José Felipe Bertran de Caralt, the emblematic representative of the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie, dies

BarcelonaBesnet of the first Count Güell and the most emblematic representative of the Catalan industrial haute bourgeoisie, José Felipe Bertran de Caralt, has died in Barcelona at the age of 98. The businessman came to public attention in the 1990s when he was convicted of tax fraud, but at the same time, he was a victim of the corruption network of Judge Lluís Pasqual Estevill, who also ended up convicted of extorting the businessmen he was investigating, including Bertran de Caralt himself.

The businessman was one of the driving forces behind the refoundation of the Catalan employers' association Foment del Treball in 1976, in the first months of the Spanish Transition, and later of the Spanish employers' association CEOE, together with Carles Ferrer Salat. He was also president of the cement company Asland (now part of the Holcim-Lafarge group), vice president of Aigües de Barcelona, ​​and became one of Spain's leading poultry businessmen with the company Material Agropecuario. In the 1990s, he was presented to the press as one of the state's largest fortunes.

Pleasant and highly cultured, he was, for example, a patron of the Friends of the Prado Museum Foundation. Among many other positions linked to the cultural and social world, Bertran de Caralt also featured in a few anecdotes during his clashes with the law. For example, on the day Judge Estevill, who was investigating him for tax fraud, summoned him to testify at Barcelona's former duty court, in the Palace of Justice on Passeig Lluís Companys, the businessman, always dressed and wearing a tie, was almost dressed in sportswear. He also showed a group of journalists what he carried in his bag: a change of clothes, a toiletry bag, and a toothbrush.

The businessman was certain that his destiny would be prison, and so it was. Years later, the judge who had investigated and imprisoned him, and who was already a member of the General Council of the Judiciary (at the proposal of CiU), would also be convicted of extorting the businessmen he was investigating. In fact, Bertran de Caralt knew what his fate would be after testifying because he had refused to yield to Estevell's demands.

However, José Felipe Bertran de Caralt would also end up being convicted in the tax fraud case. The Supreme Court sentenced him to four years in prison and a fine of 491 million pesetas. The Spanish government, with Justice Minister Margarita Mariscal de Gante (PP), granted him a pardon in the summer of 1997. During the investigation into the case, Bertran de Caralt was the subject of another anecdote. The judicial commission appeared at his mansion in Putxet, where he lived, to seize property, and found that the businessman was a tenant and that both the house and its contents were registered in the name of a company, to which he paid a monthly rent of 8,000 pesetas.