My Job
I help companies understand how Brussels works, with a special emphasis on legislative procedures and the politics behind it all. I improve their positioning vis-à-vis EU institutions and, ideally I manage to promote their interests in the EU’s diverse regulatory output.
My Experience
I’ve been almost 18 years in Brussels representing business interests in different capacities and sectors. I opened the Brussels office of LLYC, the leading Spanish public affairs consultancy, in February 2024 and I have been the Secretary General of EU association EWABA since 2013. Before that I was a Senior Government Affairs Advisor at global law firm Mayer Brown (2011-2024). Before that I had quite fun stints at Brunswick Group, EBB and the European Commission’s Secretariat General.
My Specialisms
My Proudest Achievements
Brussels Lobbyist war stories here we go:
I guess I can’t avoid mentioning that time I facilitated a client adding three entire articles to a Commission proposal, actually prompting the Commission to even change the title of the Directive!
I must say that we had the perfect industry-wide proposition, benefiting all players across Member States and, quite rarely, with no negative consequences for other sectors or stakeholders. All of it backed by extensive raw data. The Commission bought it in full and the articles were mostly untouched by Parliament and Council…for a while afterwards I used to go to the Official Journal just to admire them.
My Education
- Law Degree – University of Oviedo (2006)
- Diploma in Legal Studies – Cardiff University (2005)
- MA in European Interdisciplinary Studies with major in EU Governance – College of Europe, Natolin campus. (2008)
My Languages
English, Spanish, French, Itañol.
My Interests outside work
I really like reading, watching movies, going to nice restaurants and travelling. I love Brussels’ antique shops and flea markets.
My Favourite Brussels anecdote
I had a meeting with a rapporteur to discuss a critical article in a Directive the week before the final trilogue. At that moment it was almost certain that the deal on that article was likely to be extremely adverse for my client. I had one last shot at trying to mitigate the situation.
The APA left me alone waiting outside of the MEP office and almost immediately I started hearing the MEP shouting. Shouting as in extremely angry and loud screaming, expletives… I swear I heard furniture crashing…
He kept shouting his lungs out for what seemed to be a very long time, for sure more than 5 minutes, and I was just both amazed at what was going on and feeling more and more hopeless because the guy was obviously so pissed off that I had no chances of convincing him of anything.
When he stopped shouting he asked me in right away and… he was just completely normal, smiling, charming, he actually looked quite amused. “Ohhh, these journalists” he said pointing towards the phone. We had a very good meeting and a week later we got a pretty solid damage control measure on that article, phew!