Interesting

A Spanish businessman has bequeathed the lion’s share of his fortune to residents of the small Spanish village where he was born and grew up.

When 98-year-old Antonino Fernández died earlier this year, his estate was valued at around $210 million — and now it transpires that he has left most of it to be shared among the 80 residents of a town called Cerezales del Condado in the northwest of Spain, reports the Telegraph.

Fernández grew up in the village in the province of León, the 11th of 13 children, and his childhood was marked by poverty. At 14 he left school in order to work in his parents’ fields.

At 32, he left Spain for Mexico on the invitation of an uncle to help run the family business, Grupo Modelo, where he later founded Corona beer, says the Telegraph.

That was 1949, and over the following years, he worked his way through the company, eventually becoming chairman in the 1970s. He only stepped out of the role at 87, when he passed the reins on to his nephew.

“I do not know what we would have done without Antonino,” Cerezales del Condado bar owner Maximino Sanchez told a local paper.

Fernández was already a highly decorated philanthropist whose legacy includes several charities that help the disabled to find employment.