Chairman of the Elcano Royal Institute since 28 March 2012.

Emilio Lamo de Espinosa (Madrid, 1946) has doctorates in Law from Madrid’s Universidad Complutense and in Sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara (1979), where he furthered his studies from 1972 to 1975.

On returning to Spain he became Lecturer (1977) and then Professor of Sociology at the Universidad Complutense (1982). He was Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of California-San Diego and has lectured at many other universities, both in Spain and elsewhere.

In 1982 he was appointed Director General for Universities and subsequently first Secretary General of the Universities Council, being responsible for drawing up the University Reform Law (1983).

During the 1992 Seville EXPO he was entrusted with researching Spain’s image abroad for the study ‘La Mirada del Otro’, having subsequently expanded the project by focusing on countries such as Italy, Germany, France, the UK, the US and Japan.

He was Director of the Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset from 1992 to 2001 and was a founder and first Director of the Elcano Royal Institute (2001-05). He has furthermore been Chairman of the Spanish Sociology Federation (2007-09), of which he is currently an honorary member, and member of the Research Committee of the European University Institute (European University Florence).

At present he is a member of the Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas and of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Vice-president of the Fundación Consejo España-Estados Unidos, and trustee or board member of a number of foundations (Fundación Ortega-Marañón, Fundación Real Instituto Elcano, Fundación Botín, Fundación Príncipe de Girona, Fundación Transición Española, Fundación Barcenillas, and Fundación Fernando Pombo).

He has written 22 books, more than 100 scientific papers and around 400 press articles. In 1996 he was awarded the Premio Internacional de Ensayo Jovellanos for his book Sociedades de cultura y sociedades de ciencia (Ediciones Nobel, 1996) and he is the author (along with S. Giner and C. Torres) of the most widely-used dictionary of sociology in the Spanish language (Diccionario de Sociología, Alianza Editorial, Madrid). His latest publication, as Coordinator, is Europa después de Europa (Madrid, 2010). He has supervised 14 doctoral theses, four of which were awarded Extraordinary PhD Prizes.

He has been awarded a Honorary Doctorate by the University of Salamanca (2012).

Deputy Chairman of the Elcano Royal Institute since June 2012 and Chairman of the Ibero-American Network of International Studies (RIBEI).

Born in Almería in 1950, Rafael Estrella has a degree in Geography and History from the University of Granada. He has been a Senator (1979-93), a member of the Congress of Deputies (1993-2006) for the province of Granada and a member of the European Parliament (1986-87). As a foreign affairs expert, he chaired the Senate's Committee on Foreign Affairs and was Speaker of the Socialist Group in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Congress of Deputies. He was President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (2000-02) and Spanish Ambassador to Argentina (2007-12).

He has written numerous articles in journals and collective works on the conflict in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, European security and transatlantic relations, the EU-Mercosur partnership and public diplomacy. He was the first Spanish member of parliament to have a website (1996).

Read his personal blog at: http://rafaelestrella.es

Director of the Elcano Royal Institute since 28 March 2012.

Born in 1960 to an English father and a Spanish mother, Charles Powell read History and Modern Languages at Oxford University, where he later wrote a D. Phil. thesis on Spain’s transition to democracy. He was subsequently a Lecturer in History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the J. A. Pye Research Fellow at University College, Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, where he is currently a Member of the Senior Common Room.

From 1997 to 2000 he was deputy director of the European Studies programme of the Ortega y Gasset University Institute, and was later appointed deputy director of the Ortega y Gasset Foundation’s Spanish Centre for International Relations (CERI). In 2001 he joined the Elcano Royal Institute as Senior Analyst for Europe, and in 2004 he was appointed Deputy Director for Research and Analysis. Since 2001, he is also a professor in Contemporary History at the CEU San Pablo University (Madrid).

His recent published work on international affairs includes: ‘El amigo americano. España y EEUU de la dictadura a la democracia’ (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2011); ‘España en Europa, Europa en España’, in Emilio Lamo de Espinosa (ed.), ‘Europa después de Europa’ (Academia Europea de Ciencias y Artes, 2010); and (co-edited with Fernando Reinares) ‘Las democracias occidentales frente al terrorismo global’ (Editorial Ariel, 2008).

Since 2011, he is a member of the council of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

A trained expert in Commerce, he is a graduate of the Madrid School of Commerce. Throughout his professional life he has attended annual seminars on fiscal and budgetary matters of relevance to new developments in the private sector.

His professional career has developed in the private sector. From 1970 to 1975 he was administrative manager of the Iseco Group, with responsibility for financial and real estate investments. Between 1975 and 1998, he worked at the Incresa Group, where he was administrative manager in charge of financial investments and the balance sheets of four companies. More recently, between 1998 and 2001 he was manager of the Fortuny Clinic.