The rivers of ink that have run in the press, the bile poured into political gossip and the memes that have circulated on social networks due to the controversial signing of contrast with the levels of popularity that the former political leader of the PSOE gathers in the classrooms.
In them he has been for more than three decades a professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences as a professor of Macroeconomics at four universities through which the journalist Ana Pastor or the current Government delegate in Madrid, Mercedes González, have passed as students.
The media image of the former politician, business manager, entrepreneur, pilot, Air Force lieutenant and television talk show host has engulfed part of the profile of the economist, professor and manager. These last three are the occupations to which the versatile Carmona has dedicated 90% of his professional activity and the least known by the audience.
Carmona spent his childhood in the Madrid neighborhood of Malasaña in a house that was once frequented by his grandfather’s friends, such as Ramón del Valle-Inclán and Jacinto Benavente, and which was full of books. A library that his father would not fail to swell after his return from the US and Cuba, where he coincided with Ernest Hemingway and where he emigrated after the Civil War. His vocation for the business world began at the age of five between visits to his family’s lamp and furniture factory and math classes that would lead him to be appointed secretary of the company’s board of directors at the age of 18.
His profile as an economist, teacher and manager is the least known by the audience
Shortly after, at the age of 20, he published his first article on economics in a national newspaper, which would be followed by a series of reports from Northern Ireland in the midst of the conflict with the IRA, from the Sahara on the representatives of the Polisario Front and Libya, where he met with Muammar Gaddafi, with whom he paid for his studies.
After graduating and obtaining a doctorate from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) with an Extraordinary Award, he began teaching in the same Department of Economic Structure that José Luis Sampedro, Javier Morillas or Rafael Martínez-Cortiña passed through.
Disciple of Rafael Tamames together with Fernando Becker –who currently works in the electric company–, Santos Ruesga, Antonio Franco and José Manuel Revuelta. A group that today continues to meet every three months for dinner.
Also dating from this time is his friendship with , which he has never hidden, and his interest in nuclear energy, which led him to graduate in Energy Policy and Energy Didactics at the Atomic Forum.
US experience
Through an agreement with the prestigious University of California at Berkeley – the center that has trained the most Nobel Prize winners for society – he taught outreach classes at this center. There he rubbed shoulders with renowned economists of the stature of Nathan Rosemberg, Joseph Shapiro and David Mowery, who sowed in him the seed of economic analysis. As a result of these meetings he began to write his doctoral thesis on technological innovation and economic growth, from whose works he published his first book, Economy and Innovation, which is part of the United States Library of Congress.
Executive of numerous companies, he began his life in management as deputy director of marketing for Grupo 16 when he was only 25 years old and since then he has been an investment and investment fund analyst, director of Caja Madrid, advisor and start-up entrepreneur. Jobs that he has combined with teaching until now, which he will dedicate himself fully to.
He is president of the Association of Friends of Spain-China, the only one recognized by Beijing
In the background, his hobbies. Few people know that he has pretended to be an idol of the air. Like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, he takes to the skies because his restlessness led him to become a private pilot and a lieutenant in the Air Force.
And his best-known face, politics, of which he has been a part since he joined the Socialist Youth in 1979 and the PSOE in 1986. As a regional deputy, he led the denunciation, together with Tomás González, of the corruption of Ignacio González and Francisco Granados of the PP from Madrid. He was also a candidate for mayor of Madrid in 2015 and a member of the Federal Committee of the PSOE, but he never held a management position in the Administration. Since March 2019 he has left the political front line to be a grassroots militant.
Yes, he is president of the Spanish Association of Technological Singularity, he is also at the head of the Spain-China Friends Association (the only one officially recognized by the Chinese Government), and of the Social Democratic Foundation.
Time will tell which of all these facets he will be remembered for and whether or not this vast curriculum was enough to face his new career after the ethical controversy that the appointment has sparked.
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