The businessman Juan Miguel Villar Mir, founder of the industrial and real estate group that bears his surname and former vice-president of Real Madrid, died last Saturday in the capital of Spain at the age of 92, as reported in a press release from Ferroglobe, a company of the Villar Mir Group itself.
Born in Madrid in 1921, he graduated in Civil, Canal and Port Engineering and later became a doctor after being the best student in his class. He studied in the United States and obtained two professorships by competitive examination at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, being a member of four royal academies, being a full academician in Moral and Political Sciences and Engineering.
In 1967 he was appointed president of the National Fund for the Protection of Workers to later become president of Altos Hornos del Mediterraneo and Hidronitro Española.
Never being an official member of any political party, Villar Mir was Minister of Finance during the Government of Carlos Arias Navarro and the third vice president of Economic Affairs.
In the field of sports, Villar Mir briefly served as vice president of Real Madrid under the mandate of Ramón Mendoza. In November 1995, Mendoza resigned in a climate of anger due to friction between Lorenzo Sanz and Villar Mir himself over taking the main box seat of the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.
Finally, this responsibility led Sanz to assume the presidential position by virtue of article 49 of the Statutes of the white club, without the need to call elections. So, Sanz faced his first big project a season later and Villar Mir took a back seat.
In the summer of 2006, however, Villar Mir chose to lead Real Madrid in a candidacy with driver Carlos Sainz. Despite the influence of the media on the two-time world rally champion, this candidacy took third place in an election won by the lawyer Ramón Calderón, who beat Juan Palacios by a few votes.