The post-honeymoon layoff that gave rise to an empire

In May 2020, in the midst of the pandemic and the beginning of the de-escalation of confinement, a historic news item occurred in the world of Spanish construction: the firm Agromán, which had almost a century of history behind it, disappeared forever after its owner, the still former lasis, decided to form the former Ferrovial nation. Thus, Ferrovial Agromán was renamed Ferrovial Construcción and, suddenly, ninety-three years of history were wiped out. By the way, there will probably be people who think that the name of the extinct construction company had some relation to the agricultural world, but nothing could be further from the truth, as we will see later.

The future civil engineer José María Aguirre was born in San Sebastián in the summer of 1897, and in 1921 he had already obtained the university degree that would open the doors to the professional world, specifically to the Compañía Metropolitano Alfonso XIII, the company that built the first lines of the Madrid underground. As he himself explained, in 1925, and after returning from a long honeymoon, he saw how the company suddenly terminated his contract. Before the wedding, the company's directors had assured him that he, his manager and a third engineer would be the only ones who would keep their jobs after the works to extend the Metro had finished that same year. Faced with this situation, Aguirre decided to satisfy his desire to be an entrepreneur and, together with his former manager at the Metro, Alejandro San Román, they set up a company from scratch dedicated to developing engineering projects. The first name of the company was San Román y Aguirre Ingenieros, but it later evolved into Agromán (hence why we indicated earlier that the name of the company had no relation to the agricultural world, but was rather the conjunction of the two surnames).

With the creation of Agromán in 1927, the first stone was laid for one of the main Spanish construction companies for many decades. They soon obtained important contracts, such as the one for the port of Bilbao, the one for the university city of Madrid and one of a railway nature also in the state capital. In 1934 he founded the Technical Institute of Construction and Building (ITCE), with the collaboration of various engineers, among them the famous Eduardo Torroja Miret, fill of a Catalan mathematician, author of the praised visor of formigó from the Les Corts soccer camp and avi by the pop singer Ana Torroja Fungairiño (this engineer has a square dedicated to the city of Barcelona).

During the Republic, Aguirre had to spend a brief period in prison due to a dispute with his employers, but after the war everything went better for him, because Agromán, together with Dragados (a company that at the turn of the century would end up in the hands of Florentino Pérez's ACS) shared the cake of post-war reconstruction. By the way, in Agromán and specifically in a department run by Aguirre's son, worked for a long time an extremely singular character called José Luis Jordán Peña, father of one of the most delirious plots ever created in Spain, according to which during the fifties, sixties and seventies Scandinavian-looking aliens roamed the country.

Hyperactive and banker

The post-war period was also the time when Aguirre set foot in the banking sector, first as a director of Banco Guipuzcoano (1941) and then joining the board of Banesto (1942), two entities with which he would have a long relationship. His entrepreneurial hyperactivity is evident in his CV, because he is said to have been on the board of directors of more than fifty companies, including Renfe, Sevillana de Electricidad, Enher, Acerinox (a company he founded himself in 1970), Siemens and Nestlé, as well as being a shareholder in various media outlets. It is very difficult to find a sector in which he had not set foot. As for the banking sector, in 1956 he was appointed president of Guipuzcoano – a position he held until his death – and in 1970 he also reached the top of Banesto, where he remained until 1983. It is said of him that he was the ideologist behind the creation of the famous club of the Big Seven of state banking. In 1953 he was proclaimed president – the first in history – of the College of Civil Engineers.