José Vicente de los Mozos during an act of recognition held in Valladolid, after leaving the management of the Renault automobile company after 43 years. Nacho Gallego Méndez-Galán (EFE)
“I still don’t think about retirement,” José Vicente de los Mozos, at the time president of Renault Spain and industrial director of the group worldwide, had assured on December 2, when it was already known that he was leaving his positions in the automobile industry. French. He did so at an event in Seville surrounded by journalists, at the Renault Refactory, facilities designed to give used cars a second life. That day, the also president of the Ifema executive committee, already left a clue when he stated that his idea for the coming years was “not to work on the car.” His new professional destination will finally be at Indra, a technology company focused on growing in the Defense business, where he will hold the position of CEO, replacing Ignacio Mataix.
De los Mozos (Sao Paulo, 1962) began his career in 1978 as an apprentice on the FASA-Renault assembly line in Valladolid (today, the people of Valladolid still call the car plant ‘FASA’). Aeronautical engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and with a master’s degree in Production Techniques from Cesem, De los Mozos developed his first professional decade in the automotive industry in Spain, until in 1993 when it was time for him to go to France to occupy various positions. of responsibility in the engineering department of Renault.
He returned to our country as head of the stamping department at the Valladolid body assembly plant, to later become head of the sheet metal and stamping department at the Palencia factory. In 2003, he joined Nissan Motor Ibérica in Barcelona as deputy industrial director, before being appointed director of Nissan Motor Ibérica in 2005. In the following years, De los Mozos gained responsibility in the Japanese company under the wing of the then CEO of Nissan. , Carlos Ghosn, who years later would be prosecuted by the Japanese courts for tax fraud. In 2006, De los Mozos became vice president in charge of Nissan’s industrial operations in Spain. Three years later, he was appointed Director of Body Manufacturing and Assembly of the Renault group, a responsibility that he assumed at the same time as the position of General Director of Renault Spain since January 2012.
The economic crisis, dark years for the Spanish engine
That 2012 was especially difficult for the automotive sector in Spain (an industry that today represents approximately 10% of Spanish GDP), due to the deep economic crisis in which the country was plunged. In that exercise, registrations were on the verge of 700,000 sales, a painful figure for a sector that in a normal year should be above 1.1 or 1.2 million units sold. They were years of uncertainty for Spanish factories, such as Opel’s in Zaragoza, on which the ghost of closure loomed due to the departure of General Motors from Europe. Finally, Opel was sold to the PSA group (today, Stellantis), which ensured the future of that plant.
For his part, De los Mozos managed to get Renault to bet on its Spanish factories with successive industrial plans, which prevented their closure in the worst years of the crisis. Meanwhile, the businessman continued to climb the car manufacturer until, in 2018, Ghosn appointed him deputy executive vice president of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, in charge of manufacturing and supply chain operations. After Ghosn’s arrest that same year, De los Mozos maintains his positions of responsibility in the company and gets Renault (already under the command of Luca de Meo) to choose Spain as its production hub for the hybrid car in 2021.
The company noted at the time that the Renaulution Spain 2021-2024 industrial plan was the “most ambitious” industrial plan for Spain. With it, the group promised to bring five hybrid models to its factories in Valladolid and Palencia. In addition, a year later, Renault chose its Seville plant to manufacture all the hybrid gearboxes for the French car company there. That year, in recognition of his “contribution and contribution to the benefit of Spain”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, presented De los Mozos with the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabel la Católica.
After that, in November 2022, with a 43-year career in the Renault group behind him, De los Mozos announced that he was leaving all his positions in the automobile industry. Now, it is his turn to take the wheel of Indra.
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