Leadership in Times of Crisis: "Taking Action in Line with Our Values"

Cristina Cuesta, former director of the Miguel Ángel Blanco Foundation, kicked off the career series that the University of Navarra offers its students in Madrid, where she addressed the young people with the following message: “Sometimes we have to take the plunge, in keeping with our values and true to ourselves.”  

Cristina Cuesta was twenty years old and a journalism student when a cell of the terrorist group ETA murdered her father, Enrique Cuesta, who was then a regional manager for Telefónica in San Sebastián. “On that day, March 26, 1982, at three in the afternoon, my life changed forever,” she recalls. She put her studies on hold and began working, taking on her first leadership role. “I felt that I had been subjected to unjust suffering,” she continues. “There was a climate of victim-blaming and social isolation.” 

Four years later, Cristina noticed something was missing: the voices of the victims. She called for a message of peace: “I wanted society to take action, and the fact that a young victim came forward with a constructive, positive message—one that was so necessary at the time—caused quite a stir.” 

On the fourth anniversary of her father’s assassination, she wrote a letter in Diario Vasco: “Today, I am no braver.” Forty years later, during this gathering with young people, she read it again. “I had an idea and believed in it, and even though I was aware of the risks and didn’t know where it would lead me, my father no longer had a voice, and someone had to speak out for the values he stood for,” she explains.

During the session, he watched again the interview Mercedes Milá had conducted with him on TVE, in which he proposed the creation of an “Association for Peace” and following which he received more than five thousand letters. The call to action took the form of a group of twenty people who took to the streets after every ETA murder; years later, this would once again make him a target of the group and force him to leave his homeland.

It was when she began a new chapter in Madrid that she started working at the Miguel Ángel Blanco Foundation, where “I had the opportunity and the good fortune to serve as a symbol for the victims of terrorism, because Miguel Ángel Blanco represents all the victims, and to help preserve and pass on to future generations who he was and what he stands for.” With that in mind, he encouraged the students to work on “what you’re passionate about, something that connects with your true self and your talent.”

At this point, Cristina emphasized the importance of self-awareness and purpose, as well as acting with consistency, calmness, and perseverance: “The brain is wired to protect us, which is why it’s good to step back, rise above the problems that arise, and keep moving forward—even if we don’t always fully understand why. We have to invest in ourselves and forge our own path, even if it isn’t the standard one. Ask yourself what you want out of life and how you’re going to make it happen.”