José Luis Sampedro

José Luis Sampedro Sáez (Barcelona, 1 February 1917 – Madrid, 8 April 2013) was a Spanish economist and writer who advocated an economy "more humane, more caring, able to help develop the dignity of peoples".

Academician of the Real Academia Española since 1990, he was the recipient of the Order of Arts and Letters of Spain, the Menéndez Pelayo International Prize (2010) and the Spanish Literature National Prize (2011). He became an inspiration for the anti-austerity movement in Spain.

Biography

In 1917, the year of his birth, his family moved to Tangier (Morocco), where he lived until aged thirteen. In 1936, he was mobilized by the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War, fighting in an anarchist battalion. He spent the war serving variously in Catalonia, Guadalajara, Castilla-La Mancha, and Huete (Cuenca). After the war, he was again called up and served in the garrison of the Spanish enclave of Melilla in North Africa.

After the war, he obtained work as a customs officer in Santander before moving to Madrid, where, in 1944, he married Isabel Pellicer before completing his university studies in Economics in 1947, winning, in the process, the award of an "Extraordinary Prize".

Thereafter, he started working with a major Spanish financial institution at that moment, the Banco Exterior de España, whilst also teaching at the university. In 1955, he became the professor of Economic policy at the Complutense University of Madrid, which post he held until 1969, combining teaching with various positions in the Banco Exterior de España, where he reached the post of deputy general manager.