Ignacio Ramonet

Ignacio Ramonet (born in Redondela, Spain, in 1943) is a Spanish journalist and academic who has lived in France since the early 1970s. He is one of the best-known figures of the alter-globalization movement, and his name is closely tied to critical writing on the media and to the analysis of contemporary geopolitics.

He grew up in Tangier, Morocco, where his parents, Spanish Republicans fleeing Franco, settled in 1946. After studies in Bordeaux, he moved to Paris in 1972, where he began as a film critic and taught at the Paris VII University. He earned a doctorate in Semiology and the History of Culture at the EHESS and eventually became professor emeritus of Communication Theory.

From 1990 to 2008 he edited the monthly Le Monde diplomatique, and he has stayed associated with its Spanish edition. His writing examines media concentration, globalization and the power of large corporations. A 1997 editorial of his on the Tobin tax led to the founding of ATTAC, the organization that campaigns for that tax and other left-wing causes.

His legacy is most visible in public debate on globalization and digital surveillance, and in his role in the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, where he is credited with the slogan "Another world is possible".