José Luis Oriol Urigüen

José Luis de Oriol y Urigüen, 2nd Marquis of Casa Oriol (1877–1972), was a Spanish businessman, architect and politician. As an architect he designed few historicist residential buildings, some of them very prestigious today. As a businessman he was the moving spirit behind Hidroeléctrica Española and Talgo. As a politician he served as Conservative and Traditionalist MP, growing into a local Álava tycoon.

Family and youth

José Luis Valentin Oriol was born to a distinguished Catalan landowner family, his first ancestors recorded in the 17th century. The brother of his paternal grandfather, Buenaventura de Oriol y Salvador, was a prominent Carlist; in return for his service to the cause, Carlos VII made him marquis of Oriol in 1870. José's father, José María de Oriol y Gordo (1842-1899), pursued a military engineer career and as a colonel sided with the legitimists during the Third Carlist War. Briefly on exile in France, while the war was still ongoing he married Maria de los Dolores Tiburcia Urigüen Urigüen. A native of Portugalete and daughter of a prominent member of the emerging Biscay bourgeoisie, Lucien Urigüen, she was heir to a commercial fortune and descendant to a Liberal, anti-Carlist family.

The couple settled in Bilbao, where both José Luis and his younger sister María were born. José studied architecture in Madrid, graduating as the first in class in 1903, to continue with his studies later on in Paris. In 1904 he married an alavesa, Catalina de Urquijo Vitórica. Her father, Lucas Urquijo Urrutia, made his name as a highly successful Basque entrepreneur, co-founder of Hidroeléctrica Española, co-owner of Banco Urquijo and a number of other companies; also Catalina's mother owned an immense fortune. From 1905 to 1924 the couple, residing in Madrid, enjoyed birth of 8 children, José María, Lucas, Fernando, Antonio María, Sacramento, Teresa, Catalina and Ignacio. Four of their five sons enlisted later as the Carlist military volunteers, Requeté (the youngest one as a 13-year-old could not enlist). Except Fernando, who died in combat, all of them became well known figures in the Francoist Spain, either as public servants and politicians or businessmen and entrepreneurs. Many of their numerous offspring are currently present in various areas of public life in Spain, be it politics, business or arts.

Architect

José Luis started his architect career mostly by work on family projects, usually large residential estates. The best known designs of this category are grand villas known as Palacio Oriol in Santurtzi (1902), Palacio Arriluce in Neguri (1911) and Palacio San Joséren in Getxo (1916), all overlooking the Bay of Biscay and having been very esteemed locations until today, currently hosting luxurious hotels or prestigious social events. Their style is usually described as various breeds of historicism, with most common references to quasi-medievalism, Romanticism and British Victorian style.

Probably Oriol's most impressive design is a monumental complex of the Medicine Faculty of the University of Valencia (1908), its façade described as eclectic in style and spanning 300 yards. With the construction cost estimated at 4,4m pesetas and esthetical controversies raised, it was nevertheless applauded as a masterpiece of its time, combining technical innovation and high functionality. Especially the large hospital, an elaborate system of pavilions and rooms accommodating 250 beds, with subterranean passages and open galleries, attracted general praise. Enormous scope of the project prolonged the construction work, plagued by a number of misfortunes, like strikes, fires and political instability; the complex was eventually officially opened in 1949.

The best known Oriol's work, however, is casa de Montalbán, known today as Palacio del Retiro (1914). It was designed in the centre of Madrid as a family residence and office; currently it hosts a luxury hotel. The building, its style described as eclectic or neo-baroque, gained recognition and indeed notoriety for its lavish finishing, including stained-glass windows, fountains and frescos; some of its features bordered extravagance, like elevators which carried horses to and from the rooftop exercise ring.

Oriol went also beyond architecture, trying his hand in urban planning. He designed a never executed project intended to channel the Manzanares river in Madrid, though it was dwarfed by polemics raised by another of his schemes. At that time Madrid was changing into the modern metropolis and kept struggling to cope with the rapidly increasing traffic; to this end, in 1919 Oriol presented his plan, named ''Reforma interna de Madrid'', featuring a proposal to rebuild a section of the Gran Via. His design, discussed also in public, was eventually rejected by the municipal authorities. Also his other designs did not escape criticism, charged with verbosity and grandiloquence.

Businessman

Since 1907 Oriol was member of the executive board of Hidroeléctrica Española, the company run by his father-in-law. In 1909 Oriol replaced the ailing Lucas Urquijo at the helm of the enterprise; though his term lasted only a year, he remained in management structures and contributed to the growth of Hidrola. In 1913 he co-founded Electras Marroquíes, responsible for electrification of Northern zone of the Spanish protectorate. When he returned to the top HE post in 1937, Hidrola was already one of the 20 largest Spanish companies (second in the energy sector), controlling 12,5% of the national energy market. Hidroeléctrica owed its success to the sound financial basis, expansive strategy and responsiveness to particular conditions of the oligopolistic energy market structure. Oriol led Hidrola through the years of the Civil War and resigned in 1941, to be replaced by his son José Maria. Throughout his career he has also remained engaged in many HE subsidiaries like Madrileña Electra, Electra Valencia, Cartagena UE or Volta Electric. Apart from the energy sector, Oriol entered the construction business co-founding the Spanish branch of Babcock & Wilcox. He was also sitting in executive boards of a number of other companies and owned a semi-private chemical manufacturing enterprise.

In 1942 Oriol, taking advantage of his family-related position in the banking industry, provided financial backing to an idea developed by Alejandro Goicoechea, namely construction of a new generation, high-speed train. The result was the birth of TALGO, Tren Articulado Ligero Goicoechea Oriol, the new manufacturing and transportation company. The enterprise proved to be a commercial and technological success, though initially it had to rely on the US-based production and was desperately short of foreign currency. By the early 1950s TALGO trains were already providing regular high-speed service, up to 135 km/h, at different national railway routes. They also figured prominently in the Francoist propaganda, expected to demonstrate robustness of the Spanish industry and modernizing capacity of the regime. In 2005 the majority stake in TALGO was bought by Lehman Brothers, though the Oriol family retains a minority share until today.

Already in the early 1930s Oriol accumulated or inherited enormous wealth, estimated at 70m pesetas; the bulk of it was formed by various Spanish securities (46m), complemented by urban properties (17m), rural estates (3m) and own industrial assets. He engaged in charity, supporting specifically a medical outlet known as Instituto Rubio. During the Civil War the Basque government decided to expropriate him, but the measure was hardly applied as Biscay soon fell to the Nationalists, and in the early Francoist era Oriol multiplied his wealth in a peculiar environment of highly regulated economy. He is counted amongst the 100 most important Spanish entrepreneurs of the 20th century.

Politician

For 40 years Oriol refrained from engaging into politics, and it is not clear why he changed his mind when decided to run on the maurist ticket to the Cortes in 1918. In the ambience of caciquismo

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