2023-04-21 09:05:48
The businessman from San Sebastián José María Ruiz Urchegui, who was general secretary of Adegi for more than 25 years, died this Thursday in San Sebastián at the age of 76, who had turned on the 10th. With his death, the figure of a a man whose career as head of the Gipuzkoan employers’ association was marked by his firm defense of the business fabric of Gipuzkoa.
His defense of this association led him to be on the target of ETA and suffer an attack with a sticky bomb under his car on June 19, 1996, in the San Sebastian neighborhood of Lorea, where his cousin, Santiago Leceta, who in At that time he was taking the car to the workshop since the then leader of the employers’ association was in Sweden at a congress, he lost both legs due to the serious injuries suffered. «That bomb was for me. I still blame myself », he assured in 2017 in an interview with this newspaper. Despite this, he always had the door of his office open to deal with threatened businessmen and victims of ETA extortion.
Married and father of five children -four girls and one boy-, Ruiz Urchegui left the management of Adegi in 2008 and has since moved away from the public spotlight. He only reappeared in October 2017, already with the final cessation of violence, in an institutional tribute to the Basque businessmen who suffered from terrorism and extortion. «The tribute was an outstanding debt. Now, with our work, businessmen have to continue achieving peace and the greatest social consensus, “he said at the time in his last interview with this newspaper.
Ruiz Urchegui was passionate about Germanic culture and numbers, but, above all, a firm defender of the Gipuzkoan company. He dedicated a large part of his life to her, since he arrived at the General Secretariat of Adegi in the early 1980s, as an assistant to Jesús Alberdi, from the Lesaka plant of Altos Hornos de Vizcaya.
ahead of its time
Beyond the resistance against ETA, the businessman from San Sebastián played a key role in the business world and was ahead of his time, since he was a staunch defender of innovation as a great promoter of the Gipuzkoan economy and the welfare state. Ruiz Urchegui polished his economist training in Germany, a country he knew and admired. This is perhaps why he always emphasized perseverance and the spirit of work as two of the pillars that the Gipuzkoan business fabric should never lose sight of.
The deceased also led the process of accompanying the Gipuzkoan company during the difficult years of industrial reconversion. His career at the helm of Adegi ended in 2008 and the then president of the business association, Eduardo Zubiaurre, replaced him with the current occupant of the position, José Miguel Ayerza, in what meant a generational change at the helm of the Gipuzkoan business association. .
In 2010, a year before ETA announced the definitive cessation of armed activity, although the indefinite truce was already in force, Ruiz-Urchegui resigned from the escort that accompanied him for more than a decade, in an act of recovery of freedom that was deprived of a good part of his career.
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