Concepción Barrio elected President of the Spanish Notariat

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On 30 November 2024, the Dean of the Madrid Notarial Association, Concepción Pilar Barrio del Olmo, was elected President of the Spanish General Council of Notaries for the next four years. Barrio thus becomes the first woman to hold this position and now represents, at both national and international levels, nearly 3,000 Spanish practising notaries. She succeeds José Ángel Martínez Sanchiz, who has led the organisation for the past eight years.

The new President has identified her main objective as “the maintenance of our system of legal certainty, with all its values and duties, because it benefits the society we serve. We notaries must continue to ensure that whoever buys a house does not end up in court; that people’s last wishes, expressed in their wills, are respected; and that no one questions the type of marriage we have chosen or the company we have founded.”

The main social challenges that notaries can help address include “helping to solve issues such as unwanted loneliness, access to housing, or legal support for the most vulnerable groups. At the same time, we must continue the process of digitalisation to provide a more efficient notarial service without compromising our relationship with citizens. We will continue to offer the network of notaries’ offices spread throughout Spain, even in small towns.”

She also highlights her responsibility to women in assuming this position, saying, “It is important that other women, especially young women, see that they can be a dean or chairperson of an institution like this or of a company; that they have no limits. When I passed the competitive examination, women made up 30 per cent, but recently, it has reached 60 per cent,” she concludes.

Concepción Pilar Barrio del Olmo has been a notary since 1997. She has extensive corporate experience, both in the Madrid Notarial Association, where she has held the position of Archivist since 2007 and has served in various roles before being elected Dean, and in the General Council of Notaries, where she served as Secretary General from 2011 to 2013. She is also a trustee and Deputy Chairperson of the SIGNUM Notarial Foundation and a member of the Notary, Women and Society Commission of the Notarial Foundation. Additionally, she is the author of several legal publications and a regular speaker at courses and seminars.