John March

Juan March Ordinas (Santa Margarita, Balearic Islands, October 4, 1880 - Madrid, March 10, 1962) was a Spanish businessman and financier, considered one of the most influential of the XX.

His early businesses included the pig trade, land trading, and tobacco monopoly in Morocco. In both world wars he acted mainly on the side of the allies being a fervent Anglophile. In 1923 he obtained his first deputy certificate in the national Parliament. Already during the Second Republic he would obtain it by the Republican Cortes of the Balearic Islands in 1931 and 1933.

He founded and participated in newspapers of various political leanings. His financing of the 1936 coup against the government of the Republic was key to the success of the insurgents. However, as time went by, March opposed Franco and opted for the monarchy.

Among its most relevant businesses are the creation of the Transmediterranean Naval Company in 1916, the Pi Petroleum Company in 1925 and Banca March in 1926, as well as the purchase of Barcelona Traction.

At the end of his life he emerged as a patron and philanthropist, creating the Juan March Foundation in 1955 to support and promote culture and research in Spain. One of the most relevant in the international arena. He died in Madrid, due to injuries produced in a traffic accident, at the age of 81.

Biography

Beginnings

From a peasant family in Santa Margarita (Mallorca), he was the son of a pig dealer. He studied commerce at the Franciscan College of Puente de Inca, but was expelled from the school.

At the age of twenty, he was in charge of three businesses simultaneously: the sale of pigs, just like his father; the sale of land and the smuggling of tobacco, a traditional industry of the seamen, with the profits obtained he bought land from the old and ruined Mallorcan aristocracy. Later he dedicated himself to smuggling, acquiring products in Africa and Gibraltar that were later sold on the Valencian coast. In 1906 he dedicated himself to tobacco production, buying part of a tobacco factory in Algeria; In 1911 he obtained from the International Tobacco Company of Morocco, with French capital, the monopoly of the tobacco trade in all of Morocco, including Spain. He intervened in the production of electricity in the Balearic Islands, where he also acquired shares in the Palma de Mallorca and Canary Tram Company.

During World War I (1915) he was involved in an international incident, by supplying Austrian submarines operating in the western Mediterranean, sheltered on the island of Cabrera off s'Avall, his estate property on the coast of Majorca. This cost, at the request of the First Lord of the British Admiralty Winston Churchill, the immediate expropriation of the island from the owners by the Spanish branch of War and that they never recovered it.

In 1916 he created the Compañía Trasmediterránea, which with an initial capital of one hundred million pesetas integrated several shipping companies, and controlled communications between the Balearic Islands and Morocco and cabotage traffic in the Levant. Juan March was then a suspect in the murder of Rafael Garau on September 29, 1916, a handsome young man from a rival smuggling family, lover of his wife. The summary of the case was involved in all kinds of irregularities: when a judge was about to prosecute Juan March, he was dismissed or transferred, and numerous documents from the report ended up disappearing. There was no human way to clarify the matter. But the town accused him of the crime and the figure of March aroused so much hatred in the town of Santa Margarita that he could no longer set foot on the place.

Having obtained the (mutual) protection of the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, in 1926 he founded Banca March with the aim of financing part of his business activities. Previously, in April 1923 he was elected deputy to the Cortes for Mallorca by the Liberal Left, of Santiago Alba Bonifaz.

In 1921 he was the founder and promoter of the liberal newspaper El Día, which would be his organ of personal expression. But he also had a part in Madrid in the leftist La Libertad and in the curator Informations (1925).

In activities called war business and in addition to supplying submarines, it is worth mentioning the sale of thousands of Mauser 98 rifles and millions of cartridges (7.92 x 57) to the leader Abd el-Krim, which in the north of Morocco harassed the Spanish army. The delivery was made with the rifles devoid of firing pin, stored in a barge that was not released until the agreed payment was made and the participants were found safe. As a consequence of all these actions, Francesc Cambó said of him that he was "the last pirate in the Mediterranean".

Second Republic

After the Second Republic was established in 1931, a year-long investigation was launched into his irregular activities. Finance Minister Jaime Carner came to the following conclusion in a famous speech: "Either the Republic submits to March, or March will submit to the Republic." He was arrested, being accused of collaboration with the dictatorship and smuggling. March's account books mysteriously burned in Santa Margarita. Finally, he was imprisoned in June 1932 in the Modelo prison in Madrid accused of carrying out irregular economic activities and financing Primo de Rivera, obtaining in exchange the tobacco monopoly in Ceuta and Melilla. In 1933 he was transferred to the Alcalá de Henares prison —in which he enjoyed numerous privileges—, from which he escaped on November 4, bribing the guard officer Eugenio Vargas and fleeing to Gibraltar. Years later, the Franco regime would appoint this official to high positions in Penitentiary Institutions. Facts such as this evasion, which greatly affected the prestige of the then provisional cabinet of Martínez Barrio, motivated March to be described by former minister Mariano Ansó as a "great corrupter of men and institutions." While he was in prison, in addition, He would be elected on September 3 as a regional member of the Court of Guarantees of the Republic.

So, March left prison, arrived in Gibraltar and from there moved to Paris, where the evasion reached sensational interest, because upon his arrival in the capital of France he summoned the representatives of the European Press, to reason the accusations and the hidden motivations, declared in his defense:

Collectively — says Mr. March—I accuse those who came to ask me two million pesetas in 1930 to make the revolution. The Republic, they told me, will pay you a million for every peseta. I accuse as many as persecuted me, knowingly imprisoning those who at my expense forged documents, those who committed in the process process all the crimes that it is difficult to commit in a judicial proceeding. Collectively accusing of prevarications to the ministers of the Azaña Government, and in a concrete and individual way, to the Srs. Carner, Prieto and Domingo. But not only of prevarications, but of other criminal offences. I do not mean, of course, the moral and material aid that some of those lords have collected and obtained from me, before reaching the Government. At fifteen days of being held in Madrid prison, friends or associates of Mr. Carner, who was at the time a minister of the Treasury, Mr. Viellas, commissioned a study on my business in Morocco, and, at the same time, the so-called Minister and other elements of the Government managed "officially", near the "Societé Internationale des Tabacs du Maroc", the termination of my contract, with the manifest and proven purpose of awarding it to their friends, and after offering to the Society that this entity would be fully compensated. As already the director of the Society, and the Spanish advisor, Marquis de Caviedes, objected to Mr. Carner the impossibility of executing the operation without my consent, since I was one of the contracting parties, the minister argued in his official office: "Don't worry, March will spend the rest of his life in prison."

Juan March, statements to the international press in 1933.

Still in exile in Paris, facing the 1933 elections he decided to run for office; Although initially the Cádiz right-wing offered him to present himself for the Cádiz constituency, he would eventually do so for the Balearic Islands. Presenting himself for the Republican Center Party, March managed to obtain the act of deputy by 102,340 votes.

Civil War

With the aim of negotiating the initial financing of the coup that gave rise to the Civil War, he participated in various interviews in Biarritz. They try to ensure the future of those involved in the event that the uprising does not prosper. It has not been proven, but there are rational indications that March gave certain guarantees in this regard, based on his fortune.

Re-elected deputy in February 1936, after the constitution of the Popular Front government, he dedicated himself to financing and promoting a series of workers' strikes throughout Spain to destabilize the new executive of Manuel Azaña. Five months later, March was one of of the main financiers of the coup. In fact, he was the one who paid for the rental of the Dragon Rapide, the plane that transferred General Franco from Tenerife to Morocco in order to take command of the Army of Africa. Through his influence, the rebels obtained the support of many undecided. March made six hundred million pesetas available to the rebels and created essential lines of credit to finance the rebels in Lisbon, London, Geneva and Rome. He financed the first military airlift in history, through which elite units were transferred from Africa to Seville —by means of German Junkers Ju 52 planes—, with which they were planted almost at the gates of Madrid in a short time, at the same time that attacked Extremadura, quickly taking over Badajoz.

It is also worth mentioning here his transfer of resources to banks in Rome, together with those of Manuel Salas and other wealthy Mallorcans, to get Italian planes to break into the Porto Cristo front (Mallorca) in order to stop the Republican landing (August-September 1936). Once the payments have been validated and on board the Italian steamer Morandi, the first fighters arrive at the port of Palma in the last week of August -disassembled- from the Son Bonet aerodrome and the incipient Son San Juan aerodrome, to attack the invaders, forcing their withdrawal on September 4. His island was safe.

Some chroniclers agree that these initial events constitute the true, agile and effective contribution of Juan March in the first phase of the War and without which the rebels would not have achieved some success. This period coincides in time with the validity of the National Defense Board of Spain (July 24 to September 30, 1936) so attributing to March the financing of the entire war effort is objectively a controversial historiographical statement.

In addition to logistical and war aid to the rebels, he took advantage of his media influence to finance a propaganda campaign abroad that would favor the image of the rebels and reduce support for the Republic. He used a large amount of money to buy the media and journalists for this purpose, exaggerating the crimes that were taking place in the loyal zone and silencing the massacres of the Francoist side. March himself would admit that, in France alone, this campaign had cost him more than five hundred million pesetas.

After the Civil War

March offered, playing two decks, to nominally buy the fifty German ships held in Spanish ports from the English and Germans, without either knowing of March's negotiations with the other, to use them to their advantage; the English intelligence services, despite classifying him as "a criminal of the worst kind", decided to count on him because of his anti-communism; The Germans reached the same conclusion, who did not accept his proposal. According to Robert Solborg, US agent in Lisbon in 1942, the British government (through his contact with March, agent Alan Hug Hillgarth) decided to bribe Franco's top generals to prevent Spain's entry into World War II in favor of of Germany, specifically about thirty. The agent chosen to carry out the bribery was March, who was in charge of convincing them to a greater or lesser extent and distributing among them an initial sum of ten million US dollars at the time (according to a 2004 study by historian Pere Ferrer Guasp). The resources were codenamed "The Cavalry of Saint George" and they were the ones properly destined for this type of strategic and confidential operations of the British treasury. The Bank of England was clear that Juan March would respond with his fortune, in case the operation failed. March himself would keep five million dollars as a commission.

March's close relationship with Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, suggests that the German high command was aware of it and, therefore, it was ultimately a balancing act, not a betrayal. Both sides knew the rules of the game. It is, contrary to easy deductions, the true success of Juan March.

Current headquarters of the Juan March Foundation in Madrid

Subsequently, under the protection of the Franco dictatorship, he carried out various large-scale financial operations, such as the purchase of Barcelona Traction, after which he founded FECSA. In fact, he was known as "Franco's banker". It is no less true that an accumulation of errors in the bankruptcy administrative procedure could be attributed rather to the nefarious performance of the claimant's lawyers throughout the procedural steps, than to March's expert and seasoned lawyers. A minor detail forced the annulment of the appeal in a devastating way (the lack of standing of the plaintiffs, a minority of Belgian citizens).^{[citation required]} Finally, the Mallorcan financier - with the decisive support of the British Treasury - took over the company for a price considered "derisory". Eight years after his death, a last claim by Belgian interests was ruled in favor of Spain before the Court of The Hague. Because of all this matter, Juan March appeared in the headlines of the international press; among them, a long biographical article from 1979 in the New Yorker magazine titled "Privateer" (corsair), which starts from the Barcelona Traction case and in which March is described as "an example of American-style predatory capitalism" in a backward country like Spain.

Juan March died on March 10, 1962 from injuries sustained in a car accident that occurred two weeks earlier, on February 25, 1962, in Las Rozas (Madrid).

Juan March Foundation

In 1955, in imitation of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation, he created the Juan March Foundation to promote science and culture, which he endowed with 1.5 million dollars (300 million pesetas) and 12 million dollars (2000 million pesetas) at his death. It was for two decades a scholarship foundation. Today, it is an operating foundation with its own programs, mostly long-term and always free of charge, designed to spread confidence in the principles of humanism in a time of uncertainty and opportunities increased by accelerating technological progress. The Foundation organizes exhibitions and series of concerts and conferences. Its headquarters in Madrid houses a Library and Research Support Center specialized in contemporary Spanish art, music and theater. He is the owner of the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art, in Cuenca, and the Museu Fundación Juan March, in Palma de Mallorca. It promotes scientific research through the mixed Carlos III / Juan March Institute of Social Sciences, of the Carlos III University of Madrid.