Eduardo González
The Board of Trustees of the Carolina Foundation met yesterday to appoint Érika Rodríguez Pinzón as the new director of the institution. She replaces José Antonio Sanahuja, who directed the foundation for more than five years.
The Carolina Foundation is a public-private institution for the promotion of cultural relations and cooperation between Spain and the countries of the Ibero-American Community of Nations, particularly in the scientific, cultural and higher education fields. Érika Rodríguez Pinzón is the sixth person to head the Foundation, after Daniel Sada (2000-2003), José María Lassalle (2003-2004), Rosa Conde (2004-2012), Jesús Andreu (2012-2018) and José Antonio Sanahuja (2018-2024).
The Board of Trustees is chaired honorably by the King. The meeting of the Board of Trustees took place at the Moncloa Complex and was attended by the first vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares; the Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu; the Minister of Economy, Commerce and Business, Carlos Body; and the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant.
Born in Bogotá in 1978, resident in Spain for twenty years and with dual Spanish and Colombian nationality, the new director is a sociologist (2001) and a doctor in International Relations from the Autonomous University of Madrid (2015) and a graduate in Law and Political Sciences from the Center for Political and Constitutional Studies of the Ministry of the Presidency of Spain (2006) and has been a visiting researcher at the Universities of Copenhagen, Carleton and National University of Colombia.
To date, she worked as an associate researcher at the Complutense Institute of International Studies and as a professor of Sociology of International Development at the same university. In addition, she is a special advisor to the High Representative of the European Union for relations with Latin America, among other duties.
For more than 20 years, Érika Rodríguez has served as a senior consultant in cooperation programs of numerous international organizations and development agencies, including FIIAPP, AECID, CAF Development Bank, UNODC, UNDP, OAS, OEI, SEGIB and the European Union, and has analyzed public policies and multilateral programs in more than twenty countries, specializing in the Latin American region.
Additionally, she has developed extensive experience as a “Latin Americanist” political analyst for various think tanks. She has written reports and analyzes for the Carolina Foundation, the Institute of Strategic Studies of the Spanish Army, the Alianza por Iberoamerica Business Council and the Elcano Royal Institute, among many others. In addition, she writes an opinion column in the newspaper El Español. She was also vice president and president of the NGO Alliance for Solidarity and patron of Action Aid International.
She ran in the 2016 municipal elections in Madrid in the ranks of the PSOE and finally obtained the position of councilor after occupying the position left vacant by Carlota Merchán to replace Pedro Sánchez in Congress, when the current President of the Government resigned as a MP hours before Mariano Rajoy’s investiture vote.
Between 2016 and 2019, Érika Rodríguez was a councilor of the Madrid City Council, spokesperson for Economy and Finance, vice president of the Social Services Commission, president of the Accounts and Contracting Supervision Commission and member of the Governing Council of the Tax Agency of Madrid.
In addition, the new director has been recognized in 2023 and 2024 as one of the leading women in the Top100 in Spain by MagasIn magazine, in the academic category; with the Medal of Merit from the Council of Bogotá in 2018 for her work in favor of equality and with the recognition of 10 Colombians in Spain in 2019. On a personal level, Érika Rodríguez Pinzón was married to Manuel de la Rocha, the head of affairs economics of Pedro Sánchez.
