I have just finished a leadership class , and my son José-Otto calls me from Pamplona to tell me the news that Alejandro has just passed away suddenly. The last time I saw him in June, he convinced me that his sympathy would help him to continue to carry his own life on his own two feet. Memories and feelings run over in my head and heart. After praying to God at IESE's chapel to welcome his soul in heaven, I began to write a few lines that escape me, as subjective as they are true.

Although we had met briefly, in the spring of 1991 Alejandro proposed that I join Office of the Executive Council at the University of Navarra as University Secretary. Apparently, I fulfilled the requirement of coming from abroad, and a high dose of foolishness. After talking to him for a while in Madrid and then for a few hours on a trip to Pamplona, his ideas wrapped in his words and pushed by his personality dazzled me. Gone were my dreams of being a banker, or rather, a banker: thank God!

Letting myself go was "profitable", because I quickly knew that I had bet on the "solid", as my younger students say. Working for Alejandro meant not working, but contemplating the workings of the intelligence of a very intelligent boss; sharing the daily life of a good person, and a good person at that; but, above all, it was great fun because he wrapped the daily life with innovative and renovating touches, the fruit of his unique originality: he approached people and issues from the very beginning.

From him I learned the distinction between unscrupulous and pathetic people. The unconscionable tend to exercise authority without complexes or inhibitions, they are decisive and risky, they do not stop to think about the less pleasant effects that their behavior has on others, nor about the criticisms they arouse. They make decisions without complexes, and they are not shy about it. They solve many problems and feed many others. They are the inflated prototype of the effective person.

On the contrary, the pathetic are pained by the world (the etymology comes from the Greek verb, pathein, which means to suffer, to suffer) and tend to contemplate reality in all its rich complexity, which prevents them from deciding on simplified courses of action. The care for not hurting those they command can even overwhelm them. They are not good executors, but they have a natural capacity for reflection and the weighing of nuances, which is where the successes come from. They are more sensitive to criticism and are almost connaturally suspicious of what can go wrong. Incidentally, Alexander mastered the art of avoiding conflict. 

They know when to change, but they need an unwise person to do it. They have mastered the art of deciding to do nothing, which often yields substantial benefits of various kinds. However, they are not usually held up as a social example.

Alexander was a pathetic singular, with ideas replete with magnanimity, which infused him with audacity final.

At this point in the lines I have run over, I have smiled thinking, for example, of the perplexed Dean that recently came to us with "a bomb" and that we could no longer pass on to anyone; or in the preparation (Alejandro prepared everything thoroughly, so that it could then emerge spontaneously) of the important interview with Inés Artajo for El Diario de Navarra in which he would tell his plans for the coming years of the University, because Alejandro knew that the best Internal Communications is the external one; in so many Academic Acts where Navarra was dressed in academic and political gala, and in which it was noticeable that the whole university corporation was behind the President, as I have never noticed in any other business. And he was behind Chancellor.

The best version of Alexander, for me so great, however, I discovered in his regal attention (something that is well understood in the Old Kingdom) with Maria Teresa, MariAsun, Leonor, Carlos, or Pachi, to cite an innumerable sample .