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

Luis Coronel de Palma was a civil-law notary and a state's attorney. He was one of the team that worked with Mariano Navarro Rubio in setting up the Stabilisation Plan. In 1957 he became Head of the Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks (CECA) when the main role of such banks was shifting towards the financial economy. In 1962 he was also appointed Director General of the Institute of Savings Banks (ICCA) when it became a public body and was given the remit of political scrutiny and inspection of savings banks. From 1970 to 1976 he served as Governor of the Banco de España. During his mandate he had to tackle inflationary stresses arising from the financial needs of development plans, exacerbated by the hike in energy prices that came with the oil crisis. He handled the takeover of the IEME (Spanish Foreign Currency Institute) by the Banco de España in order to integrate the drawing up of both domestic and foreign monetary policy. Given the difficulties of the time, the Studies Unit was restructured in 1971 under the direction of Luis Ángel Rojo. He stepped down in 1976. In 1977 Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez appointed him as Ambassador to Mexico. He remained Director General of the CECA until 1983, became a senior judge at the Administrative Court of the Banco Interamericano, a director of the Banco Central and Deputy Chair of Banco Central Hispano, the bank formed when the Central merged with the Hispano. He also held high-ranking posts at private companies and was a member of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation and of various cultural organisations.

Paloma Gómez Pastor