Grupo Martínez Construcciones, one of Spain’s largest property development and construction firms, like many other businesses, was having difficulties in rolling over its loans as liquidities dried up. This did not however dampen the optimism of Fernando Martínez the group’s founder. He had come a long way since he graduated from the University of Salamanca in architecture almost two decades earlier.
The Spanish property market had experienced a decade of extraordinary growth and many great fortunes were made. There had never been a more propitious moment for investing in building and construction. In 1997 housing starts in Spain totalled 350,000 — then in 1999 almost 600,000 — and over 900,000 in 2007. Grupo Martínez Construcciones was one of Spanish industry’s most glowing success stories. Its new headquarters, a futuristic glass tower, was a gleaming addition to Madrid’s Cuatro Torres Business Area’s skyline.
The entrepreneur’s beginnings, like many of his contemporaries, had been modest. His university professors and fellow students remembered him as extremely hard working and ambitious, from the start he had set his goal on being more than just being another architect. Martínez had been motivated by the need of a diploma and being accepted by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes, this accomplished he turned his attentions to business studies and successfully completed an MBA at Valladolid University before commencing his business career.
Fernando was born in La Alberca, a village that lay thirty five kilometres to the south west of Ciudad Rodrigo, with Madrid two hundred and fifty kilometres to the east and the border with Portugal sixty kilometres to the east.
An only son, Martínez had been an excellent pupil at the village school of La Alberca. The local padre remarking his potential found him a place as a borderer at a college in Ciudad Rodrigo. His parents pride turned to disappointment when at eighteen he left for Salamanca. Though he loved his parents six years in a large town gave him little desire to return to tedious village life. The very thought of following in his father’s footsteps, raising sheep on the hard land his family had owned and worked for generations, dismayed him.
As a young boy he had watched his father doffing his hat to the well dressed notables at Sunday mass in La Alberca, then an almost isolated village, situated at 1,084 metres above sea level on the northern slopes of the Las Batuecas-Sierra de Francia mountains. Arriving in Ciudad Rodrigo he remembered how he was laughed at as a paleto by the other borderers.
Fernando’s grandfather had often told him stories of the village’s curious houses built in granite, the upper levels with timbered beams, their balconies overhanging the narrow cobbled streets and small squares. At that time the village was a backwater with a population of a little more than a thousand, its history going back to the fifteenth century. It was remarked when it became the first village in Spain to be declared a National Heritage Site in 1940, situated in the heart of a natural park, surrounded by four mountain ranges; the Sierra de Bejar to the east, La Peña de Francia to the west, with the Sierras de Francia and Kilama to the north.
Over the years La Alberca’s fortunes changed for the better. It was transformed into a picturesque destination visited by Spanish and passing tourists. Its were houses renovated and decorated with geraniums, as were its plazas, with many city people investing in second homes there. The transformation brought a welcome change of fortune for the villages small hotels and restaurants and unexpected prosperity to the village’s inhabitants.
At the University of Salamanca, founded in 1218, with its thirty thousand students, Fernando discovered the pleasures of university life taking advantage of the city’s rich variety of cultural and leisure activities. He played an active role in different societies where he learned to use his latent communication skills, winning new friends and build a network of relations that would serve his future needs. His last year of studies was spent in Valladolid, capital of Castella y León, acquiring a precious MBA in business management.
In 1986 Spain officially entered the European Union and investment started to flow in for modernisation programmes of all kinds. Franco had died more than ten years earlier and following the decades of architectural and economic stagnation under the dictator Spain had entered a period of spectacular change. Martínez had no difficulty in finding a job as a junior architect. The country’s construction boom was already launched on a growth trajectory that was to last more than twenty years: housing developments, offices complexes, public buildings, holiday resorts, highways and infrastructure projects were all up for grabs, enriching astute promoters and creating fortunes overnight.
As a creative indefatigable worker Martínez was valued member by the architects firm that employed, but it was too limited for his ambitions. In 1992, on the strength of his six years experience and the business contacts he had astutely developed, Martínez set out on his own working with developers and construction firms for holiday homes on the Mediterranean coast. As business grew, Martínez, seeing the money to be made in construction, invested in a local building firm in difficulty owned by an old but waning Ciudad Rodrigo family. In 1995 he acquired the controlling majority and appointed his close cousin, Antonio Martínez, as managing director. Then leaning on Fernando’s growing political influence, they acquired the contract to design and build a large local housing project.