Although the El Pajar cement plant, in the south of Gran Canaria, has a Canarian name, its owners are the Masaveu Corporation, the Asturian group that has 50% of the plant compared to another 50% that is from Brazil. Canaries are the party owners who appear as owners but are really pawns sent from the Peninsula. The island managers have managed to ensure that, being an industry, there has never been a strike at this plant.
This entire conglomerate that moves 40 million euros a year in the south of Gran Canaria is a product of the life of the Masaveu patriarch, Elías Masaveu Rivell, who was a merchant, banker, and promoter of important industrial firms. Elías died in 1924, decades before the company arrived on the islands at the hands of the Falange technocrats.
According to José Ramón García López in his book 'The merchant bankers in the Spanish banking system. Studies of Asturian banking houses in the 1987th century ', 1860, he was one of the most prominent directors of Casa Masaveu, which he joined at its beginnings, and which he promoted until it became a first-rate firm . In 1885, when he was barely thirteen years old, he moved from his hometown to Oviedo to work in the fabric sales business that his uncle Pedro Masaveu Rovira—the initiator of the saga—had in said business. city. There he became familiar with commercial techniques, and also with banking, as the house would gradually open up to “banking” operations, which was common practice in the best establishments of that type. He began to run the house in XNUMX, upon the death of Pedro Masaveu Rovira, and he did so with such success that, if he had paved the way by establishing a prestigious trading house, Elías consolidated and multiplied the businesses, which went beyond the commercial framework to extend to the industrial and financial.
Under his direction, Casa Masaveu participated in many of the most relevant business initiatives that took place in Asturias in the final years of the 1887th century and the beginning of the 1891th, within the framework of the investment dynamism that characterized that time. Supported by other Castilian citizens trained and integrated into the house—Martín Comas Farell and Domingo Juliana Albert—, Elías Masaveu participated in the founding or financing of multiple companies created to engage in industrial or service activities, with purposes as diverse as water supply, food, banking and finance, cement, commerce, construction, metallurgy, transportation, etc. The most important were: Economic Railway Company of Asturias (1895), Oviedo Tram Company (1898), Sociedad Industrial Asturiana Santa Bárbara (1898), Sociedad Popular Ovetense (1900), SA Tudela Veguín (1900), Fábrica de El Águila Negra Beers (1900), La Industrial de Ventanielles (1900), Constructora Gijonesa (1901), Asturian Union of Puerto del Musel (1918), Spanish Society of Vegetable Oils (1918), Coal Mills of Veguín and Olloniego (XNUMX), Carboneras of Valdecuna (XNUMX), etc. Casa Masaveu was present in the constitution of all these public limited companies, represented in most cases by its boss, Elías Masaveu Rivell, who, either as president or as a member, was part of their boards of directors.
But if all the firms mentioned were relevant, we should especially highlight what was their emblematic industrial achievement, which would become the core of the house's businesses: SA Tudela Veguín, the first artificial cement factory in Spain, founded in 1898. Located in the town of the same name, at the foot of limestone quarries and close to coal mines, its rational location allowed it to meet the large demand for cement generated by the urbanization process and the construction of the port of El Musel.
The multitude of positions and industrial businesses did not separate Elías Masaveu from commercial affairs, and - consistent with his long-standing connection with retail trade, which had been the origin of the house - he not only kept the weaving establishment open, but carried out a new and innovative achievement: the opening in Oviedo of the Gran Salón Bazar (1905), a modern establishment in the style of the great magazines of the European capitals.
In the financial field, it extensively developed the banking function in its parent company (which, since 1892, would operate under the name Masaveu y Compañía). From it, and together with other entities, he created the banking house Juliana y Compañía in 1899, and in 1920 the banks of Oviedo and Gijonés de Crédito. The subsequent integration of both banks into the Banco Español de Crédito would lead to the permanent presence of a member of Casa Masaveu on its board of directors.
