Secretary of State for Culture of the Spanish Government

José María
Lassalle

Spanish politician and writer who has crossed several public and private Spanish universities in his academic path. He has served as Secretary of State for Culture in the Ministry of Culture of the Spanish Government since 2011. He has written for several media outlets (ABC, El País, Cadena SER). Lassale earned a Ph. D. in Law from the University of Cantabria in 1999. From 2002 to 2003, he was scientific coordinator of the Centre for Hispanic and Ibero-American Studies and director of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s Carolina Foundation. From 2004 to 2012, he was an MP for Cantabria in the Spanish Cortes. From 2004 to 2008, he was professor of Compared Political Systems at CEU San Pablo University, Madrid. Between 2008 and 2012 he was a professor at King Juan Carlos University, Madrid, where he initially taught History of Ideas and Institutions and later Philosophy of Law. He considers himself a liberal, above any political or ideological orientation, which he deems to be essential for one to overcome the current crisis. That iss why, in his book Liberales, he wrote: “facing the biggest crisis of the last decades we have to restore virtues and values, a task for which the liberals are better equipped than everybody else…”