The Foundation Board of Trustees is the body that governs and represents the institution. It is responsible for establishing the activities to be carried out, approving the annual budgets and accounts and establishing the criteria for action.
Honorary President
Honorary Vice-president
A graduate in Law from the University of Oviedo, he also holds an officially recognized Master’s Course in Leadership (from the Fundación Ideas and Fundación Rafael Campalans in cooperation with the Autonomous University of Barcelona).
He began his political career in the Socialist Youth of Asturias (JSA), which he joined at the age of 17, and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), which he joined a year later. He has been Deputy Mayor of Laviana (2003-2008) and Mayor of this same town between September 2008 and 10th October 2017, as well as a member of the PSOE’s Federal Committee.
He has been Secretary General of the Asturian Socialist Federation (FSA-PSOE) since 17th September 2017. He previously served as Secretary General of the Socialist Group in Laviana (2012-2017).
Following the regional elections of 26th May 2019, in which he contested the presidency of the Principality of Asturias as the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party candidate, Adrián Barbón was elected to the Principality of Asturias Regional Parliament. He has served as the ninth president of the Principality of Asturias since 20th July 2019.
President
President of the Princess of Asturias Foundation since December 2022.
Rector of the CUNEF University, she holds a Chair in Financial Economics, a PhD in Business Economics (1985) and a Degree in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Oviedo (1981). She has been a member of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees since 2015 and has sat on the Jury for the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord on several occasions.
She is a member of the Board of Directors of Mapfre, S.A., and of the Madrid Stock Exchange (Grupo BME) and has been a member of the Board of the National Securities and Exchange Commission (2010-2014). At the University of Oviedo, she has held the positions of Secretary of the Advisory Social Council (1986-1991), Dean of the Faculty of Economic Sciences (1994-1998), Vice-Rector for Postgraduate and Certificate Studies (2000-2004) and Vice-Rector for Research (2004-2005). She has supervised twelve PhD theses and has been editor of the journal Cuadernos de Economía y Dirección de la Empresa (CEDE). She has been a member of the Board of the Banco Herrero Foundation (1997-2010) and currently sits on the Banco Sabadell Foundation’s Board of Trustees. She has published books and articles in prestigious journals in the field of corporate finance, corporate governance and banking and financial regulation.
Members
The holder of a dual degree in Law and Business Administration from Comillas Pontifical University (ICADE-E3), he belongs to Spain’s Corps of State Lawyers.
He has been General Secretary and Secretary of the Board at the Banco Santander since September 2015, as well as serving as its legal advisor. He previously headed the General Secretariat and Human Resources Division between 2015 and 2021. Among other undertakings, he has been Deputy Head of Legal Services at the Spanish Securities and Exchange Commission (1997-1999) and Head of Staff for Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs and the Minister of Economy (2001-2003). He likewise served as General Secretary and Secretary of the Board at Banco Español de Crédito (Banesto) between 2003 and 2009, when he was appointed CEO of Banco Santander, Deputy General Secretary and Secretary of the Board and Head of Legal Affairs for Grupo Santander. Between December 2011 and June 2015, he served as Under-Secretary at the Ministry of the Presidency, where, among other responsibilities, he was in charge of the organization and coordination of the activities of the Cabinet, the Government’s Delegate Committees and the General Committee of Secretaries of State and Under-Secretaries. He has been a member of the board of directors of Spain’s national heritage agency (Patrimonio Nacional) and director of several public companies, including the state industrial holdings agency (SEPI). During this period, he was also President of the Official State Gazette State Agency.
He is the author of numerous publications on administrative, corporate and stock market law, lectures at Comillas Pontifical University (ICADE) and is Chair of the ICADE Business Club.
Global Head of Regulation & Internal Control at BBVA, she graduated in Business Management and Economics from CUNEF (University College of Financial Studies).
She began her professional career at Arthur Andersen in 1988 and began working at the Spanish Securities and Exchange Commission (CNMV) in 1990 until she joined Argentaria in 1993. Since then, she has held different positions of responsibility within the BBVA group in the areas of finance, strategy and non-financial risk management. As Head of Regulation & Internal Control, with a global mandate throughout the group, she is responsible for the management of non-financial risks, the control model and global compliance, as well as the group’s relationship with supervisors.
Fernando Martínez Rodríguez (Oviedo, 1953) is Chairman of the Caja Rural de Asturias savings bank and the Caja Rural de Asturias Foundation. He studied Economics at the University of Oviedo and Spain’s National Distance Education University (UNED).
He joined the Caja Rural de Asturias Bank in 1973, where he has worked in different departments and occupied different positions. He was appointed General Manager in 2008, a position he held until 2019, when he was elected to the board of directors by the entity’s partners at its General Assembly (held in June), being unanimously elected Chairman of the Board by the Governing Council one month later.
He is currently a member of the Banco Cooperativo Español and He is also a member of the boards of the Seguros RGA insurance company, the Spanish Association of Rural Savings Banks (AECR) and Spain’s National Union of Credit Cooperatives (UNACC).
Other relevant positions he has held include those of Deputy Chairman of Rural Servicios Informáticos (RSI) and member of the board of Caja de Crédito Cooperativa and its banking subsidiary NOVANCA.
Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation, he graduated in Law from the University of Navarra.
Since joining the Masaveu Group in 1993, he has held various positions within different business sectors, such as the energy, financial, industrial, cement and real estate sectors, among others, has assumed various responsibilities through foundations linked to the Masaveu family. Among other duties, he is currently chairman of Corporación Masaveu SA, and, within the Group, chairman of Cementos Tudela Veguín SA, Masaveu Internacional SL, Oppidum Capital, Beluga Holding Limited and the American company Masaveu Real Estate US Delaware LLC. He is also an advisor to American Cement Advisors Inc. and administrator of Flicka Forestal SL. He is also chairman of the María Cristina Masaveu Foundation and the San Ignacio de Loyola Foundation. He is a member of the General Supervisory Board, the Strategy and Performance Committee and the Maturities Committee of Energías de Portugal (EDP), director of Bankinter and member of its Executive and Remuneration Committees, director of EDP Spain, EGEO SGPS and EGEO International SGPS He is a trustee and member of the Executive Committee and the Assets Committee of the Princess of Asturias Foundation and an international trustee of the Friends of the Prado Museum Foundation. He holds the Medal of Honour of the Queen Sofía Advanced School of Music. As president of the María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation, he received the Gold Medal of Madrid in 2015 and the Ibero-American Award for Patronage in 2019. As chairman of Corporación Masaveu, he received the Gold Medal of Asturias in 2015.
Chairman of the Caja de Ahorros de Asturias Banking Foundation, he graduated in Law from the University of Oviedo.
He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Principality of Asturias Biomedical Research and Innovation Foundation. Throughout his professional career at the Caja de Ahorros de Asturias savings bank, he served as Director of Human Resources and Director of Institutional Relations and Social Affairs and formed part of the institution’s Management Committee.
Gonzalo Urquijo Fernández de Araoz is CEO of Talgo from 18th March 2021.
He graduated in Economics and Political Science from Yale University and holds an Executive MBA from the Instituto de Empresa. He began his career in the banking sector, first in Citigroup and then in Crédit Agricole. He joined Aristrain (now Arcelor) as CFO in 1992 and was appointed CEO by the Arcelor Executive Committee in 2005. In 2010, he was appointed Chairman of ArcelorMittal España and in 2015 adviser to the Chairman of the Arcelor Group worldwide. He has been Executive Chairman of Abengoa from November 2016 to March 2021. He holds the distinctions of Commander by Number of the Spanish Order of Civil Merit and Commander of the Order of Civil Merit of Luxembourg.
Gonzalo Urquijo is Chair of the Hesperia Foundation. He was named “Member of Honour” of the Association of Economists of Asturias in 2017 and is also a board member of Atlantica Yield, Gestamp, Vocento and Fertiberia.
Chairman of the Board of the Grupo Azvi since 2021, he graduated in Law from the University of Seville and holds a postgraduate degree in Business Administration and Management.
He joined Azvi in 1995, where he trained in different departments with the aim of acquiring a broad-reaching, comprehensive vision of the public works business started by his family. In 2005, he succeeded his father, Manuel Contreras Ramos, as Chairman of Azvi, a position he held until 2015 when he was appointed CEO of the Group. He sits on the board of CEAPI (Business Council Alliance for Ibero-America) and the board of CESUR (Association of Businessmen of Southern Spain).
Chairman of Asturiana de Zinc, S.A.U. from 2017 to December 2020, he graduated in Law from the Autonomous University, Madrid, in 1977.
He has also attended courses in the field of law at the US Legal System International Law Institute, Georgetown University Law Center (Washington, 1985), and completed the Harvard Program of Instruction for Lawyers at the Instituto de Empresa (Madrid, 1989). He began his professional career at Bankinter in 1979. In 1981, he began working in the Madrid offices of the international law firm Baker & McKenzie (1981-1985 and 1987-1994), with stays in Chicago (USA) between 1985 and 1986. He was appointed an international partner in 1990. In November 1994, he was appointed general secretary of the Banesto Industrial and Financial Corporation, a position he held until July 1998. He joined Asturiana de Zinc, S.A. (AZSA), as general secretary and secretary to the Board in 1998. Following the acquisition of AZSA by Xstrata PLC in 2001, he also became the chief legal counsel of the zinc unit, with global responsibilities within the Xstrata Group. On the occasion of the merger of the Xstrata and Glencore groups, he assumed the responsibility of Sole Administrator of AZSA in 2013 and was subsequently appointed president in 2017, a position he held until leaving the group in December 2020.
Chairman of the boards of directors of Automobiles Luarca S.A. (ALSA) and CMC XXI S.C.R., Jacobo Cosmen Menéndez-Castañedo has a degree in Business Administration (London, 1992), is a Technical Engineer specializing in Transportation Systems and holds an MBA.
On completing his secondary studies in Oviedo, he moved to the UK where he worked as assistant director in a consulting company linked to the world of transport, a sector which he joined following the family tradition. He returned to Spain to become head of purchasing and logistics at the TVA company workshops. He later took over coordination of the ALSA GROUP Maintenance Division, following which he became manager of the same division. Son of José Cosmen Adelaida, the main promoter of road passenger transport in Spain, Jacobo Cosmen represents –along with his brothers– the perpetuation of a family business saga of international scope.
Former member of the board of BBVA (2004-2018), where he chaired the Risk Committee and was Coordinating Director, José Antonio Fernández Rivero holds a degree in Economics from the University of Santiago de Compostela and an MBA from the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium).
He joined Arthur Andersen in 1976 and subsequently took charge of management and control of the International Division at Banco de Vizcaya. In 1986, he became chair of the steering committee of Banque de Gestion Financière S.A. (Belgium). After a period in the sub-directorate general for Planning and Control at Banca Comercial and in territorial management of Retail Banking at BBV, he joined the Banco Exterior de España as comptroller general, a position he also held at Corporación Bancaria de España (Argentaria) from 1991 to 1995, following which he was appointed general manager of Internal Control and Oversight at the same bank. Two years later, he assumed the duties of General Manager for Organization, Systems, Operations, Human Resources, Procurement and Real Estate. After Argentaria merged with BBV, he was appointed general manager of Systems and Operations at BBVA. On behalf of this financial institution, he has sat on the boards of Telefónica, Iberdrola and Banco de Crédito Local and has chaired Adquira.
A graduate in Medicine from the Autonomous University, Madrid, he heads the Fernández-Vega Ophthalmological Institute and is a Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Oviedo’s Faculty of Medicine. President of the Princess of Asturias Foundation from April 2018 to April 2022.
He graduated in Medicine from the Autonomous University of Madrid and holds a PhD in Medicine and Surgery, with first class honours, from the Complutense University, Madrid. Director of the Fernández-Vega Ophthalmological Institute in Oviedo, he obtained tenure as assistant lecturer in Ophthalmology at the Complutense University Faculty of Medicine in 1980 and the Chair in Ophthalmology at Oviedo University Faculty of Medicine in 1982. That same year, he was appointed Head of the Ophthalmology Service at the Central University Hospital of Asturias. He was formerly president of the Spanish Society of Refractive Lens Replacement Surgery (SECOIR), of which he is currently honorary president, as well as president of the Spanish Ophthalmological Society (2011-2015). He is currently president of the National Committee for Ophthalmology.
Full member of the Principality of Asturias Royal Academy of Medicine and of the Spanish Medical-Surgical Academy, he is also corresponding member of the Zaragoza Royal Academy of Medicine and member of the Free College of Emeritus Academics of Spain. He is also member of honour of the College of Physicians of Asturias and holder of its Gold Badge. He has authored over 200 publications, as well as a substantial number of chapters and books. He has participated in numerous national and international congresses and has lectured at almost every Spanish university. He holds numerous awards and is a member of the world’s leading ophthalmological societies.
Chairperson of Ashoka Spain and member of the Ashoka Support Network, she holds a Bachelor of Arts from Scripps College (California) and is a 2018 Fellow of the Distinguished Careers Institute at Stanford University.
She chairs the Advisory Group of the Wellbeing Project and is vice-president and member of the Board of Trustees of the Fundación Hazloposible, a private non-profit entity that innovatively promotes the involvement of society in solidarity causes, using information and communication technologies. She is founder, vice president and member of the Executive Commission of the SERES Foundation –composed of more than 150 companies, representing around 70% of the IBEX 35 companies–, which works to reinforce and promote Corporate Responsibility as a strategic part of corporate business, promoting the spirit of collaboration among its partners. She has been a member of the ESADE Professional Council since its creation in 2003, as well as a member of its International Advisory Board since 2017. She was a shareholder and vice-president of the Board of Directors of Grupo Vips until December 2018.
Director of the Department of Public Health and Environment at the World Health Organization (WHO), María Neira studied Medicine at the University of Oviedo and specialized in Endocrinology in France.
She practiced medicine with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Central America. She later moved to Mozambique and Ruanda with the UNO. She joined WHO as Director of the Department of Control, Prevention and Eradication of Infectious Diseases. Subsequently, in 2004, she was appointed President of the Spanish Food Safety Agency, moving to Madrid.] She returned to Geneva a few years later to continue her work at WHO, though now as Director of the Department of Public Health and Environment. In 2006, she was decorated by the French government with the National Order of Merit.
Member of the Jury for the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences since 2011 and of the Princess of Asturias Foundation’s Board of Trustees since 2015, he is a Full Professor of Management and Sociology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Vice-Dean of the MBA Program for Executives. Former Dean of the University of Cambridge Judge Business School.
He earned a PhD in Sociology from Yale University and a PhD in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Oviedo. His research focuses on globalization, geopolitics, multinational companies, digital platforms and modernist architecture as an artistic movement. He is the author of a dozen books translated into seventeen languages. His online courses have attracted more than one hundred thousand participants.
Among other distinctions, he has received Fulbright, Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships and research awards from the Academy of Management, the American Sociological Association, the Social Science History Association and the Gustavo Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. He is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and an elected member of the Sociological Research Association and the Macro Organizational Behavior Society. He has received the Aspen Institute Faculty Pioneer Award and, in 2005, was distinguished with the 4th Banco Herrero Foundation Award for the best Spanish researcher in Social Sciences under forty years of age.
Businessman and co-founder of Sainberg Investments, an investment company that has acquired controlling interests in small and medium-sized Spanish companies. The firm’s current investments include fashion companies, such as Scalpers, MiM shoes, Jorge Vázquez and Victoria, and companies in the food industry, such as Internacional Olivarera, Helados La Ibense and the Black Iron Burger hamburger chain (New York).
He is also a member of the boards of directors of Naturgy, Gestamp, Zardoya Otis, and TK Elevator GmbH, and is an independent board member of Acerinox. He also sits on the Board of Trustees of the Carlos III University (UC3M), Madrid.
He graduated as a Mining Engineer from the University of Oviedo (1986), subsequently earning a PhD in Materials Science from Rutgers University (1992) and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (2001). He served as President of Otis Elevator Company (USA) until 2014. He commenced his career in the company in 1993 in the area of Engineering and R&D, going on to become manager of advanced technologies. From 2001, he focused on more commercial and managerial tasks and successively served as director of New Installations in Otis Mexico, chairman and general manager of Otis Portugal, general manager, CEO and member of the board of director of Zardoya Otis in Madrid and president of Otis South Europe and the Middle East.
She has been the director of the Princess of Asturias Foundation since 2009 and a member of its Board of Trustees since 2018.
Born in Madrid in 1972, she studied at Comillas Pontifical University (ICADE), where she graduated in Law in 1995, at the same time as obtaining qualifications as a Corporate Legal Advisor (E1). She holds a Master’s Degree in Administration and Management of Foundations and Other Non-Profit Organizations from the Autonomous University of Madrid (1999/2000) and completed the General Management Program (PDG) at the IESE Business School in 2007 and the Manager to Board Member Program at the Escuela de Consejeros (IESE-AED-KPMG) in 2021.
She has spent her entire career in the field of non-profit organizations, primarily foundations. Before joining the Princess of Asturias Foundation, she was General Manager of the Spanish Association of Foundations from 2003. Previous to that, she occupied the position of Technical Manager of the Spanish Confederation of Foundations from 2001, after joining the organization in 1999.
She became a member of the Diversity Advisory Committee at Caixabank in 2022 and was appointed as an independent member of the Board of Directors of Acciona in 2023.
Member of the Hague Club, of which she was president from 2016 to 2017, she also belongs to the International Women’s Forum. During her years of work within the foundations sector in Spain, she has participated in numerous forums, conferences and seminars, in addition to contributing to specialized publications. She has also lectured on specialized courses in this sector.
She is also an honorary member of the Colombian Academy of the Spanish Language, a member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Association of Directors (AED) and a corresponding member of the Royal Asturian Academy of Jurisprudence. She was awarded the Cross of Police Merit with White Decoration by Spain’s Ministry of the Interior in September 2014.
Economic-Financial Director General at TSK Electronics and Electricity, she graduated in Business Administration and Management (ADE) from the University of Oviedo.
She holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from the IE Business School, a Master’s degree in Tax Consulting from the College of Economists of Asturias, and has completed the Executive Programme for Women in Senior Management (Promociona Project) at ESADE. She began her professional career in 2001 at Crowe Horwath Spain as head of the Audit Team and, between 2004 and 2008, carried out Project Management functions in the Financial Department of Duro Felguera. She joined TSK in 2008 as Auditing and Consolidation Director, until her appointment as Economic-Financial Director in 2012.
Rector of the University of Oviedo, where he is Professor of Constitutional Law. At this same university, he has held the positions of Academic Secretary of the Department of Public Law, General Secretary, Vice Rector for Coordination, Communication and Institutional Relations and Secretary of the University Board. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Association of Constitutionalists and coordinator of the “Espacio Fundamentos. Constitutional models for debate” conference and seminar cycle, sponsored by the General Board of the Regional Parliament and the University of Oviedo.
He is a founding member of the “DERECONS” Group of Excellence and a constituent member of the Spanish Association of Constitutionalists, where he has been a member of the board since 2013. He has participated in national (8) as well as European (1) research projects. He is the author of several books and numerous scientific articles in national and foreign journals on fundamental rights, freedom of expression and information and the right to be informed, the right to privacy, honour, data protection, transparency, constitutional justice and territorial organization of the State. In recent times, he has started a line of research in Constitutional Theory and “liquid” Constitutionalism. He has given numerous courses, seminars and conferences on these subjects both in and outside of Spain. Editor and reviewer of several scientific journals, he has also been a reviewer of national research projects, visiting professor at the Albert Ludwig University, Freiburg, the London School of Economics and Politics, La Sapienza University, Rome, the Department of Constitutional Law at the University of Florence and, recently, at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Public Law, Heidelberg.
He has also enjoyed a long-standing professional career: he has been a lawyer for the Constitutional Court, director of the Legal Department of Gijón City Council, advisor to the Principality of Asturias Communication Council the and has advised various private and public companies on data protection, advertising and transparency, and constitutional justice.
General secretary
General secretary of the Princess of Asturias Foundation since May 2011, he graduated in Law from the Autonomous University, Madrid, and entered the Corps of State Lawyers in 1984. Lawyer at Ontier and he also lectures in Public and Economic Law and Regulated Industries at the IE Law School, as well as holding the José María Cervelló Chair, which fosters research and teaching in Lawyering and Legal Ethics.
He commenced his professional career as a state lawyer for the Tax Authority and before the Higher Court and Courts of Justice of Toledo (1984). He then became a legal advisor to the Ministry of the Presidency (1986) and, finally, chief state lawyer of the legal advisory body of the then Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs (1987). In 1998, he joined the law firm of Ernst & Whinney, which, after its merger with Arthur Young, gave rise to Ernst & Young, where he was a partner of the legal and tax department until 1996. He has been sub-secretary of state for Defence (1996-2000) and Promotion (2000-2004), member of the Board of Directors of Indra, assistant lecturer in Administrative Law at the Law Faculty of the Complutense University, Madrid, and associate lecturer of the same subject at the Ramón Carrande Centre for Social and Legal Studies at King Juan Carlos I University. Since 1986, he has been a member of the faculty of the Instituto de Empresa, where he participated in the creation of masters’ programmes in Law at this business school, in addition to lecturing in the area of Economic Public Law, a subject matter he pioneered in Spain. He has authored numerous articles on his speciality and has headed different group research studies. He sits on the editorial committee of the journal Actualidad Jurídica Uría Menéndez and on the editorial board of the Revista de Derecho del Transporte (Terrestre, Marítimo, Aéreo y Multimodal). Member of the Bar Association of Madrid and of the Association of State Lawyers, on whose board he sits, he is also vice-president of the Spanish Air and Space Law Association, member of the Spanish Aeronautical Society and general secretary of the Spanish Foundations Association. He was a founding partner of the Civil and Mercantile Court of Arbitration and has been a member of the Court of Arbitration for Football and vice-president of the Spanish Public and Regulated Procurement Law Association. He is one of the most renowned experts in Spanish public law and is an Honorary Pilot of the Spanish Nautical Pilots Association. He holds the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic and the Grand Cross of Maritime Merit of the Spanish Naval League, among other honours.