Born in 1960, Charles Powell read History and Modern Languages at Oxford University, where he later wrote a D. Phil. thesis on Spain’s transition to democracy under Sir Raymond Carr. He was subsequently Junior Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, Lecturer in History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and J. A. Pye Research Fellow at University College, Oxford.

In 1996 he joined the Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset in Madrid as director of its European Studies program. In early 2002 he moved to the recently created Real Instituto Elcano de Estudios Internacionales y Estratégicos, Spain’s leading international relations think-tank, of which he is currently Deputy Director.

Since September of that year he is also Associate Professor of Contemporary Spanish History at the Universidad CEU San Pablo (Madrid).His published work includes El piloto del cambio (Planeta, 1991), a study of the role of the king and the monarchy in Spain’s transition to democracy, the biography Juan Carlos of Spain. Self-made monarch (Macmillan, 1996), España en Democracia, 1975-2000 (Plaza & Janes, 2001), a general history of Spain since Franco’s death, and (with Juan Carlos Jiménez), Del autoritarismo a la democracia. Estudios de política exterior española (Silex, 2007). More recently, he has published extensively on Spanish foreign policy and Spain’s role in the European Union.