Aspen España Fellows
Our Fellows share their experiences in Aspen.
What is Aspen Institute España for you?
Aspen España Fellows
Aspen Institute España selects each year from its network of Alumni those who have excelled during their participation at the seminars to become candidates for the Aspen España Fellows Program.
The Aspen Institute Alumni Network is an engaged community of people actively participating in our educational and policy studies events, providing important input for our activities, and helping sustain our mission to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues.
The creation of the Aspen Institute España Fellows Program joins the network of committed Aspen alumni with the mission of Aspen in Spain and offers its members the opportunity to join the international Network of Aspen. Aspen Fellows may be trained to become moderators of Aspen seminars and have access to other programs and seminars of The Aspen Institute. Thus, their role as representatives and ambassadors of Aspen España is encouraged.
Nacho Herrera
Director of Real Maestranza de Caballería de Ronda
Many forums have programs dedicated to leadership and dialogue. Aspen, uniquely, adds a third element to the mix, with its emphasis on action. This leads to an institutional focus on impact which has immense potential in its pragmatism when complemented by the approach described by Aspen's founder as “intended to help a leader gain access to his or her own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and more self-fulfilling.” Aspen's roots in the arts and humanities are important: the use of readings and theatre in seminars, for example, is tremendously powerful, with a lasting impact on participants. This potential for impact can, I am sure, secure Aspen a greater role in contributing to our society.
Miguel Herrero de Jaúregui
Professor, Greek Philology of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Conversing is necessary because the first thing that an Aspen España moderator says is that it is much more important to listen than to be thinking about what you are going to say. Conversation in Aspen España is also horizontal. Everyone participanting in the seminar contributes diverse perspectives and different interests, with the same texts serving as the common thread. It is also diachronic; it also feeds back into the people who wrote those texts and what they were thinking at the time. It is a conversation with many different dimensions that is never the same. Like a jazz orchestra that will never play the same song twice.
Álvaro Imbernón
Director, Strategy and Foresight Unit, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, EU and Cooperation
He is a political scientist specialized in European affairs and International Relations currently working at the Secretariat of State for the EU. He also teaches European integration and international political economy at Nebrija University and other educational institutions. He has recently served as an advisor on international and economic affairs at the Vice-Presidency of the Spanish Government and as a researcher on political risk and foresight at ESADEgeo. In the past, he has worked as a consultant in Belgium, Myanmar, and Japan and has collaborated with the United Nations University and pan-European think tanks such as the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and FEPS.
Santiago Ínsula
Head of People and CR at Zurich
José Ramón Iturriaga
Partner at Abante Asesores
How can it be that the shared review of more or less classic but current readings can provide so much enjoyment?
That is Aspen España to me. Huge enjoyment.
Come away with more questions than answers. A gift in the shape of time for oneself from which if not wiser, you do come out more open-minded.
And this, in these times, is tremendously valuable.
That is Aspen España to me. Huge enjoyment.
Come away with more questions than answers. A gift in the shape of time for oneself from which if not wiser, you do come out more open-minded.
And this, in these times, is tremendously valuable.
Lara Jiménez de Parga
Lecturer in Philosophy of Law at the University of Barcelona and Senior Design Researcher
Aspen is for me a space for reflection and dialogue that allows me to distance myself from everyday life and reconnect with my values. These are moments when I can stop and understand what the speed of everyday life only allows me to intuit. This connection with what matters most is produced by conversing with the text and with others, by recognizing myself in apparently foreign experiences and listening to ideas that are different from my own. When everything leads us to reinforce our beliefs, Aspen opens up a space in which to question them and remember that it is not about being right but about being able to think and live together.
Isabelle Le Galo Flores
Deputy Director for Spain, Fundación Daniel & Nina Carasso
For me, Aspen España is a place to imagine together and think without borders. There are few places with these characteristics and there has not been such an urgent moment to have them and take care of them. Through dialogue between our very diverse ways of understanding and feeling, we build together another vision of the world, richer and more common. It is a profound experience that transcends the cognitive biases of our individualities and that gives life to a germ of real cooperation between different people, entities and ideologies. And those are for me two masterpieces for solving the social and environmental challenges that our world faces today.
Ricardo López-Aranda
diplomat and current Spanish ambassador to Ukraine
Coexistence in democracy is based on dialogue. The deeper the dialogue, the richer the democracy and the more solid the coexistence. Aspen Institute España is for me that space for profound dialogue which is often lacking in Spanish society. A sort of island that, conversation by conversation, seminar by seminar, is becoming an archipelago of exchanges, with the vocation perhaps of being the seed of a continent of mutual respect.
Fiona Maharg-Bravo
Director, Brunswick Group
Aspen España is a rare forum that gathers open-minded people in various fields to discuss complex problems. These interactions challenge you to think differently with professionals that you might not ordinarily cross paths with. It’s a gift in an increasingly polarised society.
Guillermo Mariscal Anaya
Member of the Spanish Parliament (Popular Party)
Marta Martín Llaguno
Professor of Communication and Advertising at the University of Alicante
Aspen is a communication space in the truest sense of the term. A forum to share visions of the world and life. A pause in the "noise" of the information society for thinking, debating and learning from readings and from others. A space to study the past and analyze the present with the aim that dialogue and reason will leave as a legacy a good future based on democratic values.
Valentina Martínez Ferro
Member of the Spanish Parliament (Popular Party)
For me, Aspen is an exercise of boldness because nothing that is done in it is “in style” nowadays. It is a place where one can reflect out loud without being afraid of being right and, above all, of being mistaken. Where there is time to listen, and to talk over the 144 characters . It is a space to be challenged intellectually and respected personally. A space to meet people from different fields with the common interest to build and work towards having a better country. A great exercise of boldness of which I feel very proud to be part of.