Javier Moreno was born in Paris in 1963. He has a degree in Chemistry from the University of Valencia (1988), and worked in that profession in Germany – BASF, Ludwigshafen – until 1992, the year that he completed the Madrid Autonomous University (UAM) and EL PAÍS masters course in journalism. He first joined the Business section of the newspaper, and in 1994 he transferred to the Mexico newsroom, which was the embryo of the current EL PAÍS América edition. After returning to Spain in 1997, he worked in the International section. In 1999, he was appointed editor of the Business section, and in 2002 he became the correspondent for the paper in Berlin. In 2003, he was appointed editor-in-chief of PRISA’s business newspaper, Cinco Días.

In 2005 he returned to EL PAÍS, initially in charge of the Sunday edition, and then as managing editor. In 2006, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the newspaper, he was appointed editor-in-chief, staying in the role until May 2014. During that time, the newspaper underwent the first major redesign of its print edition since it was founded. He also merged the print and digital sections in order to launch the current online edition.

The newsroom was involved in international exclusives such as the leak of secret US embassy cables, together with The New York Times and The Guardian, the exclusive known as Chinaleaks, as well as relevant domestic stories such as the so-called “Bárcenas papers,” and many more. In 2013, he launched the Americas edition of the paper.

After leaving his role in 2014, Moreno became the founding director of the Leading European Newspaper Alliance (LENA), which groups together eight top-flight newspapers in Europe: Le Figaro, Le Soir, Tages-Anzeiger, Tribune de Genève, Die Welt, La Repubblica, Gazeta Wyborcza and EL PAÍS. He headed up the UAM-EL PAÍS Journalism School from December 2017 until June 2018, when he was appointed editor-in-chief of EL PAÍS in America, which is based in Mexico City.

In June 2020 he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of EL PAÍS again.