Villarreal CF can make history tonight. The club from Castellón faces Manchester United in its first European final after years of competition stalking a great sporting success.
After 24 years at the helm of the Yellow Submarine, Fernando Roig – the longest-serving president of La Liga – is experiencing the honey of success that comes from the simple fact of having reached this final for a club from a town of just 51,000 inhabitants that lives with euphoria on moment. Only 2,000 lucky people have been able to travel to Gdansk (Poland) to follow the match due to coronavirus restrictions, but the Villarreal president’s aspiration is clear: he wants to win.
The ‘groguets’ will not have it easy since the ‘Red Devils’ have not achieved great success since 2017 with José Mourinho and are hungry for titles, but the Castellón squad is ready to fight: “it’s our moment”.
Far away is May 1997 when at a meal with Pascual Font de Mora, then president of the club, in the now-defunct Avenida 41 restaurant, the transfer of the entity was closed. Roig had previously received the refusal by the Castellón Sports Club to disembark the businessman, then known for being one of the Valencia CF shareholders
Although the spotlight has always been on the work of his brother Juan at Mercadona, Fernando has forged an industrial empire in the province of Castellón around two key sectors: ceramics and energy.
Roig has managed to become the main producer of tiles, one of the largest marketers of natural gas and the main promoter of renewable energies in the Valencian Community.
To achieve this, he has had his 9% stake in Mercadona from which he has been building his holding until rising, on his own merits, to 27th place in the ranking of the greatest Spanish fortunes prepared by Forbes.
Its heritage company Nomar Patrimonial centralizes its holdings in the main Spanish ceramic group: Pamesa.
The company competes with Porcelanosa in the manufacture of flooring, a business in which it also controls companies such as Tau Cerámica, Novarti Cerámica and Keramex, among others. Recently, Roig also acquired 50% of Argenta and Cifre, but these companies are not part of his business group as they do not have a controlling interest.
This privileged position in the tile sector has allowed the businessman to practically silently become one of the main entrepreneurs in the Spanish gas sector.
Through its subsidiary Incogas, the president of Villarreal and Pamesa has conquered a market share of 1.24% in one of the most difficult years for the sector, according to data for the last quarter of 2020 from the CNMC.
This percentage places the businessman’s company in the orbit of giants such as Engie (1.97%), Galp (1.66%) or nipping at the heels of Sonatrach herself (1.38%).
Although the figure may seem low, we must not forget that 70% of the Spanish gas market share is in the hands of six companies and the company that manages supplies his company, other tile companies in the area and has even entered in the supply to domestic customers, to whom it also offers electricity.
Incogas is already the 14th national gas marketer and one of the sponsors of Villarreal CF Interestingly, the company has among its assets a 2.76% stake in Unimot Gas, a Polish gas company.
Fernando Roig also has an important presence in the renewables business. Together with his partner Francisco Fenollar and with Acciona, they maintain the main operator of wind energy in the Valencian Community.
Renomar currently has 493 MW installed and has projects to develop another 300 MW, as well as plans to grow in much of the national territory, as well as diversify into photovoltaic energy.
The company, like Pamesa, came up for sale but Roig ultimately kept his stake.
Throughout these years, Villarreal’s presidency has also had its difficult moments. The relegation to the second division or the scandal that was generated by the sponsorship of more than 20 million received by the Castellón Airport club.
In fact, the last one has probably occurred this last week when the Castellón Prosecutor’s Office within a case that is instructed against the former president of the Castellón Provincial Council, Carlos Fabra, has included the businessman for alleged payments of several checks to the ex-politician popular in the concept of personal loans.
In any case, it should be remembered that Roig sacrificed 2.4% of Mercadona to clean up the accounts of the yellow club and Pamesa in 2012 after having managed to reach the semifinal of the UEFA Champions League in the 2005-2006 season or the League runner-up (2007/2008).
Today almost ten years after that difficult economic moment for the club, the businessman can show off a record that goes through 21 seasons in the First Division in which only seven times the submarine has missed European appointments.
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