Ramon Areces

Ramón Areces Rodríguez (La Mata, Asturias, September 15, 1904 – Madrid, July 30, 1989) was a Spanish businessman, second president of El Corte Inglés. Ramón Areces was the nephew of the founder César Rodríguez González.

Biography

He was the son of farmers Carlos Areces and Jesusa Rodríguez, previously his sister-in-law and later his second wife. He studied, first in his hometown and later in Grado. Due to the family situation, in which his parents' work had to feed a total of eight children, in 1920 he made an important decision: to emigrate to Cuba as soon as possible with his brothers Manuel and Luis, after meeting his uncle Cesar Rodriguez Gonzalez.

Cuba

The three brothers embarked on the ship Alfonso XIII from the port of Gijón and, upon their arrival, their uncle César offered them a job as a gunner (apprentice to whom they offered food and lodging) in the El Encanto stores, where he was manager.

United States and Canada

Four years later, he accompanied his uncle through the United States and Canada in order to improve the company's commercial relations, study the market and open branches in both countries. In 1928 they returned to Cuba, where he stayed until 1935. His uncle no longer worked in the company and, most importantly, the crash of 1929 had broken out.

El Corte Inglés

In 1935 he settled in Madrid and in December transferred a tailor shop specializing in Antonio Vallejo for children's clothing. This lot and the adjacent ones had been bought by Sederías Carretas for the expansion of Galerías Preciados, but the mediation and financial support of his uncle César allowed him to use it until 1940, the year in which it was moved to Calle Preciados. number 3 and the limited company El Corte Inglés was incorporated (it became anonymous twelve years later, in 1952).

Areces used the model of the El Encanto store in Havana, and the Anglo-Saxon models of department stores, distributing sales by departments and, in the 1960s, branches were opened in Barcelona, Seville and Bilbao.

Death

In 1973 he suffered a hemiplegia that kept him in a wheelchair, for which reason he delegated his duties to his nephew Isidoro Álvarez (without his situation preventing him from continuing to go to his job). Three years later, he created the Ramón Areces Foundation with the aim of promoting scientific and technical research in Spain, as well as education and culture in general (values that the institution considers fundamental drivers of progress and modernity in society). It is to this foundation that he ended up bequeathing his participation in El Corte Inglés and the one that is currently the majority shareholder of the company, naming his nephew Isidoro as its patron for life. Ramón Areces passed away in 1989.

In the Asturian town of Grado, there has been an ESO institute that bears his name since 1977 and to which its foundation awards scholarships.

Awards

• Grand Cross of the Order of Alfonso X el Sabio (1977)
• Gold Medal to Work Merit (1975)