Juan Velarde Fuertes Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences 1992

The distinguished economist Juan Velarde Fuertes  (Salas, Asturias, Spain, 1927 - Madrid, Spain, 2023)  he graduated in Economics from the Faculty of Political and Economic Sciences at Madrid in 1947, and took his PhD in 1956 with a Special Distinction Award.

He began work as a lecturer at Madrid´s Faculty of Political and Economic Sciences in 1947 and since then has served as professor, assistant professor, lecturer and assistant lecturer at the University of Barcelona (1960-63) and at the Complutense University of Madrid until the present day. He was appointed Counsellor of Spain’s Court of Auditors in 1991.

In 1951 he joined the National Labour Inspectorate, subsequently to become Vice-Secretary of Studies and then Director of the Institute of Labour Studies and the Department of Social Security (a position he held until 1982) at the Ministry of Employment.

Velarde Fuertes was Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Political and Economic Sciences and, from 1974 to 1977, Rector of the Spanish-American Santa María de la Rábida University. His usual fields of study include Spanish economy, economy and the social security system, contemporary Spanish economic thought and Latin-American economy.

Juan Velarde Fuertes was a member of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Oviedo, Seville, Pontificia Comillas, Alicante and Valladolid, as well as the Medal of Honour of the Menéndez Pelayo International University (UIMP). On the occasion of his retirement as a professor, a book of homage containing 119 essays was published in three volumes under the title Economía española, Cultura y sociedad, coordinated by Professor García Delgado.

The numerous studies and publications he has written include titles such as Flores de Lemus ante la economía española, Sobre la decadencia económica de España, Política económica de la dictadura, El libertino y el nacimiento del capitalismo, El tercer viraje de la Seguridad Social en España (Aportaciones para una reforma desde la perspectiva del gasto and Economistas españoles contemporáneos: primeros maestros. He has been editor in chief of the volume 1900-2000. Historia de un esfuerzo colectivo. Cómo España superó el pesimismo y la pobreza.