Pat Nolan Blog

For a brief moment…..

Not so after all.

It seems that Corona founder Antonio Fernandez Rodriquez, who died at the age of 99 last August, did not actually make everyone in his native village of Cerezales del Condado instant millionaires upon his demise as widely reported by leaving the 80 or so remaining villagers in the North of Spain town €200 million of his personal fortune.

Born there in poverty in 1917 Fernandez emigrated with his wife to Mexico in 1949 to begin a new life, one that was to make him a multi-millionaire via the Grupo Modelo Brewery which he helped make a global phenomenon. In so doing he also established the Corona Extra beer brand globally. This now forms part of the AB InBev portfolio.

Alas, it fell to the Communications Director for Cerezales del Condado’s cultural centre to break the news that media reports of Fernandez’s generosity had been considerably wide of the mark. The story had gone global and had got “completely out of hand” according to Lucía Alaejos from the Fundanción Cerezales Antonino y Cinia in Cerezales.

We don’t know which would be worse for the (still relatively) poor villagers: hearing the good news followed by the bad, or not hearing anything at all…

Antonio Fernandez established the Corona Extra beer brand globally.

Antonio Fernandez established the Corona Extra beer brand globally.


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