Manuel Valdés Colón de Carvajal (Prom.1) studied Industrial Engineering at the Bilbao School of Engineering. He also has several postgraduate courses and is a customs agent. He has taught "la Nocturna" at Gaztelueta and a master's degree at the Instituto de Empresa and in the School of Civil Engineering of Madrid.
He began his professional career at the age of 24 in industrial companies and later moved to Madrid to work in the world of exports. In 1986 he joined the team of BBVA and after 19 years there he retired. Two years later, in 2007, together with three other professionals and friends, he created Globaltec Developments and Engineeringwhere he is Vice-President. In his eighty-third year well accomplishedHe says that he will continue with the same enthusiasm with which he started 59 years ago.
He married his lifelong girlfriend, Maite Guinea Arroyo, and they had six children. Maite died 30 years ago and left in his hands his best legacy: his family. He has 12 grandchildren, one of them married, so he hopes to be a great-grandfather very soon. "We fought hard to move this family forward. She was always and still is the bastion of this family".
Like many of his schoolmates and friends at the time, he has always loved sport. He was a good horseman, swimmer and athlete. He also always liked reading, a hobby that was instilled in him by the teachers of those days, such as Jesús Urteaga and José Luis Gonzalez Simancas and, in general, by all those who formed part of the teaching staff.
"I believe that my whole life has been marked by the years I spent in Gaztelueta, with concepts and values that have been present in my daily life and others that have been dormant inside me, but that have emerged when necessary, sometimes many decades later. I have always been attracted to what Jesús Urteaga wrote in his book "The Divine Value of the Human", which has a lot to do with "Be our yes, yes and be our no, no". The value of the word given and of the commitment acquired. The value of friendship, honesty and hard work. What really matters; family, friends, work and in general, trying to be a real man and a good Christian. This is the inheritance I received in Gaztelueta and which I would like to have been able to pass on to my children.".
