In memoriam: Margarita Alonso Porta

Text published by Anne P. in the magazine of the

"Association des Ingénieurs de Chimie Strasbourg",

It is with deep sadness that we announce the death in an accident of Margarita Alonso, an unforgettable figure from the class of 2000 at the ECPM.

After studying chemistry at Barcelona University, Margarita came to the ECPM in September 1997 and contributed to broadening the School’s Spanish community.

Margarita rapidly became the most French of all the Spanish people at the School.

She spoke almost without accent, took an active part in the integration weekend and then was involved in numerous activities in the School. She gave Spanish classes for beginners, reinvigorated the music group with her flute, was involved in the ICT organization, more as an animator than as a sports person and, above all, enlivened the soirées at the School with her good humour and enthusiasm.

As an adoptive citizen of Strasbourg, she learned German at the school, went about on a bicycle and met the cold without difficulty with a good fur-lined jacket. She was fearless and took her first practical work stage in Germany. Later, the second stage was in Cambridge and the third and last with Rhodia in Lyon, when I became her flatmate and her friend for ever.

In love with France, she began her professional career in the South, in Saint-Martin-de-Crau, where she worked in a small SME, a subsidiary of Asahi, involved in all the services, from R&D to marketing, including team management.

Next, Spain claimed her for Bilbao, in the Guzmán company, a distributor of plastic products, where she spent two short years before being recruited by Solvay in 2006.

She joined the Solvay Advanced Polymers division in the commercial department and returned with great satisfaction to the city of Lyon, which she adored. She travelled Europe, from Brussels to Lisbon, and discovered a passion for her new professional activity in collaboration with her technical colleague Jacques G., whom she always remembered with appreciation. Margarita became a potential senior executive in Solvay.

She loved travel and in 2008 she went for three years to Atlanta, USA, in the Marketing department. There she discovered the great spaces and the American way of life, to which she quickly adapted.

In May 2011 she returned to Europe, as global marketing manager, based in Milan, where without difficulty she learned her sixth language: Italian.

Margarita left us too soon, last 11 August, in a tragic motorcar accident while on holiday in Spain, close to her village, where she went every year to rest and restore energies, together with her family and childhood friends.

All of us who had the opportunity to meet her on her way will recall her friendliness, her explosive laughter, her good humour, her kindness, the ECPM soirées and, for closer friends, her delicious omelettes. We both felt great pleasure in remembering good times at the ECPM and we had decided to go to the ECPM together in 2013 (after various failed attempts) to meet the students again, share our experiences with them and give some useful tips to the young engineers coming out of the School.

We repeat, with enormous emotion, our sincere condolences to her family, her parents, her brother and her younger sister. May they have the strength and courage to overcome this terrible trial that life has sent us.

Margarita, rest in peace.

We shall never forget you.

Anne P.