Macarrón is one of the most outstanding Spanish portrait painters of the second half of the 20th century. In 1895 his family founded Casa Macarrón, one of Madrid's best known art supply stores. He began his training at the School of Arts and Crafts of Madrid and in 1942 joined the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando. At the age of just 20, he won the Duque de Alba Award at the Salón de Otoño ['Autumn Fair'] event in Madrid. In 1950 he moved to Paris thanks to a grant from the Institut Français. He later travelled widely in Europe to study the way in which light was used in Dutch painting and colour in Nordic art in Denmark and Norway. His first portrait was of painter Jaime Bustillo, painted in 1943, but his breakthrough as a painter of the European nobility came in 1962 with his portrait of Countess Christine Potocka. In 1967 he painted Queen Victoria Eugenie at her home in Lausanne. This was the first of a long series of portraits of members of the Spanish royal family. In Spain, a landmark in his career happened in 1974, when the Provincial Council of Barcelona commissioned him to paint the then Crown Prince Juan Carlos and Crown Princess Sofía. His portraits blend academic tradition in the drawing of faces and figures with colourful backgrounds where forms tend to dissolve. He was also commissioned by the British royal family to paint portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duchess of Kent, and was appointed a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London. He also painted landscapes, in a style reminiscent of Benjamín Palencia and Álvaro Delgado, and still-lifes.

He won a Third Place Medal at the National Fine Arts Exhibition of 1948, a Second Place Medal in 1957 and a First Place Medal in 1962, and was distinguished at the Hispano-American biennials of 1951, 1955 and 1959, winning the Hispanic Culture Award at the latter. In 1961 he won the National Award for Painting. His work has been shown frequently at a number of galleries in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, with one stand-out event being the major anthology at the La Villa Cultural Centre in Madrid in 2001.

Roberto Díaz

José María López de Letona Núñez del Pino was a civil engineer, and worked in the private sector in the metal industry, in real estate and in film-making, all of which led to international contacts which enabled him to keep abreast of the status of industry in Europe, the USA and Japan and the problems involved in investing foreign capital in Spain.

In 1966 he was appointed Assistant Commissioner for the Economic and Social Development Plan for industry, and in 1969 he became Minister for Industry, a post that he held until 1974. His policy was to achieve strong, sustained expansion for the sector, within the scope of the development plans in place. On stepping down, he was appointed Chairman of Enpetrol, the national oil company. From August 1976 to March 1978, as Spain made the transition to democracy, he served as Governor of the Banco de España. During his mandate the bases were established for the setting up of two bodies that tackled the banking crises of the 1970s: the Deposit Guarantee Fund (1977) and the Banking Corporation (1978).

From then on, his career was linked to banking, especially to Banesto, where he served as Chair and CEO. He was co-founder with Rafael del Pino of the Circulo de Empresarios ['Entrepreneurs' Circle'], and in 2002 he became its Honorary Chair.

Paloma Gómez Pastor