The purpose of the initial donations was “to attend, with the income from the securities, to the creation of an annual prize for the best doctoral dissertation dealing with soil mechanics, rock mechanics or foundation technique.
The initial endowment of the Foundation was €9.1 million, the sum of the securities and amounts donated by José Entrecanales Ibarra, MarÃa de Azcárate Florez and the Grupo Entrecanales, S.A.
The history of the donations goes back to the 1960s when the first of the prizes was awarded, as José Entrecanales wished, to the dissertation Methods for accelerating the consolidation of compressible soils by Alfonso Biarge. On January 21, 1970, Entrecanales notified the School that he had made his eighth donation and that his intention was that, before he retired as a civil engineer, the prize fund would grow to 25 million pesetas. His will was more than done: in the Faculty Senate session of July 12, 1972, the director of the School announced a new contribution that brought the fund total to more than 42 million pesetas; and on October 27 of the same year the figure had reached 50 million. The total was high enough for the director to propose, and the donor to accept, that in addition to the prize, a scholarship be awarded bearing José Entrecanales Ibarra’s name, similar to the scholarships given by the Spanish government for the completion of doctoral dissertations, in an annual amount of 120,000 pesetas, to students who wanted to study subjects related to the School’s course in geotechnics and foundations.
Donations kept coming into the School until a richly endowed fund accumulated whose custodians and the family heirs decided to establish a foundation under José Entrecanales Ibarra’s name. The Foundation was created on November 19, 1999, which was the centenary of Professor Entrecanales’ birth, with an initial endowment close to 500 million pesetas (approximately nine million euros). This endowment was provided by the donations and bequests made by Entrecanales and his wife. The driving forces behind the Foundation were the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Grupo Entrecanales, S.A.
