Pedro Solbes Mira

Pedro Solbes Mira     (economist)
Born	1942-08-31 Pinoso, Alicante, Spain
Nationality	Spanish
Alma mater	Complutense University of Madrid
Spouse	Pilar Castro
Party	Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
Spanish economist who attended the 1999 and 2009 Bilderbergs  Deputy Prime Minister of Spain In office 18 April 2004 - 7 April 2009 Preceded by Rodrigo de Rato Figaredo  Spain/Minister of Economy and Finance In office 18 April 2004 - 7 April 2009 Preceded by Rodrigo de Rato Figaredo  European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs In office 16 September 1999 - 10 April 2004  Spain/Minister of Economy and Finance In office 13 July 1993 - 5 May 1996 Succeeded by Rodrigo de Rato Figaredo

Pedro Solbes Mira is a Spanish economist. He attended the 1999 Bilderberg as European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, and the 2009 Bilderberg after leaving as Spanish Minister of Economy and Finance.

Career

While independent in the sense of not affiliated to any party, his various ministerial roles in Spain have always been within Socialist Workers' Party cabinets. Since 1985 to 1991, he was the 3rd Secretary of State for the European Communities. He was agriculture and fisheries minister (1991–1993) and finance minister (1993–1996) in Felipe Gonzalez's cabinets, also MP representing Alicante for the same party until 1999.

Appointed by Spanish premier José María Aznar (of the main competing party, the People's Party) Solbes was a European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs in the European Commission presided by Romano Prodi (the Prodi Commission).

Then Solbes was second vice president and minister of economy and finance in the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero which he held from 2004 to 2009.

At the beginning of the summer of 2007, Solbes announced that he had decided to large amounts of gold from the reserves of the Bank of Spain in order to "improve the profitability of its assets": that is, with the sale of that gold, then proceed to make investments in bonds and currencies of foreign countries. He maintained that this gold was no longer profitable due to its low price in international markets. A year after these operations began, gold reached the price of 1,000 dollars per ounce, its historical maximum. By 2008, Spain had lost more than 1,500 million euros because of this operation.

After politics

At the beginning of April 2011, Pedro Solbes was appointed member of the board of directors of the Italian electricity company Enel, owner of Endesa.

As of May 2011, he worked as an adviser and counselor for Barclays bank.

Mira was president of FRIDE, Madrid-based think tank founded by Diego Hidalgo, who is also the founding member of the Club of Rome. The think tank closed in 2015.

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1999	3 June 1999	6 June 1999	Portugal Sintra	The 47th Bilderberg, 111 participants
Bilderberg/2009	14 May 2009	17 May 2009	Greece Vouliagmeni	The 57th Bilderberg

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