Solidarity, successful man, business visionary, committed to his land - of which he was “the best ambassador” -, unrepeatable or a Zaragoza fan at heart who came to the rescue of the club of his loves when it needed it most. These are some of the aspects highlighted this Monday in Zaragoza by the participants in the tribute to businessman César Alierta, who died a month ago at the age of 78 in the Aragonese capital due to health problems.
About 800 people attended the event, which took place at the Congress Palace, including the main political figures of the community and the business, trade union and sports world of the country. Among them, names stood out such as the president of Real Madrid and the ACS group, Florentino Pérez; the president of Telefónica, José María Álvarez-Pallete; the leader of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi; or the Catalan chef Ferrán Adrià.
His words were rushed, “because his mind and his ideas were always ahead,” as his successor at the head of Telefónica recalled, Alierta was one of the most important Spanish personalities of recent decades, a time in which he rubbed shoulders with leaders internationals such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel or business leaders such as the founder of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg. “He was a great Spanish businessman who played a very important role in foreign investments in Brazil for trusting in the development of our country and boosting the Brazilian economy,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, current president of Brazil, said of him after learning of his death. of his friend".
At the event, which began with a minute of silence in support of the families of the civil guards who died in the line of duty in Barbate (Cádiz), several of the personalities who were close to him during his life spoke one by one. For Ferrán Adrià he was a “visionary”; Paralympic swimmer Teresa Perales described him as a unique, unrepeatable person and one of the most generous he has ever known; and the president of Real Madrid highlighted his solidarity. “He is one of the people who has marked me the most,” said Pérez.
The mayor of Zaragoza, Natalia Chueca, remembers the delivery of the city's Gold Medal in 2010 to Alierta for taking Telefónica to more than ten countries and contributing to Spain's international expansion.
For his part, Garamendi recalled that the father of the deceased businessman, Cesáreo Alierta, was mayor of the Aragonese capital and has a street dedicated to it, which is why he claimed for his recently deceased successor the name of a square or the new stadium of soccer. Not in vain, the businessman was a “pure Zaragoza fan” who, “at the worst moment in the club's history, risked his assets and used his network of contacts to lend a hand,” recalled the president of Real Zaragoza, Christian Lapetra.
The last to intervene was the Aragonese president, the popular Jorge Azcón, for whom Alierta has been “the most important figure in the recent history of Aragon.” The politician emphasized the businessman's passion for his land, his influence as a business leader and his contribution to social development with altruistic initiatives such as the Profuturo Foundation, which works for the digital literacy of thousands of children in Africa and Latin America. .
The event, in which there were also several musical performances, experienced one of its most emotional moments when Azcón gave the deceased's brothers the figure of an oak tree, present in the first barracks of the Aragon shield, as a sign of respect and gratitude.
