Huawei brings together its legal leadership for Spain and Portugal
Since late 2025, Carmen Ruiz Lorente has also taken responsibility for Portugal and now leads a joint team for both markets, amid growing regulatory complexity
by ilaria iaquinta
Huawei has consolidated its legal function for Spain and Portugal under a single leadership. Since late December last year, that responsibility has rested with Carmen Ruiz Lorente, who heads a joint five-person team, with one lawyer based locally in Portugal, and also retains the role of company secretary, from which she documents board decisions and safeguards their legitimacy.
Before joining Huawei in 2012, Ruiz Lorente worked at Garrigues and Arizón, two experiences which, she says, shaped the way she understands the profession. Her time in private practice, the lawyer explains to Iberian Lawyer: “is an experience I recommend to any in-house lawyer, or any lawyer who is starting out and intends to move in-house. Spending time in a law firm seems very beneficial to me, even if it isn’t essential”. Since taking over the leadership of the area in 2017, Ruiz Lorente has been building her own team.
How is the department structured?
It now operates jointly for Spain and Portugal. We organise our work by practice areas and by accounts, so that the different business units have regular, trusted points of contact. This allows us to ensure consistency in the way we provide feedback, generate know-how, and develop a degree of specialisation within the team. Part of my responsibility as director is to allocate those tasks and ensure coordination.
What areas do you cover?
Broadly speaking, we cover contracts, contract review and business support; corporate work and company secretarial matters; monitoring regulatory, legislative and case-law developments that affect the company; internal dissemination and training where appropriate; engagement with different stakeholders; and managing contingencies and disputes, both pre-litigation and litigation.
You have been at Huawei Spain for more than a decade. Looking back, how has the role of the legal team evolved?
It has been a truly fascinating journey. My progression has run in parallel with the growth of the business, the company’s increased visibility, and the context in which it operates. I joined in 2012 as one more person on the legal team, and in 2017 I took over the leadership of the area. Since then, the company has expanded its lines of activity, first with the rise of devices and retail, and later with the evolution into other areas such as Digital Power. All of that also changes legal contingencies, the type of regulation we need to know, and the way legal supports the business.
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