Gabriel Tortella is Professor Emeritus of Economic History at the Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain. He received the King Juan Carlos Economics Prize in 1994, and has been President of the International Economic History Association, the Spanish Economic History Association, and Chairman of the Academic Council of the European Association for Banking and Financial History, Frankfurt. Among his many publications, recent books include The Development of Modern Spain, The Origins of the Twenty-First, with J. A. Consiglio and J. C. Martínez Oliva, Banking and Finance in the Mediterranean with Gloria Quiroga, Entrepreneurship and Growth (Palgrave, 2013), and with José Luis García Ruiz, Spanish Money and Banking (Palgrave, 2013).