'Forbes' list of 'Most Influential Spaniards 2020': All female for the first time
31/01/2021
GAINING a foothold on the Forbes list usually means being a billionaire, although another method is becoming one of the most influential Spaniards of the year.
And for 2020, it seems this alone was not enough: You also have to be female.
For the first time ever, Forbes' 'Most Influential Spaniards of the Year' ranking is made up entirely of women – possibly in an attempt to redress the gender balance, given that on both the annual 'rich' and 'influential' lists, men tend to outnumber women quite significantly, or possibly because, in the compilers' view, the 25 names featured really were last year's most 'influential' Spaniards, and the single-gender nature of it was purely accidental.
Queen Letizia sits at number one – the rest are made up of eight politicians, six top-ranking company managers, five journalists, two gallery owners, a singer, a scientist and an activist.
The definition of 'influential' covers a multitude of sins, or virtues: Being a major icon in their field, significant achievements, or simply being one of most talked-about and read-about household names.
HRH Letizia ticks all these boxes; as a journalist and TV news reporter, she covered major events worldwide and, after her master's degree, spent several years working in Guadalajara, México, where she started – although did not finish – a PhD, and was already a familiar face on the late-evening TVE news before her engagement to the then Prince Felipe of Asturias was announced.
Since Princess Letizia became Queen Consort in 2014, she has been actively involved in charity patronage and representation, especially raising the profile of women and all manner of diversity, and promoting fashion and the arts – and bringing up two daughters, Leonor, now 15 and Sofía, who will be 14 in May.
Completing the podium are Ana Patricia Botín, chief executive officer of Banco Santander and described by Forbes as 'one of the most powerful and best-known women on the planet', and Madrid regional government president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, of the right-wing PP party, who is defined as 'one of the most-mentioned persons in political speeches'.
Other politicians
Forbes women in the political arena cover all party colours: Deputy president of the national government, Carmen Calvo, from the centre-left socialist (PSOE), minister for work and pensions Yolanda Díaz, from the leftist Podemos – which governs in coalition with the PSOE, national leader of centre-right party Ciudadanos, Inés Arrimadas, who took over from its creator Albert Rivera when he married prolific pop artist and The Voice coach Malú, State prosecutor Dolores Delgado, an expert in fundamentalist terrorism and partner of one-time human rights judge Baltasar Garzón, Secretary of State for digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, Carme Artigas, and also two city mayors.
One of these is ex-judge Manuela Carmena, who governed the capital on behalf of the local Podemos faction Ahora Madrid and has been highly praised by US actor Richard Gere for her humanitarian approach and her measures to support the homeless; the other is Ada Colau, now in her second term as mayoress of Barcelona for the local Podemos branch En Comú Podem, and who started out life as head activist for the anti-eviction and repossession campaign group Stop Desahucios.
These women are listed in descending order as they appear on the Forbes list.
Businesswomen
Behind Ana Botín, and again in descending order, come Eva Fernández, global communications manager for the national phone and internet corporation Telefónica; Hortensia Herrero, deputy chairwoman of Spain-wide supermarket chain Mercadona, wife of its founder Juan Roig and chair of her eponymous charitable foundation; Irene Cano, managing director for Facebook Spain and Portugal; Macarena Rey, chief executive officer for Shine Iberia and producer for cult reality TV show MasterChef; and Marta Ortega, product manager for Zara Woman – her father, Amancio Ortega, is founder of Zara and the rest of the Inditex fashion empire and Spain's richest resident, whilst Marta herself tries to stay out of the media but has a celebrity following: Her weddings, firstly to international showjumper Sergio Álvarez Moyá and then, more recently, to fashion designer Roberto Torretta's son Carlos, were well-documented in the glossy magazines, although the bride's own life story has been somewhat unstarry, having worked in Inditex shops worldwide from the bottom up, serving customers and folding clothes, to learn the business from its foundations before she one day takes over its running.
Media women
First of the ladies in TV and the press is Rosa María Mateo, chairwoman of Spanish Radio Television (RTVE), the country's answer to the BBC; next comes Ana Rosa Quintana, 65, who has been presenting news, chat shows, and magazine shows on most of the country's television channels and also radio slots since the end of the 1970s and, for the last 16 years, her eponymous El Programa de Ana Rosa, a morning magazine interviewing studio guests ranging from celebrities to members of the public with a personal story of social significance and carrying out on-screen investigative reporting.
Rosa Montero, 70, started out writing for national broadsheet El País and has since worked for and contributed to newspapers in Latin America, France, Germany, and the UK publication The Guardian, interviewing more than 2,000 high-profile names over the course of her career including Yasser Arafat, Ayatollah Homeini, Indira Gandhi, Richard Nixon, heroic Pakistani schoolgirl Malala, and Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar (author of Hopscotch). Nowadays, she is better known as a novelist herself, with household-name titles including Instructions for Saving the World, The Cannibal's Daughter, and Absent Love.
Àngels Barceló, 57, started her career writing news for Catalunya Ràdio and then as news presenter on regional station TV3, covering everything from the national and the US elections to the Gulf War via the signing of the Maastrich Treaty and Barcelona's winning the bid to host the 1992 Olympics. She has since worked for Telecinco and La Cuatro, for the radio station Cadena Ser, and now presents documentaries for Discovery Max.
Sandra Barneda, 45, has worked with most of the mainstream TV channels and also for Catalunya's regional radio stations, and in more recent years has presented Big Brother VIP: The Debate, Supervivientes, a celebrity-in-the-jungle reality shown, and currently, La Isla de las Tentaciones, Spain's answer to Love Island. She recently announced that she and her wife Nagore Robles, 37, were midway through fertility treatment to become mums, with Nagore due to carry a child conceived using Sandra's eggs.
Art and music
Elena Ochoa, 62, a psychologist by profession, founded the art-book publishing company Ivorypress which owns an art gallery and created the Faculty of Contemporary Art at Oxford University. She is an art commissioner and has been behind several well-known international exhibitions, including Blood on Paper at London's Victoria & Albert Museum and two Biennali in Venice, and is a member of the New York MoMA's Library Council.
Helga de Alvear is the first foreigner to appear on Forbes' 'Most Influential Spaniards' list – born in Germany but a long-term resident in Spain, Helga, née Müller, 85, is an art collector and dealer whose numerous decorations include the Greater Madrid region's International Arts Medal in 2020.
The third female in the 'arts' section is, of course, global pop sensation Rosalía – the 26-year-old from Barcelona, whose style has been described as flamenco-hip hop, is probably the most famous Spaniard in music of the 21st century and frequently in the entertainment news on both sides of the pond.
Women on a mission
Campaigning for causes and dedicating one's profession to making the world a better place have earned two women and their work a place in the Forbes list – Cruz Sánchez de Lara, 48, is a human rights lawyer who specialises in gender violence, as well as chairwoman of the Tribune for Human Rights, but also a glossy magazine household name because of her partner Pedro J. Ramírez, director of the newspaper El Español and husband, until 2016, of psychedelic clothing and accessories designer Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada; Dr María Blasco, 56, from Alicante, is head of the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), a molecular biologist who has won the Körber European Science Prize and EMBO Gold Medal for her vital work into telomeres – the part of the DNA which shortens through age, a process that accelerates when under environmental stress like trauma and poor lifestyle choices, and which is associated with 'acquired' disease.
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GAINING a foothold on the Forbes list usually means being a billionaire, although another method is becoming one of the most influential Spaniards of the year.
And for 2020, it seems this alone was not enough: You also have to be female.
For the first time ever, Forbes' 'Most Influential Spaniards of the Year' ranking is made up entirely of women – possibly in an attempt to redress the gender balance, given that on both the annual 'rich' and 'influential' lists, men tend to outnumber women quite significantly, or possibly because, in the compilers' view, the 25 names featured really were last year's most 'influential' Spaniards, and the single-gender nature of it was purely accidental.
Queen Letizia sits at number one – the rest are made up of eight politicians, six top-ranking company managers, five journalists, two gallery owners, a singer, a scientist and an activist.
The definition of 'influential' covers a multitude of sins, or virtues: Being a major icon in their field, significant achievements, or simply being one of most talked-about and read-about household names.
HRH Letizia ticks all these boxes; as a journalist and TV news reporter, she covered major events worldwide and, after her master's degree, spent several years working in Guadalajara, México, where she started – although did not finish – a PhD, and was already a familiar face on the late-evening TVE news before her engagement to the then Prince Felipe of Asturias was announced.
Since Princess Letizia became Queen Consort in 2014, she has been actively involved in charity patronage and representation, especially raising the profile of women and all manner of diversity, and promoting fashion and the arts – and bringing up two daughters, Leonor, now 15 and Sofía, who will be 14 in May.
Completing the podium are Ana Patricia Botín, chief executive officer of Banco Santander and described by Forbes as 'one of the most powerful and best-known women on the planet', and Madrid regional government president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, of the right-wing PP party, who is defined as 'one of the most-mentioned persons in political speeches'.
Other politicians
Forbes women in the political arena cover all party colours: Deputy president of the national government, Carmen Calvo, from the centre-left socialist (PSOE), minister for work and pensions Yolanda Díaz, from the leftist Podemos – which governs in coalition with the PSOE, national leader of centre-right party Ciudadanos, Inés Arrimadas, who took over from its creator Albert Rivera when he married prolific pop artist and The Voice coach Malú, State prosecutor Dolores Delgado, an expert in fundamentalist terrorism and partner of one-time human rights judge Baltasar Garzón, Secretary of State for digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, Carme Artigas, and also two city mayors.
One of these is ex-judge Manuela Carmena, who governed the capital on behalf of the local Podemos faction Ahora Madrid and has been highly praised by US actor Richard Gere for her humanitarian approach and her measures to support the homeless; the other is Ada Colau, now in her second term as mayoress of Barcelona for the local Podemos branch En Comú Podem, and who started out life as head activist for the anti-eviction and repossession campaign group Stop Desahucios.
These women are listed in descending order as they appear on the Forbes list.
Businesswomen
Behind Ana Botín, and again in descending order, come Eva Fernández, global communications manager for the national phone and internet corporation Telefónica; Hortensia Herrero, deputy chairwoman of Spain-wide supermarket chain Mercadona, wife of its founder Juan Roig and chair of her eponymous charitable foundation; Irene Cano, managing director for Facebook Spain and Portugal; Macarena Rey, chief executive officer for Shine Iberia and producer for cult reality TV show MasterChef; and Marta Ortega, product manager for Zara Woman – her father, Amancio Ortega, is founder of Zara and the rest of the Inditex fashion empire and Spain's richest resident, whilst Marta herself tries to stay out of the media but has a celebrity following: Her weddings, firstly to international showjumper Sergio Álvarez Moyá and then, more recently, to fashion designer Roberto Torretta's son Carlos, were well-documented in the glossy magazines, although the bride's own life story has been somewhat unstarry, having worked in Inditex shops worldwide from the bottom up, serving customers and folding clothes, to learn the business from its foundations before she one day takes over its running.
Media women
First of the ladies in TV and the press is Rosa María Mateo, chairwoman of Spanish Radio Television (RTVE), the country's answer to the BBC; next comes Ana Rosa Quintana, 65, who has been presenting news, chat shows, and magazine shows on most of the country's television channels and also radio slots since the end of the 1970s and, for the last 16 years, her eponymous El Programa de Ana Rosa, a morning magazine interviewing studio guests ranging from celebrities to members of the public with a personal story of social significance and carrying out on-screen investigative reporting.
Rosa Montero, 70, started out writing for national broadsheet El País and has since worked for and contributed to newspapers in Latin America, France, Germany, and the UK publication The Guardian, interviewing more than 2,000 high-profile names over the course of her career including Yasser Arafat, Ayatollah Homeini, Indira Gandhi, Richard Nixon, heroic Pakistani schoolgirl Malala, and Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar (author of Hopscotch). Nowadays, she is better known as a novelist herself, with household-name titles including Instructions for Saving the World, The Cannibal's Daughter, and Absent Love.
Àngels Barceló, 57, started her career writing news for Catalunya Ràdio and then as news presenter on regional station TV3, covering everything from the national and the US elections to the Gulf War via the signing of the Maastrich Treaty and Barcelona's winning the bid to host the 1992 Olympics. She has since worked for Telecinco and La Cuatro, for the radio station Cadena Ser, and now presents documentaries for Discovery Max.
Sandra Barneda, 45, has worked with most of the mainstream TV channels and also for Catalunya's regional radio stations, and in more recent years has presented Big Brother VIP: The Debate, Supervivientes, a celebrity-in-the-jungle reality shown, and currently, La Isla de las Tentaciones, Spain's answer to Love Island. She recently announced that she and her wife Nagore Robles, 37, were midway through fertility treatment to become mums, with Nagore due to carry a child conceived using Sandra's eggs.
Art and music
Elena Ochoa, 62, a psychologist by profession, founded the art-book publishing company Ivorypress which owns an art gallery and created the Faculty of Contemporary Art at Oxford University. She is an art commissioner and has been behind several well-known international exhibitions, including Blood on Paper at London's Victoria & Albert Museum and two Biennali in Venice, and is a member of the New York MoMA's Library Council.
Helga de Alvear is the first foreigner to appear on Forbes' 'Most Influential Spaniards' list – born in Germany but a long-term resident in Spain, Helga, née Müller, 85, is an art collector and dealer whose numerous decorations include the Greater Madrid region's International Arts Medal in 2020.
The third female in the 'arts' section is, of course, global pop sensation Rosalía – the 26-year-old from Barcelona, whose style has been described as flamenco-hip hop, is probably the most famous Spaniard in music of the 21st century and frequently in the entertainment news on both sides of the pond.
Women on a mission
Campaigning for causes and dedicating one's profession to making the world a better place have earned two women and their work a place in the Forbes list – Cruz Sánchez de Lara, 48, is a human rights lawyer who specialises in gender violence, as well as chairwoman of the Tribune for Human Rights, but also a glossy magazine household name because of her partner Pedro J. Ramírez, director of the newspaper El Español and husband, until 2016, of psychedelic clothing and accessories designer Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada; Dr María Blasco, 56, from Alicante, is head of the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), a molecular biologist who has won the Körber European Science Prize and EMBO Gold Medal for her vital work into telomeres – the part of the DNA which shortens through age, a process that accelerates when under environmental stress like trauma and poor lifestyle choices, and which is associated with 'acquired' disease.