Our founder
TATIANA PÉREZ DE GUZMÁN EL BUENO Y SEEBACHER
Tatiana Pérez de Guzman el Bueno
A momentous decision.
A woman who made history.
Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno y Seebacher was Countess Torre Arias, Grandee of Spain, Marquise of Santa Marta and Marquise of La Torre de Esteban Hambrán. Together with her husband, Julio Peláez Avendaño, she decided to set up a Foundation that would inherit her estate and manage it for the benefit of society.
She lived her entire life with discretion and austerity, together with Julio Peláez Avendaño, her husband and chief collaborator in managing her estate.
She loved Spain deeply and felt a responsibility to conserve and transmit its historical and natural heritage. She shared with her husband, a physicist, an interest in science and a concern for the civic education of young people.
Thanks to her, today her Foundation helps thousands of young Spanish people and scientists.
BIOGRAPHY
Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno y Seebacher, was born in San Sebastián on 26 October 1923 and lived in Madrid until her death on 1 October 2012.
Tatiana was from a family with ancient roots in the history of Spain, whose origins date back to the 13th century. The family branch resulted from the union, in the 19th century, of the Golfines family from Cáceres and the Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno family from Córdoba, and settled in Spain’s capital, Madrid.
She spent her childhood and youth in the family home on General Martínez Campos Street in Madrid, and then, in 1949, married Julio Peláez Avendaño, a physicist by profession, who transmitted to her a love of science and research.
In 1953, the couple set up home in Quinta de Torre Arias Park, in Madrid, where they pursued their love of nature. On the death of her father, in 1977, Tatiana became 8th Countess Torre Arias, Grandee of Spain, 11th Marquise of Santa Marta and 11th Marquise of Torre de Esteban Hambrán.
Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno was characterised by her concern to preserve her legacy for future generations. To this end, she decided to establish a foundation, which, after her death, would keep the family estate together and run it for the benefit of the whole of society.
Following the death of her husband in 2003, Tatiana established the Foundation, acting as its first president.
The foundation
A firm, ambitious commitment to science, youth and the natural environment
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At the TATIANA Foundation we are committed to science and to youth. We support research in Neuroscience and the training of young people in Civic Leadership to have a positive impact on our society, with research centres, scholarships and specific programmes.
At our sites in the World Heritage cities of Ávila, Cáceres and Córdoba, we promote personal development in natural environments through Entrepreneurship Programmes that involve learning with a personal impact in the local environment. In general, we conserve and disseminate our own Historical-Artistic Heritage in a way that underpins our commitment to the personal development of people in their own natural environment.
Areas of action
Science
We promote scientific research as an essential element in impacting and improving people’s lives significantly.
With a firm ethical commitment to the person, the Foundation promotes the advancement of Neuroscience, through research grants and the training of young researchers, with a vision of Science as a service and commitment to the person, in dialogue with other disciplines and addressing society. Through its Support Plan for Spanish Neuroscience, the Foundation undertakes various actions to contribute to improving knowledge of the real brain, part of a real, living person.
The Foundation’s International Centre for Neuroscience and Ethics works in an interdisciplinary way, with humanities and social sciences, to promote understanding of the brain and associated ethical issues, with an integrating vision of the brain as an inseparable part of the human being.
Youth
The Foundation promotes civic leadership in young people through significant impacts that generate personal changes and changes in their environments.
Civic leadership is born out of a free personal decision exercised in service to the person and in responsibility to the community in which the person develops. This service requires young people to commit fully to the development of their own abilities, through intellectual, professional and cultural training, as well as to personal and social action.
Responsibility to the community is based on the relational nature of the person, and takes on great significance in the search for the common good, promoting freedom and plurality of diverse personal projects. The Foundation seeks to help young people in navigating their way when they feel called to lead and innovate using their most valuable heritage: themselves.
Tatiana Collection
An area to disseminate the Historical-Artistic Heritage
The TATIANA Collection is the area that encompasses all of the Foundation’s own Historical-Artistic and Natural Heritage.
In this area we work to conserve and disseminate the TATIANA Foundation’s own Historical-Artistic Heritage, specifically, through cultural activities and the dissemination of Art and History related to Spain and to our founder’s personal heritage.
Our founder accumulated an important collection of art, books, papers, furniture and buildings related to the History of Spain. The Foundation’s TATIANA Collection area is currently working to develop initiatives such as research on the founder herself and her lineage, dissemination of her Historical-Artistic Heritage, creation of the Digital Historical Archive of her legacy, and development work and cultural initiatives in the Golfines de Abajo Palace-Museum in Cáceres.
An area committed our country’s natural heritage
As part of the legacy of our founder, the TATIANA Foundation has an important natural heritage in Spain, distributed in provinces such as Madrid, Ávila, Cáceres and Córdoba.
The TATIANA Collection area works to protect this natural heritage and put it at the service of the Spanish people. Estates such as Dehesa Garcipedro (Ávila), Monte París (Madrid), Atalaya de Porcayo (Cáceres) and San Cebrián (Cordoba), have been sustainably restored and renovated in recent years for activities to be carried out in them related to the environment, conservation of local heritage and education, all compatible with current agricultural and livestock uses.
Currently, various farming projects and local youth training activities are carried out in many of them.
Would you like to know more?
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Learn of Tatiana Foundation calls for teaching grants, pre-doctoral contracts, research project grants, etc.
Find out about the Tatiana Foundation’s programmes for civic leadership, entrepreneurship, young people, etc.
Calendar of events
and activities