Margarita Asuar, new Managing Director of the ENAIRE Foundation

At its meeting yesterday, the Board of Trustees of the ENAIRE Foundation appointed Margaret Asuar Jiménez as Managing Director.

Margarita Asuar has a bachelor's degree in Law and a postgraduate degree in Museum and Exhibition Curatorship. She worked as a lawyer for more than twenty years in multiple areas, from liberal practice to specialised legal counsel to public administrations and bodies (town halls of Seville, Rota, Estepa, Council of Zaragoza). She has been the Managing Director of the Old Quarter, Coordinator of Housing and Roads for the Regional Government of Andalusia, and a councilor on the Andalusia Advisory Board.

She has also combined her profession as a lawyer with her activity as a cultural manager and art curator. Between 2011 and 2023, she curated more than 50 contemporary, individual and collective art exhibitions involving over 200 artists. Notable among them is the exhibition of early-20th century prints and the exhibition “Grabado en nuestro memoria” (Etched in Our Memory), dedicated to the social activism of Spanish artists (Juan Genovés, Martín Chirino, Eduardo Arroyo, Josep Guinovart, Agustín Ibarola, etc.) during the dictatorship and early Transition.

She also curated exhibitions such as the “Otras Meninas y Más Meninas” (Other Meninas and More Meninas) collective in Seville in the Parliament of Andalusia, featuring some fifty artists.

As an art curator, she has transformed multiple venues into museums, she has extensive knowledge of museography, and she promotes the democratisation of art in line with what is known as “New museology” (initially theorised by Rivièreen 1968), always highly mindful of the visiting public for whom exhibitions are intended.    

She has curated art exhibitions at the Cop25 Climate Summit in 2019, and in cities in Spain, including in Madrid, Seville, Cádiz, Zaragoza, and Valladolid, and others outside Spain in Paris and Hangzhou (China).  

The exhibitions she organised have been both in interior and exterior spaces, for example, the Plaza del Pilar in Zaragoza. Her exhibitions incorporate universal accessibility for blind people, featuring QRNavilens, and digital or virtual accessibility made with drones.   

She has also organised workshops in parallel with the exhibitions, and published art catalogues and educational material. Asuar told the Board that “for me, art is a universal language that transcends borders, it is a fundamental tool in shaping societies and people, it is aesthetics and values”. 

The legacy of Beatriz Montero de Espinosa

Margarita Asuar replaces Beatriz Montero de Espinosa, who led the ENAIRE Foundation since 2016. Over these almost eight years, the ENAIRE Foundation has expanded its programming and activities, modernised its administrative management and increased its cultural reach and institutional and public presence.

What stands out most from this period under the leadership of Montero de Espinosa is the opening of “Las Naves de Gamazo”, a cultural venue and the permanent headquarters of the ENAIRE Foundation in Santander, which has attained a social and cultural relevance of the highest order.

About ENAIRE Foundation

Is a cultural institution of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility that, in addition to managing, preserving and exhibiting the ENAIRE Collection of Contemporary Art, engages in a comprehensive annual programme of activities that focus on aeronautical art and culture. Notably, it is one of the institutions that currently provides the most support to photography through its annual prizes - which have become a benchmark for professional photographers - and by hosting exhibits.

It is the only foundation in Spain that combines the two seemingly disparate themes of art and aeronautical culture, bringing them together by undertaking a programme of activities that promote the study, research, knowledge and dissemination of aeronautical culture, integrating history and modernity to raise awareness of the world of aviation in our country.

The Naves de Gamazo are the first permanent home of the ENAIRE Collection of Contemporary Art, an example of collaboration between government agencies that was made possible thanks to the partnership and joint efforts of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, the Government of Cantabria, through the Office for Culture, Tourism and Sport, and the Port Authority of Santander, which share the operating expenses of the centre in order to ensure the present and future viability of this cultural project.

About ENAIRE

ENAIRE is the air navigation service provider in Spain.

As a company of the Ministry of Sustainable Transport and Mobility, it provides en route control services for all flights and overflights from five control centres in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Gran Canaria and Palma, as well as approach services to every airport in the country.

In addition, 46 airports receive communication, navigation and surveillance services from ENAIRE, which also maintains their air traffic control systems, and 21 of them, including the country's busiest airports, rely on its aerodrome air traffic control services.

ENAIRE is Europe's fourth largest air traffic manager and participates in the A6 Alliance, a coalition of air navigation providers responsible for over 80% of European air traffic, and which is seeking to modernise the air traffic management system. It is also a member of other international alliances promoting the Single European sky, such as SESAR Joint Undertaking, SESAR Deployment Manager, iTEC, CANSO and ICAO.

ENAIRE, as the responsible agency identified by the Ministry of Sustainable Transport and Mobility to implement the U-Space system in Spain, will, through its digital platform, provide the Common Information Services (CIS), which are essential to facilitate U-space services to drones and Urban Air Mobility in cooperation with local air traffic services, so that all types of aircraft can fly safely in the same airspace.

ENAIRE has received the highest score in Europe on the aviation safety key performance indicator for four years in a row. It has also been awarded the EFQM 500 Seal for its safe, efficient, innovative and sustainable management of air navigation services.