Dreams of greatness of the 'stiff' mecha meat

Early 90s. Seville. An ambitious and enterprising young man travels, several times a week, a hundred kilometers with his car to buy cheeses in the Sierra that he later sells in the Andalusian capital by halves. No permits, no papers.

A couple of years later, in 1993, he opened his first more or less legal business, a store on Mariano Benlliure street, in the Nervión neighborhood, near the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán stadium, the Sevilla FC stadium, where he sells, among other products, potato omelette. A classic.

The ambitious and enterprising young man is none other than José Antonio Marín Ponce, the same that 30 years after those beginnings between cheeses and tortillas achieves success with a company that manufactures and sells processed meats and responds to the name of Magrudis. Under the brand La Mechá - orange and white letters on a black background and the silhouette of a pig -, he cooks in his ship of the Industrial Estate El Pino, in Seville, meatloaf, loin with sherry and paprika, sausages and black pudding and even pork rinds that gets to place in the lines of large supermarket chains while your business grows and grows .

José Luis, a former partner whom Crónica locates in the bar he runs in a town in Seville and who partnered with the owner of Magrudis in 2005, remembers Marín's ambition well. "He was ambitious, he wanted to grow up, he wanted greatness" , recalls this hospitality entrepreneur. And he did it, more or less.

But everything starts to twist at the end of 2018 because of a bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes, which sneaks into its mechadas and begins to wreak havoc. Already in February Marín knows that he is taking his consumers to the hospital , but he covers it as he can and moves on. As he had always done, since selling cheese he brought from the Sierra. In the month of August the trail of listeriosis that leaves its shredded meat is of such magnitude that all the alarms jump and the flourishing business with which he always dreamed and that he had finally managed to stand up collapses, exposing the shame of an almost pirate company that had mocked laws and controls and has ended up being responsible for the largest outbreak of listeriosis in the history of Spain, with three fatalities, seven abortions and more than 200 affected .

Magrudis and Marín leave public anonymity and the scrutiny of the authorities and the media reveals a host of irregularities that cause shock. Although it was established in 2013, it is not until 2015 when it is registered in the Sanitary Registry of Food Companies, an essential requirement for its activity. But it does not have an activity license, the only thing he had presented to the City of Seville is a responsible statement that had little or nothing to do with the reality of his business. As if that were not enough, it raffles inspections and expands its facilities, of course, without building permission. And all under the baton of José Antonio Marín, although legally the company belongs to his son Sandro. Another son, Mario, is placed as administrator of another company, Elaborados Cárnicos Mario SLU, although both are nothing more than the father's frontmen.

That ambitious young man is now behind bars in a prison in Seville, accompanied by his eldest son and both accused of a crime against public health and three crimes of manslaughter due to recklessness, as well as abortions and injuries. Thus, in a cell, he has finished a personal and professional career marked by failures and pufos that, again and again, he managed to leave behind in a permanent flight forward. Until now.

"I wanted to be the Amancio Ortega of Seville," says his former partner, who had not known anything about Marin for eight years and who still does not leave his astonishment at the fate of that commercial that one day knocked on his door to offer sliced for his bar and with whom he was working friendship and trust until they embarked together in a business that, like all those who owned the owner of Magrudis, went to the badge.

It was not for lack of desire or, of course, ambition. José Luis says that his partner's idea went beyond opening a bar. He wanted to launch a chain, a franchise in the style of the then successful Café de Indias with at least seven or eight establishments in the first year alone. And that despite the fact that "he was a stiff, like me," who could barely disburse the 3,000 euros it cost to open the doors of that cafeteria in Mairena in a room rented to an acquaintance of Marin.

The adventure did not last more than four or five months. That did not work due to lack of clientele and because the waiter who served him turned out to be a drug addict who kept the money in the box . José Luis forced the closure against the opinion of his partner and the relationship was touched, until a short time later he disappeared and even stopped selling him at his bar.

Today José Luis breathes with relief for not having continued with that society, whose legal procedures and accounting were carried out by José Antonio.

When he appeared in his life, Marín was the owner of Embutidos El Patio, although he had already begun his practice of putting the business on behalf of his relatives, in this case, his wife, Encarnación Rodríguez, who has always been linked, like that her sister, Isabel, to the business of the father of the family.

Embutidos El Patio was the third related company José Antonio and in 2012 it was declared insolvent after it broke years ago leaving a trail of debts. Before, he had started Sanmasur, the business he set up in the Nervión neighborhood, and which, yes, was in his name. In 2004 there is an uncollectible credit in the Mercantile Registry , an inscription that is made when it is considered impossible for a company to pay its debts.

Sierra Encina SL was his next business venture, in which his name no longer appeared to avoid creditors and he named his wife and sister-in-law. The company was registered in the Mercantile Registry in 1996 and in 2003, seven years later, it was officially declared delinquent . It was in those years when he partnered with José Luis and set up what would be his fourth company on average with his partner and with the same result.

After each pufo, José Antonio Marín put land in between , lowered the blind of the business and disappeared to appear in another place, in another polygon and with a different name. Until he reached the Polygon El Pino, where he opened Magrudis and, then, Elaborated Cárnicos Mario, two twin companies with whom his ambition seemed to have reached his goal.

What he did not imagine is that this time the traps with which he had been building his success would cost him so expensive and he could not run away. Neither forward nor anywhere else.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project