Former Telefónica Chairman César Alierta Dies at 78

Alierta, the chairman who expanded Telefónica and its debt

Can you lead Spain's largest multinational while embodying everything criticized about its business elite? César Alierta, former chairman of Telefónica, died in Zaragoza at 78 due to complications from a respiratory illness. The news emerged, was retracted, and then confirmed within hours. Alierta steered the operator from July 2000 to April 2016, having previously chaired Tabacalera (the state tobacco monopoly) and headed the Business Council for Competitiveness. His legacy has enthusiastic defenders and a long list of detractors.

From 68 million to 322 million customers

Between his arrival as chairman in July 2000 and his departure in April 2016, Telefónica grew from 68 million customers to more than 322 million, becoming the country's largest multinational with operations in over 20 countries. Internationalization was the core of his mandate: if more than half of revenues came from outside Spain in 2000, that proportion reached 75% by 2015. The acquisition of BellSouth assets in Latin America in 2004 and 2005, along with his first venture into Chinese telecommunications, marked this roadmap.

The current company president, José María Álvarez-Pallete, acknowledged the "affection and admiration" of the entire organization and named him an honorary Telefónica member: "You have received so many awards during your career that we decided to give you one you created yourself when you started merging the real with the digital," he said. A tribute tinged with premature farewell.

What was the Tabacalera case?

The Tabacalera case was the legal dispute in which the Madrid Provincial Court found evidence of insider trading attributed to the businessman and his nephew, only to acquit them later by accepting the statute of limitations had expired. There was never a final conviction, but the stain resurfaces whenever his biography is reviewed. Alierta had chaired the company between 1991 and 1996, a period during which the merger of the former state-owned enterprise with Altadis was completed.

This episode fuels the most repeated thesis about his profile: that of a manager whose main asset was connections with political and economic power. Opposing this is the classic defense: the courts did not convict him, and under his leadership the operator became a global giant. Both things are true simultaneously, and that is the problem.

The debt that weighed on the balance sheet

Here begins the uncomfortable part. One school of analysis argues that this growth was built on colossal debt and that the inherited liabilities constrained the company for decades. The fundamental criticism is that the increase in customers and international presence did not translate into equivalent value for shareholders.

Against the €32.51 highs some attribute to Juan Villalonga's tenure, the share price fell to around three euros, and there isn't even agreement on who holds the record. The 2002 decision, when Alierta admitted that UMTS licenses paid during the tech bubble had lost their assumed value and cleaned up the balance sheet, is cited both as an example of accounting honesty and as a late adjustment.

The Google levy and the digital bet

His last major public act was the José Echegaray award gala in April 2022, where he argued that "humanity's future lies in digitization." He recalled that in 2010 he convened the operator's executive committee to create a digital unit: "The committee looked at me strangely; I think they thought I was crazy. When we started, we had no idea, but you learn through mistakes."

Among his most cited ideas was the desire to charge Google a fee for using its networks to generate profit. This notion, eccentric at the time, anticipated a regulatory debate still open worldwide. He also chaired the Fundación Telefónica after his replacement and, since 2020, focused his personal activity on developing education for disadvantaged minors.

The correction and two deaths on the same day

The information confusion was notable. A retraction certified that the businessman was still alive, according to sources close to him, and hours later the version flipped again. The episode, immediately turned into gossip, gave rise to the nickname of the Ibex's Schrödinger's cat: alive and dead at the same time. In parallel, a text circulating in company circles contrasted official tributes with the fatal accident of a worker from a Telefónica subcontractor who, according to that account, fell from a pole in Chinchón (Madrid).

It was not the first time his health made headlines. In the summer of 2020, he survived a cardiac arrest that kept him in an induced coma, in addition to other previous cardiovascular episodes resolved with interventions to clear coronary arteries. According to his circle, he recovered fully from that.

He leaves behind a company present in more than 20 countries with 322 million customers, and a résumé that his successors claim without nuance. Two contradictory versions of the same death in just a few hours for a man who boasted of anticipating the future. Schrödinger's cat was, at least, a thought experiment.