Beautiful Old Box: Patria

[El Presidente]

 

 

 

[Nino]

Nice "Fatherland" box.

That one name Juan March on the Bofeton struck me as very familiar. I remember him being the boss/owner of the Transmediterranea shipping company in the 60's, but I guess he was more than that :

Juan March

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_March

 

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is March and the second or maternal family name is Ordinas.

Juan March
Portrait by Noelia Martín, 2014
Born	Juan March Ordinas 4 October 1880 Santa Margalida, Spain
Died	10 March 1962 (aged 81) Madrid, Spain
Other names	Joan March i Ordinas
Spouse(s)	Leonor Servera
Children	Juan March y Servera Bartolomé March y Servera
Signature

Juan Alberto March Ordinas (4 October 1880 – 10 March 1962) was a Spanish business magnate, arms and tobacco smuggler, banker and philanthropist.

Closely associated with the Nationalist side during and after the Spanish Civil War, March was the wealthiest man in Spain and the sixth richest in the world.^[1] Throughout his life, he accumulated many labels, most notably "the last pirate of the Mediterranean". At his death in 1961, Time called him "the Iberian Croesus".^[2]

Born into a humble family of peasants in Mallorca, he was expelled from school at an early age, and began helping his father with his pig farming business while smuggling tobacco from Spanish Morocco. During the Mediterranean theatre of World War I, March was involved in an international affair after he gave supplies to a fleet of submarines of the Austro-Hungarian empire in his island of Cabrera. This action cost him the expropriation of the island by the Government of Spain acting on behalf of Winston Churchill, at the time First Lord of the Admiralty. In 1916, he founded Trasmediterránea, an important shipping company that strengthened March's naval outreach. He gained political protection from Primo de Rivera and established Banca March to finance part of his business ventures, including Franco's coup d'état and most of the Nationalist effort. For a short period of the Second Spanish Republic, he was jailed due to financial irregularities and illegal activities, including tobacco and arms trafficking. He managed to escape prison by bribing a Civil Guard and fleeing to Gibraltar.^[3]

In 1955, he set up his eponymous foundation of philanthropy and sciences, similar to the Rockefeller or Carnegie foundations. Around the same time, an elderly March uttered his famous "I am so rich, that I do not even know how rich I am".^[4] He died in March 1961 from sustained injuries caused by a road accident in Madrid.

The March family under his patriarchy had a strong influence in the financial, social and cultural aspects of European affairs in the 20th century, where it played an almost equally important role as the Rothschild family.^[5] Today, the Marches are among the richest in Spain, reported to be worth over US$5 billion.^[6]

 

[El Presidente]

Great read Nino!