Angel Ron

Angel Ron

Angel Ron doesn't like to think about the future. He's not anxious about it ? it's simply that the CEO of Banco Popular feels a banker should be focused on the here and now. "For years we've been proud to have no plan whatsoever," he says, "not even for the year ahead." As a concession to strategic planning, he now has a three-year plan but he won't look further ahead than that. The current strength of the economy makes it easy to forget how much Spain has changed and how quickly. As Angel Berenguer of the University of Alcalá de Henares in Madrid commented in the aftermath of last month's traumatic elections: " Spain is a very old country but a very young democracy."

Ron has lived through the end of a dictatorship, the assassination of a president, a failed coup, a banking crisis and an economic boom. On the day we met, Andalucian shipbuilders were demonstrating on the street outside, and the conversation was punctuated by angry shouts and firecrackers. A week later, there were explosions in Madrid and the reverberations were felt around the world.