Maverick entrepreneurs hardly ever disturbed the aristocratic cabal that traditionally controlled business and banking in Spain. The scion of a modest family sherry-making business based near Cádiz, José María Ruíz-Mateos achieved the seemingly impossible by looking to Britain to outdo the old order in Spanish commerce that up to that point had dismissed him with withering condescension.
In 1959, Ruíz-Mateos had the impudence to secure a deal — from under the noses of his more powerful and more well-heeled rivals — to supply sherry for Harveys of Bristol. Competitors claimed that he stole documents containing prices to win the contract. It was the first of many controversies that marked the ascent of one of Spain’s richest men, who would later be exposed as a fraudster,