Spain: Big on His Own

In his quick rise to riches, Spain's Eduardo Barreiros Rodriguez, 44, could never be accused of taking the easy way. A poor and nearly illiterate boy, Barreiros fought in the Civil War as a gunner for the Franco forces. He later lost four fingers in factory accidents. As a struggling contractor and later an engine builder, he neither sought nor received help from any of Spain's snobbish financial combines. He was a loner, a hard worker and an audacious plunger. Now he is Spain's biggest private businessman, heading a $200 million industrial empire that employs 15,000 workers. "He is not a man," complains a competitor. "He is an avalanche."

No Limits. Barreiros now has interests in 23 companies. His diesel engines are used by truckmakers in Spain, Portugal and Latin 'America. His fuel pumps, springs, gears and electrical equipment find their way into markets across the world. From his assembly line outside Madrid annually come 6,000 trucks, 5,500 tractors and 200 buses. Backed by Gulf Oil money, he is building 460 service stations across Spain. So pleased is Chrysler with its deal to have Barreiros turn out Dodge

Darts in Spain that it has increased its investment in Barreiros Diesel to $19 million, which gives it 40% of the company's stock. "It's hard at first to get in tune with them," says Barreiros of his U.S. partners. "But once mutual trust is established, there is no limit to their ingenuity, imagination and drive."

Barreiros might have been describing himself. Just after World War II, he got a job paving five miles of dirt road in his home village of Orense. Hooking a sweeping contraption of his own to an old truck, he found that he could prepare the road for paving in practically no time, soon earned a reputation for reliability and thoroughness as well as for speed. Before long, he had a small business in converting gasoline engines to diesels, but what he did not have was a good diesel design to fit Spanish needs. After losing a bid to make British diesels in Spain, Barreiros found that F. Perkins Ltd.—the British company that had turned him down—had never registered its diesel patent with the Spanish patent board. Barreiros took advantage of a 1922 Spanish law allowing anyone to register an unregistered foreign patent as his own, began making diesels himself.

Friendly Strolls. In a country where political friendships usually help businessmen get ahead, Barreiros is surprisingly free of such ties, has met Franco formally only a few times. After 18 years in business, Barreiros still puts in as many as 14 hours daily on the job, breaking his deskwork routine with friendly strolls along his Villaverde assembly line. "They know I'm the boss," says Barreiros, "but they know I can work with my hands just the way they do. This makes them feel pretty good, and it makes me feel good too."