A long-running trade battle with the King of Morocco over a variety of tangerines has put Cordoba’s Eurosemillas back in the headlines in recent weeks. On this small agri-food giant, dedicated to the management of plant innovations and owned by a large Spanish fortune, the insurance magnate Modesto Álvarez Otero has been planning the shadow of Opus Dei for decades.
In September, the General Court of the EU (TGUE) upheld the protection of Nadorcott, a variety of mandarin owned by the King of Morocco, and rejected Eurosemillas’ appeal, which claimed it did not meet the requirement of novelty, in another chapter of the affair. an old dispute after which the millionaires are royalty of two varieties of this fruit: that of the Moroccan royal family, through the French company Nador Cott Protection, and the Tang Gold clementine, from Eurosemillas.
Both are protected by the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO), which in 2020 rejected as “unfounded” an appeal by the Cordoba company against the protection of the Moroccan variety. It is a question “of knowing whether the protection process was correct or not”, explains the CEO of Eurosemillas, Ana Cano, by telephone. “When it comes to a protected variety, it must have a protected variety title,” he adds, without giving more details on this approach.
The conflict originated in the 1980s. A Moroccan farmer, El Bachir Nadori, observed that his mandarin trees produced citrus fruits that could ripen without seeds. The result of random cross-pollination, the discovery attracted the attention of American and Moroccan researchers. And the variety was registered in 2006 by this company of Mohamed VI, whose assets Forbes estimated in 2015 at $5.7 billionwhich would place the monarch as the fifth richest person in Africa.
In 2013, Eurosemillas succeeded in having its Tango mandarins recognized by the Spanish authorities as a new variety, which it registered in the EU. And the dispute arose with Nador Cott and the Protected Plant Varieties Club, Valencian landowners with agreements with the King of Morocco. The CEO of Eurosemillas does not specify whether she has appealed the TGUE decision: “It is a decision that is still open,” she says.
The company he runs was established 55 years ago as a breeder seed producer and gradually added cotton fiber production and seed oil extraction. It is currently one of the world leaders in patents on seeds and plants. Without participating in the production of the product, it has more than 2,000 licenses of different varieties: mandarins (Kino, Tango Fruit), avocado (Luna), pistachios (Golden and Lost Hills) or strawberries (Belvedere). Tango is a seedless and late-producing mandarin: it is sold when the supply is almost non-existent on the markets. It was born from an agreement signed in 1989 with the University of California (United States) on patents in plant genetics.
With 200 employees, according to its website, Eurosemillas is very profitable. Its latest accounts in the commercial register, dating from 2022, include assets of over 200 million, sales of 77.5 million and profits of 21.5 million. With subsidiaries in Portugal, Turkey, the United States and Peru, and focused on Africa and Asia, it operates in more than 40 countries. It began its internationalization in 1977. It devotes around 8 million euros per year to innovation.
The company does not detail its shareholders. “It’s something private that I cannot reveal,” specifies its CEO. “In this house, what is public is published, and what is not, let those who want to say it,” he says.
The only partner for which there is public data in the commercial register is Sierra Oriel SL (20%), of Modesto Álvarez. Owner of 33% of Santalucía and former CEO, this discreet 82-year-old executive corresponds to the definition of the ultra-rich: people with assets exceeding $30 million. In his case, the figure is below, although far from the level of the King of Morocco.
El Mundo places Álvarez in 53rd place in the ranking of rich Spaniards, with a fortune of 1.175 million, the result of his participation in the insurance company and enormous real estate assets. The billionaire and landowner has become the largest shareholder in Primero H, a real estate agency which claims to “fight homelessness” with “social” housing. Álvarez has been director of Eurosemillas for over 30 years.
Since its creation, several leaders of the Cordoba company have maintained close ties with Opus Dei. The religious organization is going through a period of turmoil due to the accusation of its senior officials in Argentina for trafficking in women and labor exploitation, a case that could spread to other countries. The CEO of Eurosemillas is “surprised” that this link is mentioned, “a personal problem” with which the company “has absolutely nothing to do”.
His father and president of Eurosemillas, Juan Cano, was one of the pioneers in the launch of the Agrarian Family Schools (EFA), educational establishments linked to the Work that offer training in agriculture, livestock, agro- industry and environment.
As he explained in 2012 in an article on the official Opus website, “in 1962, a group of professionals and businessmen from rural areas created the Torrealba agriturismo in Córdoba. [hoy un colegio concertado de la Obra en Almodóvar del Río] and they asked me to participate in this initiative”: the process of modernization of the Spanish countryside required “a certain technical qualification” from its workers and caused a massive exodus to the cities.
“We cannot dispute the idealism of this group of professionals who conceived formation as the main engine of human and social development, relying on the idea of Saint Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei.
Born in 1939 and father of nine children, Cano is an agricultural engineer, with a degree in business administration, an MBA from IESE at the University of Navarra and a postgraduate degree in crop production from fats of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). . Shortly after the creation of the EFA, he was one of the founders of Eurosemillas in 1969. He contributed 25,000 pesetas, as he recalled to El País in 2020.
Many years later, until the end of the 90s, he chaired the Center d’Initiatives pour la Formation Agraire, SA (Cifasa), to which EFAS is attached, professional training centers which, “from the beginning of their activity, asked the Prelature of Opus Dei to appoint priests responsible for the spiritual care of people who voluntarily request it. This spiritual care is always carried out with the greatest respect for freedom of conscience”, they explain in your website.
They emphasize that they have trained more than 15,000 students over the last half century: the project “has grown until there are currently 24 EFAS in Spain”, more than 400 professionals and more than 8,000 students trained each year in regulated fields. education and unregulated.
Cifasa, without “any relationship” with Eurosemillas, underlines Ana Cano, has had several leaders linked to politics and certain companies linked to Opus. Juan Cano succeeded to the presidency of the former Francoist Minister of Commerce (1965-1969) Faustino García-Moncó, member of Opus dismissed by the dictator Francisco Franco after the outbreak of the Matesa scandal, for which he was condemned then pardoned. In Cifasa, Juan Cotino, symbol of the Opus Dei sector of the Valencian PP and the corruption of this party, presented himself as a representative before entering politics.
This year, Soledad García, former administrator of Enseñanza y Cultura SA, owner of the Opus Senara school in Madrid, resigned from her position as director of Cifasa. García was the representative of the Federation of Real Estate Entities, SA (Feisa), owner of Fomento de Centros de Enseñanza, the best-known brand of the Opus network of educational centers: 35 schools in 11 Communities, 20 Kid’s Garden nurseries and the Villanueva University from Madrid.
The founder of Asaja
Feisa, with assets of 143 million euros and controlled by three foundations, had as its representative in the 1990s another former director and shareholder of Eurosemillas at the time, José Antonio Puerta Orué. In those years, according to Insight View data, Eurosemillas had as advisor and brief president (1996) Felipe González de Canales de Córdoba, member of Opus, agricultural engineer, co-founder and first secretary general of the EFA. Founder in 1975 of what is today Asaja, the conservative peasant organization integrated into the CEOE from which the positions of Vox and the PP came, until 2013 he was advisor and secretary of Surcotton, a subsidiary of Eurosemillas .
Asaja filed a complaint which, in July 2013, led to a €5 million sanction from the now defunct National Competition Commission (CNC) to the Protected Plant Varieties Club for “anti-competitive conduct” in the management of Nadorcott mandarins . Eurosemillas was part of the case. The National Court has just canceled the fine and forced the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) to return it.
The late Professor Martín Salcines, promoter of the Córdoba Food Bank, historically linked to Opus, and former high-ranking officials like Julio Sánchez Fierro, also deceased, who chaired the Spanish Food Agency, also served on the board of directors of ‘Eurosemillas. or its Medicine subsidiaries and was undersecretary of the Ministry of Health under José María Aznar. He was vice-president of Eurogenetic, a subsidiary of Eurosemillas.
Another example is that of Eduardo Becerril, director general of the Ministries of Planning, Development and Industry during the dictatorship and the Transition. A state economist, he was a director of companies like Petronor and vice-president of Eurosemillas until his death in 2022. He was also a shareholder, according to the extraordinary meeting imposed in June by his two sons asking to join the Córdoba Board of Directors. farm. Its CEO does not specify whether they agreed: it is a “personal” question.
