Born in León in 1948, José María Fidalgo Velilla is a physician specialized in Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology, on leave from Hospital La Paz in Madrid, and ex-secretary general of Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO., Workers’ Commissions), a post in which he replaced Antonio Gutiérrez in 2000 and to which he was reelected in 2004. When his term ended in 2008, and driven by the Syndicate’s Health Federation, he and a group of experts created the Institute for Strategy and Good Governance of Health and Social Services (IEBUGS), which analyzes the prospects and problems of healthcare in terms of sustainability, rationalist, and governability.

The Instituto de Empresa (IE) Business School has recently tasked him to organize its ‘Foro Negocia’, a program intended to disseminate the values of conflict management.

As member of a commission gathered by Unespa that includes Rodrigo Rato, Juan Manuel Eguiagaray, Juan Chozas, Xavier Sala I Martin, and Víctor Pérez-Díaz, he has published an analysis of the challenges that the aging of the population poses for the welfare state.