Aim
The activities of the Cañada Blanch Centre and the Princesa de Asturias Chair at the LSE are structured around the general mission of the Fundación Cañada Blanch. This mission involves promoting social innovation through dialogue, transferring knowledge and values, and betting on talent.
The Centre is the vehicle to achieve the objective of the Fundación of developing and reinforcing the links between the United Kingdom and Spain. This is done by means of fostering cutting-edge knowledge generation and joint research projects between researchers in the United Kingdom, and at the LSE in particular, on the one hand, and Spain, on the other.
History
The Centre was created as part of the agreement signed by the Anglo-Spanish Cultural Foundation—founded by Vicente Cañada Blanch—and the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1993. The following year the LSE appointed Paul Preston, Príncipe de Asturias Professor, as Director of the Centre. From 2020, the new director of the Cañada Blanch Centre and holder of the Princesa de Asturias Chair is Professor Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Professor of Economic Geography, who has worked at the LSE since 1995.