The businessman who symbolizes the bursting of the real estate bubble

BarcelonaIf there is a businessman who symbolizes the bursting of the real estate bubble in Spain – which, added to the failure of Lehman Brothers, generated the Great Recession – it is Enrique Bañuelos (Sagunt, 1966). In the Spain of easy credit of the early 2000s, Bañuelos created Astroc, a real estate company whose primary purpose was to buy land to reclassify it. At first, the business was not going badly. In 2006 the company went public and in less than a year its shares went from 6.4 euros per share to over 75. And Bañuelos, until then an unknown businessman, made it onto the Forbes list and made a place for himself among the richest people in the world.

But in April 2007, an audit of the company was published, which emphasized related-party transactions, and the shares plummeted. The bubble burst and Enrique Bañuelos put the Atlantic between him and Spain. In 2008 he reappeared in Brazil with his company Veremonte, linked to real estate and agricultural businesses. The company opened offices in London and, later, also in Madrid, to act as a bridge for business between the Old Continent and Brazil.

His last major appearance was in September 2012, in the midst of the crisis, when with the company Veremonte he landed in Catalonia to lead, together with La Caixa, the Barcelona World project, after the American billionaire Sheldon Adelson decided to withdraw the Eurovegas project. It was to be a macro-complex on the edge of Port Aventura. But finally Bañuelos withdrew from this project to continue with his real estate businesses. And Barcelona World, almost fifteen years later, is still not being built.