Tomas Allende y Garcia-Baxter

Tomas Allende y Garcia-Baxter was a Spanish businessman, lawyer and politician born in Madrid in 1920 to a prominent industrial family with agricultural interests, and dying in Madrid in 1987. He held the Ministry of Agriculture from 1969 to 1975, spanning four consecutive governments in the final years of Franco's rule, and used the post to reorganize the country's agrarian agencies, create the Institute for Agrarian Reform and Development known as IRYDA, and consolidate forestry and conservation bodies under one authority. After the transition to democracy he led the telephone company Telefonica as its president from 1976 to 1981.