Bárbara Botía Sainz de Baranda

Barbara Botia Sainz de Baranda is one of those professionals who defy easy categorisation: an economist by training and a lawyer by practice, or perhaps the other way around. Her dual degrees in Business Administration and Law from the University of Murcia are not academic decoration — they are the tools that allow her to move with equal confidence between a trial balance and a set of contractual terms. Over more than fourteen years of practice, she has built the kind of profile that companies increasingly demand: someone who can understand risk in legal terms and quantify it in financial ones.

Before joining BMC in 2020, Barbara developed her career in business advisory, where she honed a specialisation that has become critical for any serious organisation: personal data protection, corporate compliance, and cybersecurity from a legal perspective. It is not about knowing the GDPR by heart — any lawyer with access to the Official Journal can manage that — but about knowing how to implement a compliance programme that works in practice, integrates into the company’s operational processes, and withstands a regulatory inspection without incident.

At BMC she serves as data protection and compliance lead, acting as external DPO for clients across multiple sectors. Her day-to-day work includes preparing Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), managing security breaches, reviewing data processor agreements, adapting internal policies to the European and Spanish regulatory framework, and training senior management in compliance culture. She also leads legal due diligence on corporate transactions, where her hybrid profile proves especially valuable: while a pure lawyer reviews clauses, Barbara reviews clauses and understands what they mean for the income statement.

Her commercial and civil law practice complements the compliance work. She has advised on company formation and restructuring, shareholder agreements, share purchase agreements, and civil claims arising from commercial relationships. Registered with number 11,233 at the Malaga Bar Association, she combines the technical rigour of legal practice with an uncommon ability to translate complex legal concepts into the language that managers and boards of directors need to hear.