HUMANIST
A great reader
For a voracious reader such as Luis Valls, and what’s more a Catalan, it is a twist of fate that 1926, the year of his birth, was also the year chosen by King Alfonso XII to launch the first edition of Book Day in Spain, the genesis of the current St. George’s Day, which is celebrated in Cataluña. Historical anecdotes aside, Valls was known to be a successful banker, but not everyone knows about his vocation as a journalist, and that he lived and worked among books. He had thousands of books.
Living Among Libraries
He bought books, gave books as gifts, lent books, and, of course, read books. He consulted them at all hours, in all his free moments, much like Napoleon Bonaparte, who travailed with a portable library of a thousand volumes. This made him happy and served to improve his profession: “Out of passion and, perhaps, because I inherited it from my father, I am among those who believe that reading is a noble adventure (…) If conversation is a pleasure of gods – as Plato would say – then reading is equivalent to conversing, to speaking with the author of what is written”, he expressed on one occasion, indicating that reading was also a fundamental part of his savoir faire at the helm of the world’s most profitable bank: “For those of us who are men of action, the adventure of reading becomes something fundamental, as it is not a pastime, but the nourishment and stimulus for our actions.”
Passion for the Fate of Empires
Luis Valls showed a great passion for history books, specifically in relation to the fate of great empires, where he found keys as to what should be done and what should not be done when success is achieved. Reading what Rostovtzeff’s reflections on the Roman Empire or how Kennedy analyzed the great powers or Madariaga the Spanish empire, stimulated him 2 : “Since I was a child, I have been interested in the phenomenon of the rise and fall of individuals, societies, and countries. This makes me attach great importance to books about upsurges and falls (…) I think that a permanent concern for times of crisis helps to avoid falls.”
His Favorite Books
In this same vein, Luis Valls’s passion for Machiavelli was notable 3 (“especially, Machiavelli as interpreted by Napoleon,” he specified). One of his favorite books was “Machiavelli: Lessons for Managers,” by the English author Anthony Jay, who applied the theories of the Florentine philosopher to business management. Other favorite works 4 included “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” by Baltasar Gracián, “Being There” by Jerzy Kosinski, “Fouché: The Man with Many Faces” by Stefan Zweig, the Old Testament, and, of course, everything written by Peter Drucker, the father of the modern corporation and, for him, a kind of guru.
Bibliography
(1) From the welcoming speech to guests and the press during the inauguration of the Beatriz Building on December 11, 1975. (2) In an article written by himself, titled Rise and Fall of Banking (published by El País on October 9, 1990). (3) Excerpt from the chapter “The Rebirth of the Leopard” from the book Portraits of Interior. The Human Side of Twenty Powerful Men (Temas de Hoy, 1994) by journalists Pilar Ferrer and Luisa Palma. (4) As collected by Luis Pérez-Sala in his compilation Documents>2 of Luis Valls Taberner (Fundación para Atenciones Sociales, 2007).
