Thursday, March 28

The tycoon of La Antilla


He urbanized the beach of La Antilla, exploited mines, signed Massiel exclusively as soon as he won Eurovision so that, for a cache of one million pesetas, he would sing ‘La, la, la’ exclusively in his hotel establishments and in 1968 he became the first Spaniard to receive the Tourist Merit Medal. His name was Juan Asensio Méndez, he was born in Valverde del Fresno in 1914, he died in 2003, he belonged to the Chicato valverdeira saga and he is one of the most outstanding and unknown Extremaduran historical entrepreneurs.

From a biography like his, it is said that it would be enough for a Netflix series: he lost his father when he was very young and at the age of seven he began to work taking care of pigs, his uncle Ignacio took him out of the shanties and placed him in construction as carrier of water… And the Civil War came… Juan was a member of the Socialist Youth and with those ideas he went into combat, but he was captured by the Francoist troops, they gave him the choice between becoming a Falangist or being shot and his instinct to survival made him a fervent Josephantonian. “I ended up being convinced of the National Movement,” he declared two years before he died.

The fight ends, he returns to Valverde del Fresno and begins a new stage marked by tungsten. World War II converted this mineral, which was extracted from the mines of La Raya, into an indispensable product for the war industry. German and English agents appear in the Sierra de Gata buying wolfram: the Germans because they needed it and the English to pay for it at the price of gold and that it would cost their enemies more. Juan takes advantage of the tessitura, brings smuggled ore from Portugal and enriches himself with tungsten.

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But the world war is over, nobody needs wólfram anymore, construction was stalled in Valverde and Juan decides to change his mind. It is the 1950s and a friend of Acebo tells him about an immense virgin sandbank in Huelva, where a new phenomenon could develop: beach tourism that was already emerging. Juan Asensio did not hesitate and went to Lepe, settled next to the then unknown beach of La Antilla and began to buy very cheap land near the sea, which was empty and not even suitable for cultivation.

As he was a self-made man, he applies his lifestyle to the real estate business and succeeds: he buys the land, develops it, builds it, sells it… He designs the electrification of the plots and the water supply network and He pays it all out of pocket. It establishes commercial relationships with German and English promoters, associates with Spanish financiers and builders, has the favor of the Franco regime and its mayors and ends up sowing La Antilla with chalets, flats and bungalows and turning it into “the beach of Extremadura”.

He will be the general director of ten companies from Huelva related to the real estate, hospitality and advertising sectors. He will direct the mining company Estaños Españoles, which will exploit deposits in Logrosán, Salamanca, Madrid and three in Cáceres: Trasquilón, Maruta and Los Arenales. And in those companies, his partners will be people from his family like his cousins ​​Marcelino, José Simón ‘Chilla’ and Jesús Germán ‘Gaixas’.

In 1968, after receiving the tourist merit medal, he hired Massiel exclusively the day after he won Eurovision. Juan doesn’t stop: he keeps building, he builds golf courses and he doesn’t miss the parties in his town, where he finances musical performances. He dies at the age of 89, being unknown to his countrymen, who spend the summer on that ‘extremaduran beach’ that another Extremaduran invented.

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