Professor Alejandro Lorca Corróns has passed away 

An honorary professor and department chair at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and one of the pioneers in the study of Islamic finance in Spain, he passed away in Madrid on Thursday, July 8, 2021. Here at Casa Árabe, we mourn his loss and convey our most sincere condolences to his family and loved ones.

Alejandro Lorca Corróns (Paterna, Valencia, 1938-2021), Honorary Professor of Fundamentals of Economic Analysis and Jean Monnet Chair at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), passed away on Thursday, July 8, 2021. With a bachelor’s degree in Law from the University of Valencia and in Economics from the University of Barcelona (UB), he earned his Master’s degree from Northwestern University (Illinois) and then a PhD in Economics from UB.   

He was a professor and dean of the School of Economics at the University of Valencia and a professor at Harvard University, before “returning,” as he put it, to the UAM in 1976 (he had already been a professor in its early years, in 1968 when the school was located in Parque del Retiro, before moving to Cantoblanco) and became the second Dean of the School of Economics and Business at the University.   

Two of his main tasks as dean in that first period, as he told it, seem to have marked his career over the following decades: centralizing the department library collections into one single library, giving rise to the current Library of the School of Economics (named after him), and the establishment of relations with foreign universities, in Europe and the Americas, through the organization of exchange programs, research teams and inter-university meetings.

An expert in Mediterranean and Middle East geopolitics and geoeconomics, his international outreach was notable due to both his curiosity and the wide range of topics that interested him, as well as his passion for travel. In addition to Harvard, he was a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), Northwestern University, Florida State University and Ohio State University (USA), as well as a consultant to the European Union for the Middle East, International Trade and Mediterranean Agriculture.  

He therefore contributed to connecting the university with international research centers and projects in Europe and the United States, as well as North Africa and the Mediterranean, one of the three seas to which he would devote a large part of his work (see the book Tres poderes, tres mares, dos ríos (Three Powers, Three Seas, Two Rivers, published by Encuentro in 1996), which summarizes his geostrategic viewpoint).  As recalled by Professor Bernabé López García, a department chair and honorary professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the UAM, in a memo written a few days ago,  the Gredos Meetings that he inspired and encouraged in the 1980s contributed not only to consolidating Spanish-Maghrebi friendship, but also to strengthening ties with universities and experts from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.   

Being a good citizen of the Mediterranean, he was convinced of trade’s power as a tool for peace and development; in the nineties he would champion the Euro-Mediterranean project, taking part in the most important international networks and forums established in this arena, including Euromesco, Femise, Institute of Strategic and International Studies (IEEI) in Lisbon, as well as many others), while supporting dialogue between the two shores, as remembered too by Josep Maria Jordán Galduf, a professor of Applied Economics at the University of Valencia.   

His office was a gateway to the other worlds where he traveled regularly, to participate in conferences and scientific meetings of different kinds. From Module I, above the Library, which bears a plaque with his name, you would enter another world of functional, minimalist aesthetics in the UAM School of Economics, when crossing through the doorway of Office 303, which he occupied. It was a colorful space filled with plants, rugs and souvenirs from remote places, as well as books, many books, items and papers. We students who went in there always found support and advice and left with books, ideas and projects.  

When I decided to devote my final year project (now referred to as the “TFG”) to exploring what Islamic banking was all about, a banking system that I had heard did not charge interest, my project director at the time told me that I had better not, that there were no books on the subject. Somewhat disappointed, I discussed with my professor, Ángel Rodríguez García-Brazales, about Monetary Economics at UAM, and he suggested that I approach Professor Lorca. The professor was not only knowledgeable of the topic, but had actually begun working on it, and of course had books and papers about the subject, as a result of having attended the earliest courses arranged on the topic by the Islamic Foundation at Leicester, United Kingdom. These are books and folders of papers that he generously gave me so that I could get to work, with no further commitment. Thanks to him, not only was I able to do my final year project on a subject that interested me and ended up exciting me, but two years later we would publish the first book in Spanish on the subject together: La banca islámica sin intereses: elementos básicos (Interest-free Islamic Banking: Basic features, AECID, 1999). He helped me, like so many students who crossed that mysterious threshold of his office, to set our dreams in motion, to go out and find our place in the world.    

Professor Lorca was a pioneer in this field, as in so many others. At a time when International Relations studies did not exist in Spain and multidisciplinary studies were not in vogue, from the School of Economics and with the School of Philosophy, he supported the development of studies on migration, trade, energy and sustainable growth in the Mediterranean.  

Along with Professor Bernabé López, he founded the DEIM, the Doctoral Program in International Mediterranean Studies, which led to the creation of the International and Mediterranean Studies Workshop (TEIM) and the PhD program in Economics and International Relations (DERI), where many of the people who now work and research in the region would be trained and inspired.  

In conjunction with the Klein Institute for Economic Forecasting (UAM), in 1995, in the early days of the Internet (we still consulted statistical data on paper at the Documentation Center), he launched and directed the MEDINA Research Project (Mediterranean Documentation and Information Network Association), an online database containing economic, social and political information on the Arab countries in the Mediterranean.  

In 2001, he became a member of the Scientific Council of the Real Instituto Elcano, taking part in its work groups and in many publications on economics and energy in the Arab world and Mediterranean, always in close collaboration with Gonzalo Escribano, senior researcher and director of the Energy and Climate Change Program at Elcano, as well as a regular visitor to Office 303 at the time.  

Later he would also become a founding member of the UAM School of Economic Intelligence and International Relations (La_SEI) in 2014, president of its Scientific Committee and a professor in the Master’s degree program in Economic Intelligence.

These are just a few of the projects he embarked on. He ignored retirement and remained active until the very end. In recent years, at the Ateneo on Calle Prado in Madrid, he promoted the Tertumed discussion group, once again on the Mediterranean, that “conflictive, yet seductive cosmos of civilization that developed between the seas,” as Professor Victor Morales Lezcano, co-organizer of this initiative with Lorca, recalled. They invited the general director of Casa Árabe, Pedro Martínez-Avial, with whom they had already been in contact back in the days of the Spanish-Arab Institute of Culture.  

During his last week, as we have also been reminded by Bernabé López, he was one of those who signed the manifesto “For concord between Spain and Moroccan,” along with 300 other Spanish and Moroccan professors and intellectuals. This is the last example of his work up to the very end in favor of dialogue and understanding between the shores of the Mediterranean.  

Here at the Observatory of Islamic Finance in Spain, we are especially sad about his loss. It was Professor Lorca who put Professor Celia de Anca (IE) and me in contact when she was doing her thesis on Islamic and ethical investment funds, under the direction of Bernabé López, and I was working on the Medina project, thus initiating a years-long collaboration that would give rise to the Observatory we created in 2017, between Casa Árabe and the IE’s Spanish-Saudi Center for Islamic Economics and Finance (SCIEF). He participated in some of the initial meetings, though in recent years he came down to Madrid very little from his wonderful house in Tres Cantos (which was as filled with books as his office was). He was undoubtedly one of the predecessors of Islamic finance studies in Spain (along with José Collado Medina, a professor of Applied Economics and Economic History at UNED, also deceased ten years ago - see video of one of the first round tables on the subject recorded in 1997 on the UNED TV channel). He was one of the first people to take an interest in and explore the new approaches offered by Islamic economics and banking, bringing us closer and helping us to understand it, calmly, with intelligence and a critical viewpoint.   

Thank you, Professor, for so much. Rest in peace