne.

After working as a works inspector, Hidalgo became an advisor to former labor minister Martine Aubry, the architect of France's 35-hour workweek.

After Francois Hollande was elected president in 2012, Hidalgo was widely tipped for promotion to ministerial office. She opted instead to remain at City Hall and wait for the opportunity to take over from Delanoe.

AFP

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