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La terrible historia de Rumasa: El imperio que cayó en 24 horas — Transcript

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0:00It was the largest business group in
0:02Spain. More than 300 companies, 20
0:05banks of its own, wineries with
0:08centuries of history exporting wine
0:10across Europe, hotels in the
0:12country’s best cities, shipyards
0:15launching vessels, textile factories,
0:17pharmaceutical labs, distribution
0:20fleets, insurance companies, and
0:22construction firms. A conglomerate so
0:26vast and diversified that no one, not
0:28even those working within it, had a
0:31complete picture of everything it
0:33encompassed. 150,000 workers who woke
0:37up that morning believing they had jobs
0:39, a salary coming at the end of the
0:42month, and a reasonably predictable
0:44future. And at 9 o'clock on a Tuesday
0:48in February, it all vanished. Not in
0:50months, not in weeks, not after a
0:52negotiation process that would have
0:54allowed time to prepare, but in a
0:56single day, with a single signature. On
1:00February 23, 1983, the Spanish
1:05government passed a decree and seized
1:08everything José María Ruiz Mateos had
1:11built in 30 years of frenetic work,
1:13accumulated debt, and multiplied
1:15promises; without prior notice, without
1:18a trial, and without the owner being
1:21able to say a single word before it was
1:24all over. Overnight, the richest man in
1:29Spain became a fugitive sought by the
1:32justice system of the very country
1:34where he had built his fortune. But
1:39what no one knew at the time, what it
1:41would take years for even the
1:43technicians who accessed the holding's
1:45internal files to fully understand, was
1:48that behind the largest business
1:49conglomerate in Spanish history lay
1:52something much darker than the simple,
1:54excessive ambition of a businessman.
1:59There was a financial architecture
2:01deliberately designed to deceive
2:03multiple parties at once: external
2:05banks, the Bank of Spain, the
2:07government, auditors, the workers
2:10themselves, and anyone who got too
2:12close and started asking uncomfortable
2:15questions. And if there is one thing
2:20this story demonstrates with a clarity
2:22that is hard to ignore, it is that when
2:24the deception is large enough, complex
2:26enough, and convenient enough for
2:28everyone who witnesses it, it becomes
2:30almost impossible to distinguish from
2:32genuine business genius. This is the
2:37story of Rumasa. And if you think you
2:40already know how it ends, wait. To
2:43understand how all this was built, we
2:45must go back to the beginning, to the
2:47starting point of a man who reached
2:49where he did from a place no one would
2:51have considered promising. José María
2:55Ruiz Mateos. Jiménez was born in 1931
2:59in Rota, a coastal town in the province
3:02of Cádiz, where the Levante wind
3:04carries the salty scent of the Atlantic
3:06deep into the cobbled streets and where
3:09the wine tradition has been woven into
3:11the fabric of daily life for centuries.
3:16He was the eldest son of a modest
3:18family of winemakers, not wealthy, not
3:20influential, and not connected to the
3:22great economic powers of the time.
3:26Simply people who worked the land,
3:28tended to the vines, and understood
3:30wine for what it was to them. A way to
3:33earn a living with their hands and the
3:35knowledge accumulated over generations.
3:39He grew up in postwar Spain with
3:41everything that implied. The poverty,
3:45the hunger in some homes, the
3:47omnipresence of the Franco regime in
3:49every aspect of public and private life
3:52. The Catholic Church as the central
3:55institution of social life and
3:57collective morality. And in that
4:00context, while still young, he made a
4:02decision that would prove fundamental
4:04for the rest of his life. He joined
4:07Opus Dei. For those unfamiliar with the
4:12organization, Opus Dei is a prelature
4:14of the Catholic Church founded in Spain
4:17in 1928, which maintains that personal
4:19sanctification is possible through
4:21ordinary work done well, without the
4:23need to withdraw from the world. In
4:28practical terms, during the 20th
4:30century, Opus Dei built an
4:32extraordinarily effective network of
4:35influence in the academic, business,
4:37and political worlds of many countries,
4:39but especially in Francoist Spain.
4:45Belonging to Opus Dei was not simply a
4:47private religious choice; it was
4:49belonging to a community that opened
4:51doors that personal merit alone could
4:54not have opened. It was accessing a
4:58network of contacts that crossed the
5:00spheres of power in a way that would be
5:02hard to imagine in today's democratic
5:04Spain. Ruiz Mateos understood that very
5:08early on and used it. By age 25, he was
5:11already running the family wineries.
5:14His management style was aggressive and
5:17impatient, that of a man who looked at
5:19what he had and immediately saw what he
5:21could have if he dared to take the next
5:23step. By 30, he had bought his first
5:27outside company. By 35, he controlled a
5:31small group of wine companies with real
5:34weight in the sherry market. He was not
5:39the most sophisticated businessman in
5:41technical terms; he had no deep
5:43financial training, nor had he studied
5:45at the great business schools of the
5:47time, but he had something that no
5:49business school teaches and no
5:51management manual can convey. An almost
5:55supernatural ability to convince people
5:57to entrust him with their resources.
6:00When Ruiz Mateos asked to borrow money,
6:03people lent it to him. When he promised
6:06a return, people believed him. When he
6:10said they were going to do something,
6:12people took for granted that he would.
6:15He had that peculiar gift of great
6:18salesmen and charismatic leaders, which
6:20consists of making others see in your
6:23words a reality that does not yet exist
6:26, but seems inevitably near. And the
6:31first secret of Rumasa, the one
6:33fundamental to understanding everything
6:35that followed, is that Ruiz Mateos used
6:38that gift not to build a solid and
6:40profitable company, but to build
6:42something much more fragile and
6:44dangerous: a castle of debt. He bought
6:48companies with money he borrowed, using
6:50the companies he already owned as
6:52collateral. Then he used those new
6:55companies to take out more loans to buy
6:57even more companies. The new
7:00acquisitions served as collateral for
7:02new credit. The new credit financed new
7:05purchases, and the cycle began again.
7:10It was a system that could only
7:11continue as long as there were
7:13companies available to buy, banks
7:15willing to lend, and enough confidence
7:17in the value of the assets put up as
7:19collateral. As soon as any of those
7:23three elements failed, the collapse
7:25would come with a speed proportional to
7:27the speed at which it had grown. It was
7:30, in essence, the logic of a financial
7:32pyramid, although Ruiz Mateos would
7:34never have acknowledged it as such. To
7:37him, it was simply aggressive expansion
7:40, entrepreneurial thinking on a large
7:42scale, the normal logic of any holding
7:44company looking to grow rapidly by
7:46leveraging financial debt. And on the
7:50surface, for years, the system worked
7:52because the assets he bought were real.
7:56The wineries produced wine, the hotels
7:58had guests, the factories manufactured
8:00goods. The problem wasn't that the
8:04assets were fictitious, the problem was
8:07that they were massively overvalued in
8:09relation to the debt leveraging them,
8:12and the entire financial structure
8:14depended on that valuation never being
8:17tested under real stress. But for the
8:20pyramid to keep spinning, it needed
8:22more than just profitable companies. He
8:26needed direct control over the money,
8:28without outside intermediaries asking
8:30questions, without third-party banks
8:32setting uncomfortable conditions. And
8:35that was when Ruiz Mateos took the step
8:38that would transform an industrial
8:40holding into something much more
8:42dangerous. He started buying banks—
8:46not one or two. Throughout the 60s and
8:5070s, the group acquired banking
8:52entities until it controlled 20 of its
8:55own banks, 20 financial institutions
8:57that, in theory, should have operated
8:59with total independence from the group,
9:02respecting legal limits on risk
9:04concentration and the prudential
9:06principles that protected depositors.
9:10That was what the law said. That was
9:13what Ruiz Mateos claimed without
9:15hesitation whenever a journalist or
9:16official asked him directly about the
9:18relationship between the banks and the
9:20rest of the holding company. The
9:23reality was completely different.
9:26Rumasa's banks were not banks in the
9:28real sense of the term; they were, in
9:31practice, internal financing
9:32instruments for the group. The money
9:36that citizens deposited in those
9:38entities, the savings of families
9:40seeking a safe place to keep what they
9:42had accumulated through years of work,
9:44was systematically used to finance the
9:47operating and expansion needs of the
9:49holding company. The loans the banks
9:53granted went to group companies in a
9:56proportion that flagrantly violated all
9:59applicable legal limits. The collateral
10:03backing those loans was inflated, when
10:06it wasn't outright fictitious. It was a
10:09circular system of perverse elegance.
10:13The group generated cash flow that
10:15served to pay the interest on the loans
10:17it took from its own banks. And the
10:20banks used public deposits to finance
10:22the group's needs. As long as both
10:26elements of the circle turned in unison
10:28, everything seemed to work. The group
10:31could keep growing, and the banks could
10:34keep attracting deposits with the image
10:36of solidity provided by being part of
10:38an apparently prosperous conglomerate.
10:42Auditors could keep signing off on
10:43financial statements with the
10:44tranquility of someone who chooses not
10:46to see what is right in front of them.
10:48And Ruiz Mateos could continue
10:49presenting himself to the world as the
10:51greatest businessman Spain had ever
10:53produced. Spain in the late 70s was a
10:57country undergoing a brutal
10:58transformation. The dictatorship had
11:02died with Franco in 1975 and the
11:06country was trying to build a democracy
11:08on the rubble of 40 years of economic
11:10autarky, political repression, and
11:13international isolation. In that
11:16context of uncertainty and accelerated
11:18change, large business groups were seen
11:21, at least by a part of the political
11:23spectrum, as elements of economic
11:25stability that should not be
11:27unnecessarily disturbed. Ruiz Mateos
11:31understood that logic perfectly and
11:33exploited it. When inspectors from the
11:37Bank of Spain got too close, obstacles
11:40would appear, such as legal appeals
11:42that delayed the processes. Alternative
11:45interpretations of regulations that
11:47created enough doubt to paralyze any
11:50action. Political connections that
11:53generated informal pressure on the
11:55officials in charge of the files. It
11:58was not necessary to corrupt anyone
12:00directly or crudely. It was enough for
12:03the system to understand that pushing
12:05too hard on Rumasa had political and
12:07personal costs that not everyone was
12:09willing to pay. Thus, the holding
12:14company grew for two decades with
12:16protection that had parts of political
12:19legitimacy, parts of strategic skill,
12:21and parts of the simple institutional
12:24cowardice that characterizes all
12:26systems when they face powers they find
12:28uncomfortable to confront directly. And
12:33then, that protection ended with a
12:35speed that no one within the system
12:37could have anticipated. In October 1982
12:41, the Spanish Socialist Workers 'Party
12:44won the general election by an absolute
12:47majority. It was the first time in
12:51Spanish democratic history that the
12:53left reached power through elections,
12:56arriving with an economic
12:57transformation agenda that prioritized
13:00the modernization and stabilization of
13:02the Spanish financial system. Felipe
13:06González was 40 years old. He was
13:09charismatic and intelligent. But the
13:12person who would change Ruiz-Mateos’s
13:14life forever was not González; it was
13:17the man he appointed as Minister of
13:19Economy. Miguel Boyer Salvador was a
13:22rigorous economist, trained in the best
13:24traditions of European economic thought
13:27, with a technical commitment to
13:29financial orthodoxy that did not yield
13:31to considerations of political
13:33opportunism. He was not a man of grand
13:36gestures or inflammatory statements. He
13:40was precise, analytical, and deeply
13:42convinced that the new government's
13:45most urgent economic task was to
13:47stabilize a financial system that had
13:49been accumulating imbalances for years
13:51that no one had wanted to correct. And
13:56on that stabilization agenda, Rumasa
13:59occupied a position that became clearer
14:01and clearer in the months following
14:03their arrival in power. At the end of
14:081982, the Bank of Spain initiated an
14:10exhaustive inspection of the group's
14:13banks. It was not the first inspection,
14:17but it was the first with the firm
14:19political backing of a government
14:21willing to act on its findings,
14:23whatever the political cost might be.
14:27What they found exceeded their most
14:28pessimistic previous estimates. The
14:32group's banks had granted loans to the
14:34holding company in amounts that
14:36multiplied their own capital several
14:38times over, systematically and
14:40persistently violating the legal limits
14:42that existed precisely to protect
14:44depositors. The collateral backing
14:49those loans was, in an alarming
14:51proportion, fictitious or vastly
14:53overvalued. The financial statements
14:57that the banks had presented to the
14:59authorities for years contained
15:01irregularities that, in less severe
15:03cases, were misleading omissions, and
15:05in more serious cases, directly
15:07bordered on document forgery. And there
15:12were very strong indications that part
15:14of the group was using money coming in
15:16from new deposits to pay interest on
15:18old debts. The classic mechanism of a
15:22pyramid scheme that turns a situation
15:24of illiquidity into one of structural
15:26insolvency over time. The report
15:29reached Boyer's office at the beginning
15:31of January 1983. He read it carefully,
15:36summoned the governor of the Bank of
15:38Spain, gathered the ministry's legal
15:41advisors, and together they reached a
15:43conclusion that had no obvious
15:45alternatives. If the group were to
15:48collapse spontaneously, without prior
15:50orderly intervention, the resulting
15:52banking crash would be of a magnitude
15:55sufficient to threaten the stability of
15:57the entire Spanish financial system.
16:01Depositors would lose their savings,
16:03trust in the banking system would be
16:05damaged long-term, and the final cost
16:08to the State would be enormously higher
16:10than that of an early, controlled
16:12intervention. The only option was to
16:16act before the group collapsed on its
16:17own. The decision was made at the
16:21highest levels of government. González
16:24, Boyer, the Governor of the Bank of
16:26Spain, the Attorney General, and a very
16:29small circle of trusted technocrats. No
16:33one else, because any leak, however
16:36small, would trigger exactly the panic
16:38they were trying to avoid. If
16:42depositors at the group's banks found
16:45out what was being prepared before the
16:47intervention was complete, they would
16:49queue at branches from dawn, money
16:52would pour out, and the system would
16:54collapse anyway, but in chaotic
16:56conditions that would make any orderly
16:58management impossible. The operation
17:03was prepared in secret during the weeks
17:04prior. State attorneys drafted the
17:08legal texts. Bank of Spain technicians
17:12drew up intervention protocols for each
17:15company and each bank. The officials
17:19who were to take over management of the
17:21holding company quietly coordinated the
17:23logistics of an operation that would be
17:25, due to its scale and complexity,
17:27completely unprecedented in Spanish
17:29economic history. The date chosen was
17:34February 23rd, the second anniversary
17:36of Lieutenant Colonel Tejero’s
17:39attempted coup d'état. The choice was
17:42not coincidental. The government wanted
17:45to send a message that went beyond the
17:47purely technical and financial
17:49dimensions of the intervention. Spanish
17:52democracy was capable of acting firmly
17:54against established economic powers.
17:58The rule of law would not yield to the
18:00pressure of big capital. The rules were
18:03the same for everyone, regardless of
18:05the size or connections of whoever
18:07violated them. On the night of February
18:1122nd to the 23rd, while Spain slept,
18:13unaware of what was to happen the next
18:15morning, the technical teams were
18:17already at their posts. Some had spent
18:21the night working on the final
18:23documents; others arrived before dawn
18:25to be ready the moment the order came.
18:29They had precise instructions. The
18:31moment the decree was approved, they
18:33would present themselves simultaneously
18:35at the headquarters of the group's
18:37companies and banks, identifying
18:39themselves as representatives of the
18:41State and assuming control of the files
18:43and management. At 9 o'clock in the
18:47morning on February 23rd, 1983, The
18:51Council of Ministers approved the
18:53decree-law for the expropriation of the
18:54Rumasa group on grounds of public
18:56utility and social interest. At that
19:00moment, without further delay, all the
19:02holding's companies, all its banks, and
19:05all its assets became the property of
19:07the Spanish State, and within hours,
19:09government representatives appeared at
19:12every identified headquarters. At every
19:15bank, at every central office, they
19:18took control. 150,000 people who had
19:22gone to work that Tuesday, believing it
19:25to be a normal day, discovered before
19:28noon that their world had changed
19:30irreversibly. Ruiz-Mateos's reaction
19:35was immediate, furious, and perfectly
19:38calculated to maximize its media impact
19:40. That same day, he called a press
19:44conference. He appeared before the
19:47cameras with a tense face, but a
19:49surprisingly steady voice. The voice of
19:52a man who had already decided on the
19:54story he was going to tell and who had
19:56no intention of straying from it. He
19:59denied everything. He denied that the
20:02group had serious financial problems.
20:04He denied that the banks had been
20:06managed illegally. He denied that the
20:09loan guarantees were fictitious, and in
20:12the face of all that, he launched an
20:14accusation that would resonate for
20:16years. The government had committed a
20:19robbery, a political robbery, an
20:22ideological expropriation motivated by
20:25socialism's enmity toward Spanish
20:27Christian businessmen. It was a
20:30skillful narrative. It placed the
20:32discussion in the realm of ideologies
20:35and political motivations rather than
20:37the technical and accounting terrain,
20:39where the facts clearly worked against
20:42his position. It presented Ruiz-Mateos
20:45as the victim and the government as the
20:46aggressor. And in a Spain divided
20:49between the right that had lost the
20:51government and the left that had just
20:53won it, that narrative found a
20:55receptive and broad market among those
20:58who already distrusted the socialists
21:00for reasons that had nothing to do with
21:02Rumasa. But while the narrative spread
21:06through the media, in the offices of
21:08the technicians who now had access to
21:11the group's real files, the reality
21:13that emerged page by page was very
21:15different. The audits conducted in the
21:19following months revealed a situation
21:21that, in some respects, was even worse
21:24than previous reports had anticipated.
21:28The network of operations between the
21:31group's companies was so dense and so
21:33deliberately opaque that tracing any
21:35significant transaction required weeks
21:38of work by specialized analysis teams.
21:42The balance sheets presented to the
21:44authorities for years did not reflect
21:46the group's true situation. The
21:49valuations of assets used as loan
21:51collateral were inflated by percentages
21:54that were, in some cases, scandalous,
21:56and there was evidence of transactions
21:59specifically designed to improve the
22:01appearance of financial statements at
22:04closing dates, creating a temporary
22:06image of solvency that would quietly
22:09unravel in the following months. But
22:13here, an element appears that
22:15complicates the simple narrative of
22:16discovered fraud and the state as the
22:18dispenser of justice. The element that
22:21makes historians, economists, and legal
22:24experts continue to argue, even today,
22:26whether the expropriation was the right
22:29decision or if there were alternatives
22:32that were discarded too soon, because
22:34inside that fraudulent financial
22:36structure, there were real companies:
22:39centennial wineries that produced
22:41genuine quality wines sold in demanding
22:44markets, hotels with solid operating
22:47histories, and experienced staff. Food
22:50distribution companies with contracts
22:52and market share, pharmaceutical
22:54laboratories with their own products
22:57and specialized technical teams.
23:00Companies that, once separated from the
23:02dead weight of the holding company's
23:04debt and managed with criteria of
23:06operational efficiency, could have been
23:08viable and profitable businesses. The
23:11State that assumed the management of
23:12those companies found itself in an
23:14extraordinarily difficult position. On
23:17one hand, it had the political pressure
23:19to solve the problem as soon as
23:20possible and prove that the
23:22expropriation had been worth it. On the
23:25other, it had the responsibility to
23:26preserve jobs and the value of the
23:28assets as much as possible. And on yet
23:32another hand, it faced the practical
23:34reality that managing 300 companies in
23:36completely different sectors, with the
23:38urgency of the crisis and without the
23:40time or resources to perform detailed,
23:42company-by-company analyses, was a task
23:44beyond the real capabilities of any
23:46public administration in the world. The
23:51result was that some decisions made
23:53during the years of state management of
23:55the holding were questionable and, in
23:57some cases, clearly incorrect.
24:00Companies that could have survived with
24:03proper management were liquidated with
24:05excessive haste. Sales made under
24:08unnecessary time pressure produced
24:10prices that did not reflect the real
24:12value of the assets. And throughout
24:16that process, workers who had done
24:18their jobs honestly every day paid a
24:20cost they had no reason to pay.
24:23Meanwhile, the protagonist of the drama
24:26kept fighting from exile. In May 1983,
24:30with legal proceedings advancing
24:32against him and the real possibility of
24:35an arrest warrant becoming increasingly
24:37imminent, Ruiz Mateos left Spain and
24:39settled in London. From there, for
24:44years, he waged what was perhaps the
24:46most sustained and personalized media
24:48campaign in Spanish business history.
24:52He gave dozens of interviews, published
24:54statements, organized events, and
24:56appeared on television programs in
24:58several countries. He built with almost
25:01obsessive dedication the image of the
25:03exiled businessman, the man whose
25:05life's work the State had stolen and
25:07who was persecuted because he
25:09represented something the socialists
25:11could not tolerate. The success of
25:14Spanish Christian capitalism. In 1989,
25:17from his London exile, he made a
25:20decision that was surprising even to
25:22those who knew him well. He ran for the
25:27European Parliament elections with a
25:29party he founded specifically for that
25:31purpose and which he named with the
25:33same lack of modesty that had
25:35characterized his entire career: Ruiz
25:37Mateos. The campaign was a spectacle in
25:41itself, with the candidate appearing
25:44before his followers in outfits that
25:46changed from one event to the next,
25:48always carrying a symbolic weight that
25:50his followers interpreted with
25:52enthusiasm. His speech mixed legal
25:56arguments about the illegality of the
25:58expropriation, religious references to
26:00the persecution of the righteous, and
26:03emotional appeals to the solidarity of
26:05those who felt mistreated by a state
26:07that favored the powerful. He obtained
26:12300,000 votes and a seat in the
26:13European Parliament, enough to gain
26:15parliamentary immunity and be able to
26:17return to Spain without the immediate
26:19risk of arrest. And the image of that
26:23return remained forever engraved in the
26:25Spanish collective memory. He showed up
26:30at the Congress of Deputies dressed in
26:32a full clown suit, wig, makeup, and
26:35enormous shoes. It was such an
26:39extravagant statement that it was
26:41difficult to interpret within the usual
26:43frameworks of political communication.
26:47But when they asked him, Ruiz Mateos
26:49explained it with a logic. that within
26:52his own system of reference was
26:54perfectly coherent. The clown was him,
26:57yes, but the real comic spectacle was
27:00the one starring those who had stolen
27:03his company. International media
27:06reproduced the image with a mixture of
27:08astonishment and amusement. In Spain,
27:11it generated a divided reaction. Those
27:14who were hostile toward him saw it as a
27:16tasteless spectacle. Those who were
27:19sympathetic toward him saw it as an act
27:21of irreverent bravery. And the vast
27:24majority who did not have a fixed
27:26position simply did not know quite what
27:28to think. The years that followed were
27:33a whirlwind of judicial proceedings,
27:35partial convictions, appeals, periods
27:37of imprisonment, and provisional
27:39releases. The technical complexity of
27:44the alleged crimes made the trials
27:46extraordinarily slow and difficult to
27:48follow for anyone without specialized
27:50financial information. The defense
27:54attorneys were brilliant and had
27:56unlimited resources. Each piece of
27:59evidence presented by the prosecution
28:01was countered with alternative
28:03interpretations developed by experts
28:05with impressive credentials. Throughout
28:09the 90s and the early years of the 21st
28:12century, the convictions piled up:
28:14embezzlement, fraudulent conveyance,
28:17forgery of commercial documents, and
28:19crimes against the public treasury. He
28:24spent time in prison, in some cases
28:26under circumstances his followers
28:28presented as humiliating for someone of
28:30his age and status. He was released on
28:33provisional bail, prosecuted again, the
28:36cycle repeated several times, and
28:38throughout that time he never once
28:40publicly acknowledged any
28:42responsibility for what had occurred.
28:47But then comes the second act of this
28:50story, which proves that the Rumasa
28:52tragedy was not a unique historical
28:55accident, but the manifestation of a
28:57logic that persists with disconcerting
29:00tenacity. In the 2000s, the children of
29:05Ruiz Mateos built a new business group;
29:08they called it Nueva Rumasa. The growth
29:12strategy followed exactly the same
29:14pattern that had characterized the
29:16first one. Aggressive expansion,
29:20extreme diversification, and raising
29:23external financing with promises of
29:25returns that were extraordinarily
29:27attractive in the context of low
29:29interest rates that characterized the
29:31Spanish economy during the first decade
29:34of the century. This time, instead of
29:38relying mainly on their own banks, the
29:41group issued promissory notes aimed at
29:43the general public, debt instruments
29:45that promised annual returns of between
29:488 and 12%. In an environment where
29:52traditional bank deposits were paying
29:54between 2 and 4%. For an older person
29:59with accumulated savings looking to
30:01supplement their pension with
30:02additional income, those notes were
30:04extraordinarily tempting. The National
30:08Securities Market Commission issued
30:10warnings. Specialized financial
30:13analysts published reports pointing out
30:16the inconsistencies between the
30:18promised returns and the businesses
30:20backing them. Specialized media raised
30:24their voices, but those warnings
30:26reached a limited audience with
30:28technical language that made them
30:30difficult for the non-specialized
30:32investor to understand. And the group,
30:35for its part, was skillful in its
30:36communication with potential investors.
30:40The Ruiz Mateos surname remained
30:42synonymous with large companies, with
30:44Spanish business ambition, with a story
30:47that, seen from a convenient distance,
30:49could be interpreted as that of a man
30:51who had built something enormous and
30:54whom the State had unfairly persecuted.
30:58Tens of thousands of people put their
31:00savings into those notes. In 2011, when
31:04the group declared bankruptcy, the
31:07total hole exceeded 800 million euros.
31:11Those affected organized victim
31:13platforms, protested in the streets,
31:15and filed complaints with the
31:17authorities. Many of them were elderly
31:21people who had invested a significant
31:23portion of their life savings—the
31:25result of decades of work and
31:27deprivation—in an instrument that
31:29promised returns the market could not
31:31sustainably support. 28 years after the
31:36original expropriation, with the entire
31:38history documented, with convictions
31:41published in official bulletins, and
31:43with analyses accessible online for
31:45anyone who wanted to look, the family's
31:48second generation had managed to do
31:50essentially the same thing as the
31:52father: on a smaller scale, but with
31:54equally devastating consequences for
31:56their direct victims. How is it
32:00possible that this happened? How could
32:03a scheme that was documented, analyzed,
32:05judged, and condemned be repeated? The
32:09answer requires understanding something
32:11about the psychology of financial
32:13decisions that economics books rarely
32:16address with sufficient depth. When
32:20someone offers a return that
32:21significantly exceeds what the market
32:23offers, the rational response is to
32:25suspect that something doesn't add up.
32:28But the human response, the response
32:31that most people give in practice, is
32:33to look for reasons why, in this
32:35specific case, it could be legitimate.
32:39It is a psychological defense mechanism
32:42that protects our image as reasonable
32:44people who do not fall for scams. If we
32:47decide to invest, we need to believe
32:49that we have made a sensible decision.
32:52And to believe that, our mind builds
32:54arguments that justify the decision.
32:57The return is high because the company
33:00has a genuine competitive advantage.
33:03The Ruiz-Mateos surname guarantees
33:05proven business experience. The
33:09analysts' warnings are exaggerated or
33:11motivated by conflicting interests.
33:14This time it is different. There are
33:17always reasons to believe that this
33:19time it is different, until it turns
33:21out it was not. And this brings us to
33:25the reflection that this story has been
33:26demanding for decades. A reflection
33:29that is uncomfortable precisely because
33:31it points toward something that goes
33:33far beyond the specific individuals who
33:35starred in these events. The story of
33:38Rumasa is not the story of an
33:40exceptional case; it is the story of a
33:43logic that repeats itself in different
33:45countries, in different eras, with
33:48different names and different figures,
33:50but with the same fundamental structure
33:53. A charismatic operator with a
33:56powerful personal narrative. Promises
33:59of returns that cannot be sustained
34:01over time. A financial structure
34:04designed to make external analysis
34:06difficult. Oversight mechanisms that
34:09operate with a delay or do not function
34:11at all. And when the system collapses,
34:14victims who did not have enough
34:15information to protect themselves or
34:17who, having it, made the decision to
34:20ignore it. Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat,
34:24Madoff, Wirecard. The stories are
34:28different in the details, but identical
34:30in the logic. And the question that
34:34inevitably arises when studying them is
34:36whether there is anything that
34:38oversight systems and the individuals
34:40who participate in them could do
34:42differently to interrupt the cycle
34:44before the victims pay the price. The
34:49honest answer is yes. There are things
34:52that could be done differently.
34:54Supervisory mechanisms with greater
34:56political independence and better
34:58equipped with technical resources.
35:01Liability regimes for auditors who sign
35:03off on financial statements that turn
35:05out to be misleading. Financial
35:09education that equips investors with
35:11the basic tools to critically evaluate
35:14promises of extraordinary returns.
35:17Institutional culture that rewards
35:19officials who speak up about problems
35:22before they turn into crises. But we
35:25must also be honest about the limits of
35:27these solutions. Supervisory systems
35:29are always lagging behind those trying
35:31to evade them. Financial complexity can
35:34grow faster than the regulatory
35:36capacity to understand it. And human
35:39psychology, with its tendency toward
35:41self-deception, is a structural
35:43vulnerability that no regulation can
35:45completely eliminate. José María Ruiz
35:50Mateos died in August 2015 in a clinic
35:53in Germany. He was 83 years old. Until
35:59the end, according to those around him
36:01in his final days, he maintained his
36:03conviction that he was innocent and
36:05that history would eventually recognize
36:07it. He died believing he was the
36:10greatest businessman Spain had ever
36:11produced and the greatest victim of the
36:13Spanish State. He was neither of those
36:16two things; he was something more
36:18complicated. A man who had built
36:21something real on fraudulent
36:22foundations, who had created real jobs
36:24with money that did not belong to him.
36:29Who had given life to companies that
36:31truly existed while financially
36:33destroying them, who had convinced
36:35thousands of people to trust him with
36:37their resources based on a narrative
36:39that mixed genuine elements with
36:41impossible promises, and who in the end
36:43left without having understood, or
36:45without having wanted to understand,
36:47the damage he had caused. There is an
36:52element in all of this that is
36:54especially disturbing if one stops to
36:55think about it calmly. There is reason
37:00to believe that Ruiz Mateos sincerely
37:02believed his own version of the facts;
37:04that, in his mind, the financial
37:06architecture he had built was a
37:08creative but legitimate system of
37:10business management; that the loans
37:13between group companies were normal
37:15transactions in any diversified holding
37:17; that the optimistic valuations of
37:20assets reflected a bold business vision
37:22and not mere accounting fictions; that
37:24the government, by intervening, had
37:28destroyed something perfectly viable
37:30under the pretext of irregularities
37:32that any company of that size might
37:35have. This possibility, that of
37:38self-deception on that scale, is
37:40perhaps the most unsettling of all the
37:42possible interpretations of this story,
37:44because it suggests that the line
37:46between aggressive entrepreneurship and
37:48fraud is not always clearly drawn in
37:50the mind of the person crossing it.
37:54That there are people capable of
37:56convincing themselves that the rules
37:58which apply to others do not apply to
38:00them, that faith in one's own vision
38:02can become so powerful that it erases
38:04the awareness of the harm that vision
38:07produces in others. That self-deception
38:10, when it reaches a certain scale, can
38:13be indistinguishable from deliberate
38:15deception. And that turns the story of
38:17Ruiz Mateos into something more than
38:19just the tale of a corporate criminal.
38:22It turns it into a story about the
38:24limits of human self-knowledge, about
38:26the mind's ability to protect itself
38:28from truths that are too uncomfortable
38:30to accept. There is one number that
38:34sums up better than any other the
38:36magnitude of what happened between 1983
38:38and the years that followed. The total
38:42cost of the state-managed operation of
38:44Rumasa, including bank bailouts, losses
38:47from company sales, and management
38:49during the period of public ownership,
38:52exceeded 3 billion euros at the time.
38:56An amount that represented a
38:57significant fraction of the Spanish
38:59state budget during those years. That
39:02money came out of the pockets of all
39:04Spaniards, not just those who had
39:06something to do with Rumasa, all of
39:09them, because when a financial system
39:11collapses on that scale, the taxpayers
39:13always pay the bill. And if we add the
39:18cost of the collapse of Nueva Rumasa in
39:212011 with the 800 million euros lost by
39:23private savers, the total bill for the
39:26Rumasa phenomenon, across its two
39:28generations, far exceeds 4 billion
39:31euros. In human terms, those are tens
39:36of thousands of people who lost part or
39:38all of their savings, workers who lost
39:40their jobs, and companies that ceased
39:42to exist because they were part of a
39:44structure that collapsed. Families who
39:48changed their life plans because
39:50reality turned out to be very different
39:52from what they had been promised. Those
39:55people are not a statistic; they are
39:58the true human cost of what happened.
40:02150,000 workers woke up on February 23,
40:051983, not knowing that their company
40:09had ceased to exist as they knew it.
40:14They had done nothing wrong, had made
40:16no fraudulent decisions, had signed no
40:18illegal papers; they were simply part
40:21of a structure that someone had built
40:23on foundations that could not hold. And
40:27when that structure collapsed, they
40:29paid part of the bill. That has no
40:33technical name in economics textbooks,
40:36but in real life, it carries a weight
40:38that numbers alone cannot fully capture
40:41. The largest business holding in
40:45Spanish history took 30 years to build
40:48and 24 hours to disappear, but the
40:50damage it left behind lasted for
40:52decades, and the story it tells, if one
40:55knows how to read it correctly, does
40:58not speak only of the past; it speaks
41:00of the present and, likely, the future.
41:05Because as long as there are promises
41:08of impossible returns presented with
41:10enough conviction and charisma, as long
41:13as there are oversight systems
41:14permeable to the pressure of economic
41:17power, and as long as the human need to
41:19believe in success remains more
41:21powerful than the discipline of
41:23verifying promises before trusting them
41:26, there will always be someone willing
41:28to build the next Rumasa with a new
41:30name, a new face, and a new narrative.
41:34Adapted to the historical moment and
41:36the expectations of the public of its
41:39time, but with the same underlying
41:41logic, the same circular structure of
41:43promises that feed on themselves, and
41:46the same inevitable end when the circle
41:48, as always happens, comes to a stop.
41:51The question is not whether there will
41:53be another version of this story. The
41:55question is whether, when it arrives,
41:57anyone will be paying enough attention.

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