globalmadridonline: PROFILE: AMANCIO ORTEGA, The Boy Behind the $37.5 Billion Fortune

          Amancio Ortega, or Choliño as his mother called him, is the youngest of the three children of a poor railway worker who earned 300 pesetas ($2.30 or approx. €1.80) a month. "And don't tell me that wasn't so bad in those days," he says. "Three hundred pesetas, then and now, is no way to live. It just won't make both ends meet."

          It was after the Spanish Civil War, dubbed the "dress rehearsal" for World War II.

          And yet the boy was enormously proud of his father, of how well he did his lowly job.

One day after school he accompanied his mother Doña Josefa to the grocery store. To his utter humiliation he heard the man behind the counter tell Doña Josefa that he was sorry but he could no longer extend her credit.

Deeply hurt, Amancio vowed then and there that this was the last time his mother would ever be demeaned, a mother he so adored that to this day the sheer memory of her could bring tears to his eyes. He dropped out of school and became a gofer at the nondescript Gala shirt shop in A Coruña, a port city in northwestern Spain where he lived with his family. At twelve years old he couldn't be hired formally. Choliño would have to wait till he was older to sign his first bona fide work contract.

From Gala he moved to a better shop, La Maja, and there he fell in love with the daughter of a moneyed client. The mother of the girl thought he was the son of the shop owner and when she found out he was only a salesclerk she nipped the budding affair, and no remorse.

Choliño, a sensitive child, admits that the injustice of the snob helped strenghten his resolve to make it big. He says it wasn't all for the money though he, who knew from first hand experience how it felt to go to bed on a grumbling stomach, would, without any hesitation, confess to giving due importance to money.

Choliño

          Now 76, he owns a fashion empire (Inditex) that has more than 100,000 employees in 78 countries around the world. It's of course one of the world's biggest clothiers; net sales on the first half of 2011 alone totalled $8.07 (€6.21) billion. With Inditex shares rising 20% in that year, his fortune increased by $6.5 (€5) billion.

          But Inditex isn't all there is in the billionaire's holdings. He's into prime real estate (recent acquisitions include the Picasso Tower in one of Madrid's posh addresses for $536/€412 million and the Zara store space on Fifth Avenue corner 52nd Street, between St. Patrick's Cathedral and MOMA, New York, for $324/€247 million). He's in the hotel business. He co-owns a soccer team; is the proprietor of Casas Novas, reputedly the best horse-jumping circuit in Europe, etc.

Choliño, the founder of Inditex, has three children: Sandra and Marcos, by his first wife Rosalia Mena, a self-made billionaire in her own right, and Marta, said to be the apple of his eye, by his present wife Flori Pérez.

Forbes magazine's 2012 listings rank Choliño the fifth richest man in the world, and Spain's richest, with an estimated wealth of $37.5 (€29) billion. He's also one of the world's most reclusive tycoons. And one of the most unaffected? He sure looks like it despite his occasional temper outbursts. One of the most endearing things about him is his ready smile.

¡Ole, Choliño!