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BANKER

His first jobs

Although he had been a good student and completed his university studies, earning a bachelor’s and a doctoral degree and thesis, it did not seem that Luis Valls wanted to pursue a career as a university professor or researcher, as his father had done. In spite this, after finishing his doctorate, he joined the Complutense University of Madrid as an assistant in the Political Economy department, whose chair was held by José María Zumalacárregui, with Federico Silva Muñoz and Enrique Fuentes Quintana. In that same year (1952), José María Albareda, a close friend of his father and a decisive authority at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), appointed Luis Valls as the deputy head of publications, effectively entrusting him with the management of an important publishing company. He worked there until 1956 when he was in the process of entering Banco Popular.

On the Council of Don Juan de Borbón

“In the sixties (specifically, from 1962), he joined the private council of Don Juan de Borbón,” recalls journalist Fernando González Urbaneja 1, who explains: “This connection to the legitimist monarchists came about curiously, and was the result of Luis Valls’ participation in a commission of notables created to collect popular funds for a gift to Prince Juan Carlos on the occasion of his wedding. Luis Valls had met Don Juan in Rome during the early days of the Civil War, when his father, Fernando Valls, accompanied and taught the heir to Alfonso XIII.” It should be noted that during the Roman exile of the Valls Taberner Arnó family, Luis’s father was briefly an advisor and professor of Catalan history and language to Don Juan de Borbón.

Attraction to Banking

Although he lived immersed in the academic and publishing world, Luis Valls’ genuine desire was to work in banking, and he spoke about it with enthusiasm despite not having the personal wealth that would make that dream feasible. This is how he explained his eagerness to enter the banking sector in those days: “Banking is perhaps the best and most varied sector to apply theoretical knowledge of political economy.” 2 And as the saying goes, persistence pays off; he managed to enter banking in 1956, introduced by one of his of his mother’s uncles who worked at Banco Popular.

Bibliography

(1) Interview by Fernando González Urbaneja with Luis Valls published in El País on December 5, 1976. (2) Interview by journalist José María Expósito with Luis Valls published on TVE in 1977.

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