Board/ organizational changes

Telefonica SA
19 December 2007

                           PRESS RELEASE

19/12/2007

Javier de Paz and Manuel Pizarro, new members of Telefonica's board

JULIO LINARES APPOINTED COO OF TELEFONICA



•         Guillermo Ansaldo will head Telefonica Espana

Madrid, 19 December 2007.- At its ordinary meeting today, Telefonica's board,
with the approval of the Nominating, Compensation and Corporate Governance
Committee, has named Julio Linares, General Manager for Coordination, Business
Development and Synergies, as the company's new Chief Operating Officer. It also
decided to appoint Guillermo Ansaldo as General Manager of Telefonica Espana. Mr
Ansaldo will replace Antonio Viana-Baptista, who leaves the Company citing
personal reasons.



Meanwhile, Manuel Pizarro and Javier de Paz will replace Enrique Used and
Maximino Carpio as members of Telefonica's board of directors. Both Manuel
Pizarro, Javier de Paz and Alfonso Ferrari will join as well the Executive
Commission of the Company's board of directors.



The appointment of a new COO at Telefonica implies changes to the organisational
structure, which in any event still supports a regional focus aimed at becoming
more customer-oriented and leveraging economies of scale.



From now, the three regional business divisions, Spain, Europe and Latin
America, will report to the new COO, Julio Linares. Until now they had reported
directly to the Company's Executive Chairman and CEO, Cesar Alierta. Guillermo
Ansaldo will take Antonio Viana-Baptista's place at the helm of Telefonica
Espana, with Belen Amatriain as the Company's CEO and number two.  Matthew Key
will oversee Europe and Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete will continue to lead
Telefonica Latinoamerica. All three general divisions will continue to manage
all the fixed and mobile businesses in their respective regions in an integrated
way.



Also reporting to Telefonica's new COO will be four support units: Operations
(Alfonso Alonso); Strategy, Innovation and Business Development (Sohail Qadri);
Planning, Budgeting and Monitoring (Laura Abasolo); and Human Resources
(Oscar Maraver).



Therefore, reporting directly to Telefonica's Executive Chairman and CEO will be
COO Julio Linares; the General Manager of Finance and Corporate Development,
Santiago Fernandez Valbuena; head of the Legal and Board Secretariat (Ramiro
Sanchez de Lerin) and the head of the Technical Secretariat to the Chairman's
Office (Luis Abril). In the new chain of responsibilities, Internal Auditing
will report to the Finance and Corporate Development unit, which will also act
as Controller (Ezequiel Nieto).



Antonio Viana-Baptista, until now the General Manager of Telefonica Espana, is
leaving the company on his own accord, citing personal reasons. Mr
Viana-Baptista, a longstanding executive at Telefonica, has spent the last nine
years -eight of them also as member of the Board of Director- achieving huge
success in Latin America, overseeing the global mobile division and, lastly, at
Telefonica Espana. The company wishes to thank Antonio Viana-Baptista for his
dedication and achievements over these years.



The Telefonica board also agreed to add Manuel Pizarro and Javier de Paz as
members. They will replace Enrique Used and Maximino Carpio, who will leave as
well the committees they were part of. The Board recognized the intense work
carried out by the outgoing directors and thanked them for the contribution and
efforts in recent years.



Lastly, Antonio Hornedo Muguiro will step down, for personal reasons, as deputy
general secretary and secretary of the board of directors. He will be replaced
by Ma Luz Medrano Aranguren.



Julio Linares, COO of Telefonica



Julio Linares is a telecommunications engineer who joined Telefonica's R&D
Centre in May 1970 and held various positions there before being appointed Head
of Telefonica's Technology department in 1984.



In April 1990 he was appointed General Manager of Telefonica Investigacion y
Desarrollo (Telefonica I + D). In December 1994 he became Deputy General Manager
of Telefonica's Marketing and Services Development department, in the commercial
area, subsequently moving to the position of Deputy General Manager for
Corporate Marketing. In July 1997 he was appointed CEO of Telefonica Multimedia,
and President of Telefonica Cable and Producciones Multitematicas.



In May 1998 he was appointed General Manager of Strategy and Technology in
Telefonica, S.A.'s Corporate Centre. He has been Executive Chairman of
Telefonica de Espana since January 2000, as well as a member of the board of
Telefonica Data Corp.



In June 2005 he was appointed Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Telefonica O2
Czeck Republic, and is currently  the Vice-Chairman. In December 2005 he became
Managing Director for Coordination, Business Development and Synergies in
Telefonica S.A., where he is also a Member of the Board of Directors and
Secretary for the Executive Committee. He is also a member of the Board of
Directors in Telefonica Espana, Telefonica O2 Europe, Telefonica Latinoamerica,
Sogecable S.A., the Social Council of the Complutense University of Madrid, of
the Advisory Scientific Council of Telefonica I+D and Counsellor representing
innovating companies in the Science and Technology Advisory Board.





Guillermo Ansaldo, general manager of Telefonica Espana



Guillermo Ansaldo, 45 years old, was born in Argentina. He has a degree in
Industrial Engineering from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and a Master in
Business Administration from The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration,
Dartmouth College.



From 1989 to 2000 he worked for McKinsey & Company. From 1989 to 1993 he was
based in Madrid-Spain. In 1993 he returned to Argentina, and two years later he
was elected partner. During his career at McKinsey, he focused on financial
institutions and the telecom sector.



From 2000 to 2004, he held the position of Chief Executive Officer at Telefonica
de Argentina S.A.



In April 2005 he was appointed COO of Telefonica de Espana, subsidiary of the
fixed telephony business of Telefonica Espana, position from where he has
contributed to the development of Broadband and Imagenio in Spain.



The chart with the new Telefonica's organisational structure is available on the
Company's website (www.telefonica.es).









For further information

Press Office

Ronda de Comunicacion s/n

28050- MADRID

Tel: +  34 91 4823622

Tel: + 34 91 482 3637

e-mail: [e-mail]

http://www.telefonica.es/saladeprensa


                      This information is provided by RNS
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange