Events

When territories are left behind: responses from a new economy

Paul Collier and Jose Ignacio Torreblanca

On 27 October 2025, the Rafael del Pino Foundation is organising the dialogue "When territories are left behind: responses from a new economy", with the participation of Paul Collier and Jose Ignacio Torreblanca.

Sir Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He is also the Oxford academic director of the International Growth Centre, a collaboration between the LSE and Oxford Universities. Paul is also a board member of the Natural Resource Governance Institute and his work on natural resource management includes the book The Plundered Planet: How to reconcile prosperity with nature; he has also co-edited a companion book, Plundered Nations? In The Future of Capitalism: facing the new anxieties (2017) and Greed is Dead (2020), co-authored with Professor Sir John Kay, he criticises the misdirection of public policy and private enterprise, which has led to avoidable polarisation and the decline of poor regions such as southern Italy. He advises local and national governments on practical ways of regional renewal. His book Left Behind (published in Britain, the United States and Germany) draws on successful examples from around the world.

Dr. José-Ignacio Torreblanca is a senior advisor to the Madrid Office and a distinguished member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). He is currently a full professor at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Madrid, where he teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on the EU political system and the EU as an international actor. He has been a Fulbright scholar at George Washington University (GWU) in Washington D.C. and a postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. He has published extensively on EU politics and EU foreign policy, including a book on eastward enlargement (The Reuniting of Europe: Promises, Negotiations and Compromises. Ashgate, 2001), another on the EU and the financial crisis of 2008-2011 (Who Rules Europe: Rebuilding Democracy, Reclaiming Citizenship? Catarata, 2014) and another on EU foreign and security policy (La fragmentación del poder europeo, Icaria 2011). He has also published on the politics of populism, including a book on the rise of the Podemos party in Spain (Asaltar los cielos: Podemos o la política después de la crisis, Debate, 2015) and the rise of the Spanish far right ("¿Ha llegado Vox para quedarse?: la sorpresa Vox", Deusto, 2019).In his latest work, he has focused on the geopolitics of technology, where he has led several research projects focusing on EU external digital policies, including the EU-Latin America and the Caribbean Digital Alliance. In addition to several reports and policy commentaries with the ECFR, he has published a book on Europe's digital sovereignty (Europe's Digital Sovereignty, with Carla Hobbs, Catarata, 2020) and an article on 'Social networks and democracy: problems and dilemmas of regulating the digital ecosystem' (Siyasal Journal of Political Sciences, 2023). As an expert on disinformation, he has collaborated with the Working Group of the National Security Directorate on Disinformation Campaigns of the Presidency of the Government and has given oral testimony on disinformation and foreign interference before the Joint Commission on National Security of the Spanish Congress and Senate of the Spanish Parliament. He runs a weekly column in EL MUNDO entitled 'Café Steiner' and is a weekly contributor to RNE (Radio Nacional de España). Previously, he was editorial director of the newspaper EL PAÍS, where he wrote a weekly column and a blog for ten years.

Translation made with the free version of the translator DeepL.com

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