Jesús Alfredo Ispizua Zuazua, professionally a civil servant of the Basque Government, currently holding the post of head of legal advice in the Directorate of Social Economy (Department of Labour and Employment), states, at the request of the interested party and for the purposes invoked by her, that he has known María José Anitua professionally during the performance of her duties as head of the legal advice area of the Directorate of Administrative Registers and Local Regime of the Department responsible for foundations (then Department of the Interior, Justice and Public Administration).
In this regard, it should be borne in mind that the Spanish constitution recognises the right of foundation for purposes of general interest, in accordance with the law, article 34.1. In the case of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (ACBC) it is currently, Law 9/2016, of 2 June, on Foundations of the Basque Country, article 1 of which defines the foundation as a private asset, permanently affected to the realisation of purposes of general interest.
The ACBC is responsible, among other functions, for the registration of those foundations to which it is applicable.
Amongst the acts subject to registration, the act of constitution is of special legal relevance. The formalisation of the constitutive act, its organic and functional design, as well as the specification of the activities to be carried out and the economic regime to which it is subject, – independently of the important tax effects derived from it – is usually complex for people who are willing to allocate private assets to general interest purposes; all the more so when multiple founders concur in the articulation of the same general interest. For this reason, the work of legal advisors is decisive for its legal formalisation.
In this sense, María José Anitua, in a specific case of particular complexity, and as a representative and legal advisor of private interests, has carried out an excellent professional activity, in my opinion, with singular professional expertise, bringing about its alignment and conjunction with the general interest, for its formal legal configuration as a foundation in accordance with the autonomous foundational regulations in force at the time.