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Business History
2021, VOL. 63, NO. 3, 421–442

https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2019.1577824
Business must go on: 175 years of an olive oil business

beyond firms and families
Fco. Javier Fernández-Rocaa and Jesús D. López-Manjónb
a
Department of Economics, Quantitative Methods and Economic History, Universidad Pablo de Olavide,
Seville, Spain; bDepartment of Financial Economics and Accounting, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville,
Spain
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
As opposed to most literature on the history of family firms, this article Business continuity;
focuses on the continuance of business –products, services, markets– Business history; Family
which is not the same as the longevity of the firm, understood as the Firm; entrepreneurial
Family; longevity;
maintenance of ownership, control or management, or of the business
ownership; management;
family, with its kinship connections, succession of generations, etc. markets; case study; spain;
The article aims at demonstrating how a business can be perpetuated Olive Oil business;
regardless of firms or owning families. For this purpose, it studies the 19th-20th Centuries
case of an olive oil business related to several families and companies
(most of them family firms) from 1857 to the present day. The history
of this olive oil business explains how it persisted throughout the years
with its factories, products and trademarks being transferred from firm
to firm and from owner to owner. The work also underlines how, in this
process, each new firm and each new owner claimed the accumulated
heritage as their own. The article insists on the continuation of the busi-
ness activity and highlights the relevance of studying, not only compa-
nies and owning families, but the businesses they develop.
1. Introduction
‘It was impossible to connect the dots looking forward […], but it was very very clear looking
backwards’.
Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement Address 2005
The economic weight of family business has led an increasing number of researchers from
the fields of management, marketing, accounting or history to choose it as an object of
study. From the perspective of family business history, different aspects have been consid-
ered, such as the definition of family firm, its typology, the overlapping of firms and families,
conflicts within families, business family culture, processes of internationalisation, longevity,
and, closely related to the latter, the intergenerational transfer of the business (Chua,
Chrisman & Sharma, 2003).1
This article moves away from this focus of attention and concentrates on an aspect that
may survive independent of other factors: the ‘ business’ itself – products, services, markets
CONTACT Fco. Javier Fernández-Roca jfernandez@upo.es

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
422 F. JAVIER FERNÁNDEZ-ROCA AND J. D. LÓPEZ-MANJÓN
– separate from the firm, which is understood as ownership, control or management, and
from the family, i.e. kinship bonds, generations, etc.2 Sharma and Salvato differentiated these
spheres and interpreted ‘family business’ as a construct with two components: the ‘business’,
which integrates products, services and markets, and the ‘family’, which includes the factors
of kinship, generational succession, order of birth, legal status and cohabitation (Sharma &
Salvato, 2013).3 The family business is the intersection of both concepts and sets of elements,
and is articulated through ownership, direction and management.4
Business longevity, understood as the permanence of a firm beyond the life or activity
of its founder and while the firm is still owned by the family and the family name persists as
part of the corporate name, to which the wish of the present generation to transfer the firm
to the next may be added, is not a closed concept (Sharma & Salvato, 2013; Napolitano,
Marino, & Ojala, 2015; Zellweger, Nason, & Nordqvist, 2012; Fahed-Sreih and Djoundourian,
2006; Poutziouris, Smyrnios & Klein, 2006. For a comparative study, between Italy and Spain,
see Colli, García-Canal and Guillén, 2013 (Ramadani & Hoy, 2015; Ibrahim, McGuire & Soufani,
2009; Perricone, Earle & Taplin, 2001). First, because it does not establish how long a firm
must last in order to be catalogued as long-lived. Secondly, because there is no full agree-
ment among researchers on what exactly must necessarily survive in a company for it to be
considered long-lived. For instance, the competencies developed by the firm may subsist,
even if the firm disappears as a legal entity, if the know-how and technology are transferred
to other organisations. When one company merges with another, or is acquired by a com-
petitor, the business may continue as part of the activities of the new organisation in spite
of having lost its independence (Napolitano et al., 2015).
Sharma, Salvato and Reay are interested in the study of businesses and business families
over time, and they consider time a variable the explanatory potential of which is still to be
valued. Thus, works that explicitly include time-related variables in family business research
are still an exception, although family firms are a wonderful scenario to develop and test
time-based theories.5 The participation of multiple generations in the firms automatically
expands the time framework that owners, managers, consultants and researchers use as
reference for their choices and analyses.6
Also in relation to the importance of time, this article incorporates the idea introduced
by Drozdow (1998, 339) according to which there is business continuity when the business
implements the same strategy, provides services to the same clients, employs the same
workers and makes contributions to the same community, though under a different own-
ership structure. This approach to the analysis of continuity includes a multidimensional
vision of the firm, family and business and understands that continuity exists even if one
dimension is or needs to be sacrificed in order for the rest to survive.7 The idea that both
ownership and management must remain in the hands of the family through generations
as the culmination of longevity is thus overcome.
The article focuses on the process of business continuity, independent of firm and family.
For this purpose, the dimensions of business continuity proposed by Drozdow are integrated
into the family business system model suggested by Sharma and Salvato.8
Figure 1, which adapts Sharma and Salvato’s diagram to the case here studied, places the
business at the centre (so that culture and strategy may prevail), surrounded by the different
owning families (which progressively sacrifice their leadership, cohesion and independence)
and the firms they set up under different legal statuses and ownership structures (the own-
ership, governance and mission of which are also progressively sacrificed) (Annexe, Table 1).
Business History 423
Figure 1. The Evolution of Subsets Family Company, adapted from Sharma and Salvato (2013, p. 41).
Each of those firms has claimed the accumulated heritage as their own and guaranteed the
survival of the founding legacy, for the successive owners have all been very interested in
preserving the inherited tradition through elements that have become inseparable from
the business.9
The results of this research are novel because the focus is set on the business, more spe-
cifically on the singular development of an olive oil business, understood as the unit formed
by the oil factory, in its successive sites, and its clients, providers and trademarks. This busi-
ness, initially founded in Seville by the Luca de Tena family, has continued for more than
160 years. Business continuity was not the objective of the different owners but the outcome
of their decisions, in which certain dimensions associated with their firm and/or family had
to be sacrificed. The continuity of the business-related dimensions was therefore a conse-
quence rather than an aim. As Drozdow concluded, supported by the work of Collins and
Porras: ‘Continuity was not their objective, but it was the result’ (Drozdow, 1998, p. 346).
Previously published works dealt with the longevity of family firms or with the business
families themselves, analysed how ownership and control remained – or not– in the hands
of those families, measured longevity as a variable of success, and sometimes even described
the sacrifices made by the families to achieve the longevity of their companies. Thus, there
are studies on the longevity of centuries-old family businesses explained from the point of
view of the owning family (Japanese shinises, Avedis Zildjian), and others that introduced
Table 1. Chronology.
some flexibility into the concepts of business and family (Salvadori), analysed the firms’
capability to adapt to new business sectors (Merck), or considered their leap to internation-
alisation (Pirelli, Olivetti) or their ability to adapt to hostile sociopolitical environments (Behn
Meyer) (Sasaki & Sone, 2015; Sharma & Salvato, 2013; Amatori, 2016; Castagnoli, 2014; Shakila,
2012). Spanish historiography includes works on families and firms founded in the Basque
Country (Aznar, Ybarra [the Basque branch], Sota, Echevarrieta), Catalonia (Planas, Bonaplata)
and other regions (Villarroya y Castellano, Mahou, López [Marqués de Comillas], Gil).10 In a
similar geographical area and within the same sector to those of the case herein studied, it
is possible to mention the examples of firm longevity of Ybarra and Carbonell, two of the
most relevant oil-producing firms in Andalusia and Spain, which involved four and five gen-
erations, respectively.11
There are only a few works focused exclusively on the continuity of a business, notwith-
standing the loss of continuity of the business family or the family firm. For Spain, the only
history that somehow resembles the one here studied is that of the Planas family, which
sacrificed firms and businesses in order to survive as a business family: ‘que con cambios de
nombre, de socios y de forma, traslados de sede y de talleres, aumentos y reducciones de
capital (…) había de prolongar su existencia hasta mediada la actual centuria’ (‘despite
changes in name, partners and forms, office and factory sites, capital increases and reductions
[…], the family prolonged its existence until the middle of the present [20th ] century’). In
the international context, the Beecham family and its companies represent an example of
business continuity from its origin to the constitution of present-day GlaxoSmithKline, which
does not hold the family name any more but has indeed remained active within the same
sector (Corley, 2011).
The present research work is based on a great number of available primary sources. On
the one hand are the bankruptcy records kept in the archive of the Chamber of Commerce
in Seville, which may be considered the successor of the Mercantile Consulate Courts and
the guardian of their historical documents. An interesting aspect of this source, for the pur-
poses of this article, is that bankruptcy records register the trader’s property in much detail,
distinguishing assets and liabilities (Bernal & García Baquero, 2011). A second source was
the notarised public documents (memorandums of constitution, unpaid bill protests, mar-
riage certificates, etc.) found in the Protocols Archive in Seville, which described the situation
of the first generation of the Luca de Tena family and the beginnings of the second gener-
ation. Information on the consecutive firms involved in the business and kept in the archives
of the firm Acesur was also used, including copies of commercial instruments (deeds of
constitution and dissolution, modification of the articles of association, purchase and sales
documents), studies on the relocation of factories, accounting documents (not always com-
plete) of the various firms, letters, etc.12 However, these sources have not allowed analysing
the most personal components of the business strategy, such as the styles of management
or leadership. Finally, in order to complement the available information, oral history was also
resorted to, its benefits having been widely proved already, although its implementation is
still quite limited (Hammond & Sikka, 1966; Matthews, 2000; Sian, 2006). Personal interviews
were conducted with Nicolás Luca de Tena Alfonso (grandson of Nicolás Luca de Tena y
Caño), Antonio Adalid Luca de Tena (great-grandson of Nicolás Luca de Tena y Caño), and
Enriqueta Vila (Professor of History at the University of Seville and wife of Nicolás Carretero
Luca de Tena). The research work was completed with the use of literature that helped to
contextualise the case. The most abundantly consulted works were those by Gómez Zarzuela
(1866 ff.), Almuedo Palma (1996) and the historical publications of the firm Acesur (Aceites
del Sur S.A., 1991).
The article is divided into five sections, the first four of which cover the history of the olive
oil business at the pace in which owning families and firms succeeded one another (Figure 1).
During the first phase, the business was owned by the Luca de Tena family through a first
company that was registered in public records in 1891, having been involved in the olive oil
industry since 1857. The second phase coincides with the mid-20th century, when the Luca
de Tena family distributed its business activities into several branches and sold the olive oil
business to new owners who were only indirectly related to the Luca de Tena family, but
who, nevertheless, kept the family name as part of the corporate name. The third section
focuses on the 1960s and the removal of the family name Luca de Tena from the olive oil
business, which was fully transferred to a new firm, Aceites Giralda S.A. The fourth section
recounts how a firm founded at the end of the 1960s, Acesur, acquired the olive oil business,
which had by then been handed down for almost 100 years. Finally, the fifth section draws
the final conclusions, and reflects on how studying the longevity of a family firm may include
a debate on the continuance of its activities and on how, in this specific case, the olive oil
business has survived more than 160 years in the hands of various owners, whether they
were family or not, and firms.
2. Birth and consolidation of a family-owned olive oil business13

Secondary references, not yet supported by any documentary source, date the starting
of the olive oil activities of the Luca de Tena family in 1840.14 The present research has
situated the first documented activities of the Tena family – which back then did not often
use their last name Luca – around 1853, when Nicolás Luca de Tena y Reyna rented a house
in Calle Cuna, in the city of Seville, where he started a book-selling business. Around
1856–57 the business was still operating and now included the bookstore and a printing
house.15 In those years, more specifically in 1857, the family operated under the corporate
name of Tena Hermanos, although the company was actually never registered on public
record.16
The company reached its peak after 1857, when Nicolás Luca de Tena y Reyna received
92,000 reales from the dowry of his wife (Regla del Caño), plus an advance of what she would
later receive from her father’s inheritance.17 With this capital, Nicolás Luca de Tena founded
the industrial colony of Torreblanca (in the outskirts of Seville, on the road to Cordoba and
Madrid), following the model of Catalonian industrial colonies. A steamed chocolate factory
and a perfume factory were established in the colony.18
However, already in 1856, the Tena brothers were accumulating unpaid bill protests, most
of them related to their book-selling business.19 In 1862, the bankruptcy of Tena Hermanos
materialised, directly affecting Juan Manuel del Caño (Nicolás Luca de Tena y Reyna’s father-
in-law) and the brothers’ cousin Gerónimo Tena (owner of an ironmonger’s shop).20 In the
bankruptcy report, the investigating judge pointed out that, in 1857, the Tena brothers were
already trading in olive oil and accused them of not providing information concerning that
business.21
The purpose of this work is not to delve into the bankruptcy process, which was resolved
in 1868 when the Tena brothers paid off their debts, of which they had previously advanced
the payments that were agreed on in the arrangement with the creditors. This rapid solution
was facilitated by the separate arrangement reached by Juan Manuel del Caño, which
reduced his debts by 65% and subsumed the Tena brothers’ debts through guarantees
endorsed by him. As a result, Tena Hermanos recovered from the bankruptcy and resumed
its activities in different sectors of the Sevillian economy. The Torreblanca colony remained
active and under their control.
Right after the bankruptcy, in 1869, the Tena brothers purchased a perfume business
founded in 1840 by the Court family. They moved it from the town of San Juan de Aznalfarache
to the Torreblanca industrial colony. The acquisition may have been motivated by the need
to improve the company’s own perfume factory, which did not reach the ‘mejores elemntos
ni caladades ni baraturas de las procedensias extranjeras’ (‘better elements or qualities or
low prices of imported products’).22 A steamed soap factory was also installed in the colony.
This way, at the beginning of the 1870 s, the colony comprised three different ‘business units’
(chocolate, soap and perfume) that, ‘con una complete independencia…., sin comunicaca-
cion ni contacto alguno entre ellas’ (‘fully independently…, with no communication or con-
tact among them’), operated in the five buildings in which the colony was divided (Gómez
Zarzuela, 1872, p. 159). In addition, Tena Hermanos had a storehouse or office in the centre
of the city.23 With regard to the olive oil business developed by Tena Hermanos, it was still
active, as proved by different notarised documents, like one dated in 1881 in which Nicolás
Tena y Reyna acknowledged the transfer of a consignment of olive oil from the train station
to their storehouse in Calle Almirante Espinosa, No. 1.24
Although the sources refer to Tena Hermanos, the main responsibility for the economic
activities of the firm must have been with Nicolás Luca de Tena y Reyna. This is confirmed
by secondary sources that mention him as the owner of the businesses in which he partic-
ipated. He was the one who had the capital required (taken from his wife’s dowry, infra) and,
when his son and nephews’ trading company began operating, it was his name that appeared
on the documents certifying the transfer of those businesses. Also, the official guide of the
province of year 1890 recorded the constitution of the manufacturing firm Tena owned by
Nicolás Luca de Tena, and included him in the list of ‘almacenistas de aceites de olive y
petrólio’ (‘olive oil and petrol warehouse owners’).25
The year 1891 was a turning point in the history of the Tena family and their olive oil
business. That year the family founded a new company, Hijos de Luca de Tena S.C., and built
a new olive oil factory.26 Hijos de Luca de Tena, which took over the management of the
soap, perfume and chocolate factories as well as of the olive-oil refining factory, had a share
capital of 15,000 pesetas, subscribed in equal parts by three shareholders: the brothers
Torcuato and Cayetano Luca de Tena Álvarez-Ossorio (sons of Torcuato Luca de Tena y Reyna)
and their cousin Nicolás Luca de Tena y Caño (son of Nicolás Luca de Tena y Reyna).27 The
new company ‘toma en traspaso el negocio que de igual clase llevaba Nicolás Luca de Tenya
y Reyna, formándose al efecto la oportuna liquidación, ingresando aquellas existencias en
la compañía que ahora se constituye y pagándose el precio del traspaso con el capital
social’(‘incorporated the transferred business of a similar kind managed by Nicolás Luca de
Tena y Reyna, for the purpose of which the corresponding liquidation has taken place, the
stock has been handed over, and the price of the transfer has been paid with the company’s
share capital’), contrary to what was usually done in that period, when companies received
the assets and liabilities of preceding firms and established a bond of continuity with them.
In this case, the bond did not exist as such because Tena Hermanos had never been registered
in public records.28
In July 1891, the company started proceedings to obtain a permit to move the business
activities developed in Calle Almirante Espinosa, No. 1, which included the manufacture of
washing soap, chocolate, perfume and refined olive oil. It is not known when, prior to that
date, the activities were moved from the Torreblanca colony to this address.29 The new loca-
tion was found outside the city, in the Huerta de la Salud area, close to the train station.30
This was the first change of domicile of the oil factory, when the business was still in the
hands of the family’s second generation. The file explains the move of the soap, chocolate
and perfume manufacture and oil refining facilities to the new premises. The new olive oil
factory incorporated the extraction of pomace oil with carbon sulphide, which represented
a leap towards modernisation and eliminated the bad smell produced during the process,
given that the ‘sulphurous acid gas resulting from sulphur calcination will be burnt in a
machine and, once disinfected, will be expelled through the main chimney, which is 35
metres high’).31 The firm made a great innovative effort and, as a result of it, it developed, in
1894, its own chemical-mechanical procedure for the improvement of olive pomace oil, and
later on, in 1903, another system to extract pomace oil from olives and from the detritus of
oily seeds by using carbon tetrachloride.
The oil business of the Luca de Tena family developed a trademark policy, just like other
oil firms, such as Ybarra, did, having progressively abandoned, whether partially or totally,
the sale of oil in bulk (Fernández-Roca, 2014). In the case of Hijos de Luca de Tena, the number
and diversity of trademarks registered in public record (under the name of the company or
under that of a family member) is particularly noteworthy. The oldest of those brands were
‘La Giralda de Sevilla’ (1886), ‘Giralda’ (1889) and ‘Ramo de Oliva’ (1908).32 In addition, the
central role of this trademark strategy was reinforced by the firm’s active defence of the
exclusive use of its brands. In 1907, Eduardo Luca de Tena authorised ‘Ezequiel Carnicer
Artolegui, of legal age, dealer and resident of La Habana’ to apply for the registration – in
the Republic of Cuba – of the trademark ‘La Giralda’ and any other trademark belonging to
Hijos de Luca de Tena in order to initiate the appropriate legal proceedings against those
who were usurping and falsifying the company’s brands in Cuba.33 This application was
endorsed by the concession granted by the Ministry of Development, in November 1889,
to develop trademarks for all kind of soaps and oils, as well as for orange-blossom water.
During the 1920s, Hijos de Luca de Tena was already an important olive oil exporting
company, although there are references to its export activities from before 1913.34 Far from
the data of larger companies, such as Carbonell (8301 Tm) or Hijos de Ybarra (5734 Tm), Hijos
de Luca de Tena maintained an average of 1796 Tm (2.5 percent of the total national exports)
exported during the 1930–1934 period (Ramón, 2000 and 2012). During those years, Hijos
de Luca de Tena’s exports were 1 percent of all olive oil exports made to Argentina, and
between 1 and 2 percent of those made to the United States (Ybarra’s exports to these
countries amounted to 5 percent and 4–10 percent, respectively). Exports to America rep-
resented around 50% of Hijos de Luca de Tena’s exports. These largely consisted of bottled
oil, commercialised under the firm’s trademark ‘La Giralda’, combined with oil in bulk to be
bottled by different importing firms in destination, as happened in Brazil. The remaining
50% of the company’s exports went to Europe, especially Germany, in the form of oil in bulk.
This balanced distribution between various destinations is what differentiated Hijos de Luca
de Tena from other companies, such as Hijos de Ybarra, which were mostly focused on the
American markets (Ramón, 2000).
To the oil producing and exporting activity of the Luca de Tena family it is necessary to
add that of the shipping firm Guadalquivir, owning three ships for the transport of oil
between Montevideo and Buenos Aires.35 In the process of integrating different business
activities the family coincided with the Ybarra family, who owned one of the largest shipping
firms in Spain, Ybarra y Compañía, and the Longoria family.36 In addition, the Luca de Tena
family owned a company specialising in the production of metal containers for oil
(Metalgráfica Sevillana). In fact, Hijos de Luca de Tena had been patenting its containers to
market oil since 1912.37 This search for diversification in foreign markets and the integration
of its business activities were signs of the firm’s proactivity, highlighted by the literature as
one of the most important entrepreneurial factors contributing to the success of a family
business (Zellweger, Sieger and Muehlebach, 2010).
3. The first business transfer: the importance of the corporate and

family name
Succession within a family business may trigger substantial changes in it. Thus, in the first
decades of the 20th century, the Ybarra family reorganised itself to transfer the business to
its third generation and start a successful industrial activity in the olive oil sector, keeping
the firms under its ownership and control. In contrast, Carbonell faced a severe crisis at the
death of Carlos Carbonell (1917), and Hijos de Luca de Tena, which had not experienced any
major changes until that moment, and encountered serious problems at the deaths of Nicolás
Luca de Tena y Caño (1927) and his son Torcuato Luca de Tena y Luca de Tena (1932). Disputes
arose among the rest of the founder’s children, who did not accept their brother Eduardo’s
imposed authority.38 It was also in 1927 when the businesses of Luca de Tena y Luca de Tena,
who lived in Seville, were separated from those of Luca de Tena Álvarez-Ossorio, residents
of Madrid and founders of the ABC newspaper.39
*Thus, in a memorandum dated March 3 1947, the brothers Luis, Eduardo, Carlos and José
Luca de Tena y Luca de Tena were mentioned as general partners, managers and shareholders
of Hijos de Luca de Tena S.C. Nicolás Carretero Luca de Tena (the brothers’ cousin) and Manuel
Alarcón de la Lastra (husband of their sister Regla Luca de Tena y Luca de Tena) appear on
the same document as shareholders and proxies. Both the brothers’ mother (Pilar Luca de
Tena Álvarez-Ossorio) and their disabled brother (Manuel Luca de Tena y Luca de Tena) were
mentioned as beneficial shareholders. At that stage, the company had a preferred limited
liability capital of 2 million pesetas, and a collective capital and non-preferred limited liability
capital linked to the reserve funds that altogether amounted to 10 million pesetas.
The 1947 document reflects the final split-up of Hijos de Luca de Tena in the family’s third
generation. This third generation sacrificed the family-related dimensions of independence,
cohesion and leadership during the break-up. It also sacrificed the mission of the firm. The
purpose was therefore to help the different businesses grouped under Hijos de Luca de Tena
to survive individually and, consequently, preserve their founding legacy, strategy and cul-
ture. Thus, the brothers Luis, Carlos and José Luca de Tena y Luca de Tena sold their limited
partnership shares in the firm and received in exchange the company Metalgráfica Sevilla
S.A., which had been integrated in Hijos de Luca de Tena and produced metal containers for
olive oil. However, , Eduardo Luca de Tena y Luca de Tena, together with Nicolás Carretero
Luca de Tena and Manuel Alarcón de la Lastra, remained in control of the perfume, chocolate
and olive oil factories, still within Hijos de Luca de Tena.
Later, Eduardo Luca de Tena y Luca de Tena segregated the different business activities
developed by Hijos de Luca de Tena: perfumes and soaps on the one hand, chocolate and
olive oil on the other. In this process, the Luca de Tena family (Eduardo and Nicolás Carretero)
preserved, under the name Hijos de Luca de Tena, that which they considered the core of
their work as a business family: the chocolate and perfume factories, but sold the olive oil
business. Thus, Manuel Alarcón de la Lastra, together with Bernabé Fiestas, Álvaro Gil-
Delgado, Julio Ruiz Velasco and Ignacio Coco y Coco, founded the company Aceites y Jabones
Luca de Tena S.A. with an initial share capital of 5 million pesetas and bought from Hijos de
Luca de Tena what was called the ‘Grupo de Grasas’ (‘Grease Group’), which included the
olive oil factory, its suppliers and customers portfolio, and its trademarks (‘La Giralda’, ‘Ramo
de Oliva’, ‘Toro’, ‘Tena’ and others), for 21.6 million pesetas.40 The sale and transfer procedure
was a complex operation because the new companies shared the same premises and some
basic supplies. It is important to remember that, in 1893, when Hijos de Luca de Tena moved
to the Huerta de la Salud area, the company concentrated all its industrial activities in the
same site. Now it was necessary, not only to disaggregate the different activities, but to
rearrange the site that was originally occupied by Hijos de Luca de Tena alone. The final
purchase was registered in public record on August 31 1949, once the previous renting
contract was cancelled.41(Deed of sale signed by Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A. and
Aceites Giralda S.A. Archives of Acesur.) The accounting documents of Aceites y Jabones
Luca de Tena S.A. reflect the fact that certain expenses were shared with the firm Hijos de
Luca de Tena until at least 1951, but there seems to be notarial evidence indicating that the
debts between both companies had been settled.42
The name Luca de Tena survived in the new partnership, although only 20% of the com-
pany’s capital remained in the family through the person of Manuel Alarcón de la Lastra,
Regla Luca de Tena’s husband.43 The documents describe the negotiation between the Luca
de Tena brothers and Manuel Alarcón. It was not an amicable separation, the conflict lasted
several years and it was necessary to resort to reports, injunctions and judicial decisions,
and the intervention of amiable compositors to reach an agreement between the two
parties.44
One of the reasons for this conflict was the use of the name Luca de Tena by the new firm
Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena. Thus, point 7 of the arbitral award of January 1949 specified
that the company Hijos de Luca de Tena would not oppose the use of the family name by
Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A. as long as the latter used its full corporate name (i.e.
without omitting Aceites y Jabones) written on the same line and with the same types of
letters, in order to avoid confusion and make clear that Hijos de Luca de Tena and Aceites y
Jabones Luca de Tena S.A. were separate firms.45 Given the accumulated tradition, it was
important that the family name remained as part of the corporate name as a guarantee of
product quality. Despite having broken almost all bonds with the Luca de Tena family, Aceites
y Jabones Luca de Tena was still interested in the commercial use of the family name, and
in which any specialised literature reinforces its intention to operate as a family business.
(Landes, 2006 mentioned in Colli, 2012; Sharma & Salvato, 2013).
The accounting documents of Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A. show that 1958 was a
turning point, because after that year the company stopped being loss-making, a feature
that had been constant in all previous accounting years. In addition, the company launched
a capital increase and a first reference was made to Eumelio García López, the director-man-
ager of the firm, who had gained prominence in recent years.46 Although no details can be
provided on how the change took place, this evidence makes it possible to affirm that it was
in 1958 when the founders left the firm and new shareholders and managers joined.
4. Third phase: Aceites giralda

In 1968 a new company, Aceites Giralda S.A., was founded in Madrid. That was the moment
in which the link with the Luca de Tena family was lost and the longevity of the firms founded
by this family came to an end. However, the foundation of this new company paved the way
for the continuity of the oil business, from which only the original strategy and culture per-
sisted, added to the new owners’ interest in becoming the heirs of the earliest founder and
preserving his legacy. The new firm’s corporate purpose was to conduct all kinds of
businesses related to the production, industrialisation and distribution of oils and greases,
as well as all operations resulting from or complementing such activities. The company’s
share capital amounted to 10 million pesetas and was subscribed by Francisco de Sales
Núñez Naranjo, his wife María Luisa Pol, Eumelio García López (supra), his wife Milagros López
Oporto, Antonio Herrera Martín and the brothers Vicente and Enrique Puchal Sánchez. The
relevance of Eumelio García López’s role in Aceites Giralda S.A. increased after 1971, when
the company’s share capital was augmented to reach 55 million pesetas, subscribed in equal
parts (after the withdrawal of the other shareholders) by Francisco de Sales Núñez Naranjo
and by him. They had been the first partners and now became majority shareholders:
Francisco de Sales Núñez Naranjo owned 48.13% of the shares (plus 0.15% corresponding
to his wife’s shares), while Eumelio García held 46.92% (plus his wife’s 1.37%).47
That Eumelio García López worked for the two companies is proved, among other evi-
dence, by the fact that, in October 1972, he, as CEO of Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A.,
presented the project to move the oil refining and bottling factory from the Huerta de la
Salud area – where the olive oil factory of the Luca de Tena family had been located since
1893 (as confirmed by Almuedo’s maps of 1900 and 1930) – to plot No. 52 of the Polígono
Industrial La Palmera (industrial site La Palmera) in the town of Dos Hermanas, near Seville.48
The file containing the details about the move confirmed that the trademarks inherited from
Hijos de Luca de Tena were still in use, among them ‘La Giralda’, – which was still the most
important export brand, – ‘Ramo de Oliva’ and ‘Tena’, además, se continuaban usando la
mayoría de esas marcas para la exportación, en especial hacia América Latina.49 The com-
mercial bonds between Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A. and Aceites Giralda S.A. were
thus very strong from the beginning. Thus, according to the purchase records of Aceites y
Jabones Luca de Tena S.A. and the sales records of Aceites Giralda S.A., during the last tri-
mester of 1973 the latter sold to the former more than 1 million kilograms of olive oil, the
former being the latter’s only major client.
The histories of Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A. and Aceites Giralda S.A. finally came
together on December 27 1973, when the latter acquired the commercial and industrial
properties of the former, including furniture and machinery, for 7 million pesetas, as well as
its commercial loans, valued at 8,719,465.12 pesetas.50 The acquisition was the last step of
a process of integration initiated some time before; in fact, the above-mentioned move of
the factory owned by Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A., which in the end did not take
place, would have been to a neighbouring plot to the one occupied by Aceites Giralda S.A.
The day after the sale, the board of administration of Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A.
held a meeting to decide on the dissolution of the firm. Among the members of the board
were Francisco de Sales Núñez Naranjo, José Núñez Naranjo, Renato García López and Manuel
Jiménez Barberá, who were also shareholders of Aceites Giralda S.A., yet further evidence
of the close connection between the two companies. The opportunity of making a real estate
business with the relocation of the historical factory in the town of Dos Hermanas played
an important role in this operation, since the thus liberated lot was located in what then was
one of the most important urban expansion areas in the city of Seville. This intention was
evidenced by the fact that those who agreed on the dissolution of Aceites y Jabones Luca
de Tena S.A. did not act on their own behalf but as representatives of various real estate
companies.51 Some time after the merger, in December 1974, the company Aceites Giralda
S.A. changed its name to Olivarera Internacional S.A. arguing that the firm had now acquired
a greater and more global dimension.52
During this third phase in the evolution of the olive oil business, the trademarks inher-
ited from previous periods were still maintained by the new owners. Thus, Olivarera
Internacional commercialised the brands ‘La Giralda’, ‘Ramo de Olivo’, ‘Tena’, ‘Trini’, ‘Toro’,
‘Ofelia’, ‘La Gaviota’, ‘Rocío’, ‘Aceites Giralda’, ‘El Giraldillo de Sevilla’, ‘La Gua Gua’, ‘Topol’ and
‘Zumo de Oliva Giralda’, all of them used before by Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A.y
las usaba en sus procesos de exporatción53 Likewise, ‘Olivarera Internacional’ resumed the
strategy to produce its own containers and installed the necessary machinery for it in the
mid-1980s.54
5. The last phase: Acesur, heirs of luca de tena

The last phase in the history of the olive oil business started by the Luca de Tena family has
two protagonists, Juan Ramón Guillén and the Alamar Belloch family. The former, who is still
present in the firm today belonged to an Andalusian family traditionally associated with
different olive oil businesses, from at least the time of his great-grandfather Manuel Guillén
Muñoz.55 Later, his uncle Ramón and the family’s firm Ragusa appeared, separately, as olive
oil suppliers in the first accounting records (1947) of Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A.56
In 1964, while living and studying in Madrid, Juan Ramón Guillén founded the firm Aceites
del Sur S.L., and three years later, in 1967, he set up a factory in the nearby town of Valdemoro.57
From the beginning, the company developed an intense trademark policy and undertook
the production of both plastic and metal containers.58 On the other hand, the Alamar Belloch
family from Valencia was also previously linked to olive oil business activities. Thus, in June
1945, Agustín Alamar Alfafar applied for the registration of the trademark ‘Aceite puro de
oliva La Española’, which was granted to him in 1948.59 In 1970, his wife Encarnación Belloch
registered another trademark, ‘La Española’, which had the same logo but was intended for
the rest of edible oils they produced.60
Before the end of 1976, the Alamar Belloch family and Juan Ramón Guillén acquired shares
in Olivarera Internacional S.A., and the Alamar Belloch brothers (Salvador, José María, Agustín
and Juan) joined the company’s new board of administration, replacing, among others,
Eumelio García López, who until then had held the position of CEO.61
The resolutions of the shareholders’ meeting of Olivarera Internacional S.A. held on June
30 1981, were registered in public record in September that year. Those resolutions included
the resignation of the Alamar Belloch brothers and the appointments of Juan Ramón Guillén
Prieto as the company’s president and CEO, Dolores Benjumea Troya (his wife) as vice-pres-
ident, Manuel Jiménez Barberá as secretary, and Dámaso Pereira Sanz as chairman.62 In
addition, it was agreed that the firm’s head office would be moved from Madrid to Dos
Hermanas (Sevilla), more specifically to Km 550.5 of the Carretera Nacional IV (National Road
VI) Madrid-Cádiz, which is the current location of the factory.
The documents bearing witness to this radical change in the board of administration,
which passed from the hands of the Alamar family into those of the Guillén family, are not
available, but the change itself seems to indicate that the latter had previously acquired the
shares owned by the former. This change of ownership can be understood as part of the
movement towards integration undertaken by Olivarera Internacional and Aceites del Sur
(belonging to the Guillén family) when the latter’s trademarks (‘Guillén’, ‘Altivo’, ‘Itálica’ or
‘Suroliva’) were incorporated by Olivarera Internacional S.A.63
The Alamar family’s exit from the firm marked the start of the current phase of the olive
oil business started by the Luca de Tena family and inherited by the Guillén family, which,
in 1981, was at the head of both Aceites del Sur S.L. and Olivarera Internacional S.A. For
operative and marketing reasons, both firms merged in 1988 into a new company, Aceites
del Sur S.A., known by the acronym Acesur or, after the acquisition of the once public-
ly-owned company Coosur, by the name Acesur-Coosur.64 The acquisition of Coosur, a firm
located in Jaen, the province with the largest olive production in Spain, automatically trans-
formed the firm inherited from the Luca de Tena family into the third largest olive oil bottling
company in Spain (the second one with national capital), with a market share of 9.1% (García
Brenes, 2008). In the last few years, Acesur has reinforced its bond with the olive oil tradition
initiated by the Luca de Tena family as one of its main values. In 1990, for instance, it organ-
ised several events to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the business, thus situating the
origin of the activity in 1840. Acesur stresses innovation as another mark of distinction, but
even innovation is linked to tradition (its motto says ‘innovamos por tradición’, ‘traditionally
innovating’). Therefore, the company keeps an eye on its past and interprets as cause and
effect two factors that are usually considered as being two poles of a continuum in the lit-
erature on entrepreneurship (Zellweger, Sieger & Muehlebach, 2010). In this context, in 2006,
the firm applied for and obtained the transfer of the trademark ‘La Española’ for edible oils.
6. Conclusions
The focus of this article was neither on family firms, understood as legal and economic
entities, nor on the owning families, but on what Sharma and Salvato have called ‘business’.
More specifically, the interest was in establishing how a business can survive, researching
the concept of ‘continuity’ in the sense suggested by Drozdow, which overcame the idea
that the persistence of ownership and management in the hands of a business family guar-
antees longevity across generations. This author proposed a multidimensional model to
study business continuity without the requirement that all its dimensions persist in time. In
fact, she affirmed that continuity exists as long as the business survives and keeps developing
the same strategy, providing services to the same clients, employing the same workers and
serving the same community. All these characteristics can be found in the olive oil business
here analysed, because its owners have always chosen to sell their companies instead of
dissolving them, and the exporting strategy and the trademark policy of the consecutive
firms in charge of the business have remained the same from the times of the Luca de Tena
family to the present day. Those companies have always been interested in preserving the
trademarks and even the family name of the original business, because they were addressing
the same markets and clients, the workers were transferred from one company to the next,
and the factory always remained in Seville or in the neighbouring town of Dos Hermanas.
Consequently, the firms’ social return, in the form of employment, taxes, etc., has always
favoured the same area of influence.
Finding correspondence between the dimensions and subsystems used in this article
makes it possible to prove how the business-related dimensions have survived even when
owners and firms have changed. The construct comprising companies, business and family
was created in 1891 with the foundation of the family firm Hijos de Luca de Tena, which
guaranteed the continuity of a previous business. Later (1947), the dimensions associated
with the family (cohesion, leadership and independence) were sacrificed with the break-up
of the family and the dismemberment of Hijos de Luca de Tena. In particular, the olive oil
business preserved some of the firm-related dimensions until 1958, when ownership and
governance were definitely lost. From then on, the successive business transfers sought to
maximise the profitability/liquidity profile of the investments, without a real interest in the
continuity of either the firm or the owning family. Firms disappeared, families withdrew
without the newer generation being incorporated or used as an element for family cohesion.
Only the business continued, because it was understood as the best way to contribute to
the new owners’ profits and to the former owners’ capital gains as a result of the transfer.
Thus, the continuity of the founder’s legacy and value proposition was ensured, because
each of the successive firms presented itself as heir of the former and, ultimately, of the olive
oil business initiated by the Luca de Tena family. The prominence given to the business’s
history is also acknowledged by the current family-firm unit, Guillén-Acesur, which has clearly
and firmly supported the conservation of the founding legacy received from the Luca de
Tena olive oil business. But it has also reincorporated the family-related dimensions of lead-
ership and control, owned as it is by a single family and involving as it has several generations
in the business’s management.
This willingness to bond with the past and the remotest origin of a business is also linked
to the importance attached by business families to the commercial use of their family name.
It became evident in 1947, during the transfer of the olive oil business from Hijos de Luca
de Tena to Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A., when a conflict emerged around the use of
the family name in the commercial references of the new company. In the case of Aceites y
Jabones Luca de Tena S.A., the use of the family name was especially relevant to bond the
company to its predecessors, since only 20% of the capital remained in the hands of the family.
Several of the factors mentioned in the literature on family business as contributing to a
firm’s success in the long term are present in the history of the olive oil business started by
the Luca de Tena family. Thus, the companies and families that have successively operated
the business shared such characteristics as proactivity, innovation and a fixed strategy based
on exports and a strong trademark policy. In contrast with other cases analysed in previous
studies, these factors have not contributed to the longevity of the firms associated to the
olive oil business or to the permanence of the different families in control of them but to
the continuity of the business itself. This continuity is reinforced by the fact that all changes
were made on the basis of what already existed, rather than starting from scratch. Each new
firm acquired the business with the factory and brands as they were, and only then were
innovations introduced. On the other hand, contrary to what is said to be usual in family
businesses, no special interest has been identified in the successive owning families, at least
until the last phases, to build a long-duration family firm that might be bequeathed to the
next generations, even less so in the specific case of the olive oil business. In this case, com-
panies and families have built continuity from the past into the presenst, highlighting their
bonds with the preceding firms and families and making an effort to prove how the founder’s
legacy was being preserved.
In summary, 160 years after its foundation, the olive oil business here analysed maintains
the dimensions of culture and strategy linked to the survival of the founder’s legacy, as a
result of the interest shown by its successive owners in declaring themselves as heirs of the
first Luca de Tena. The main contribution of this work is the description of the continuity of
a family business in the long term, despite changes in the firms, owners and families. This is
what differentiates this study from previous ones focused on business longevity or the main-
tenance of the family character of a company. A second contribution has to do with the
importance of the will to create continuity shown by the successive owners of the analysed
business. Paraphrasing Steve Jobs, histories are not connected forward – from the Luca de
Tena to Acesur – but backwards.
Notes
1. A literature review on these issues can be found in Colli & Larsson (2014) and in Ramadani and
Hoy (2015).
2. Other authors have chosen to study the family as the persistent factor in a family business, as
is the case of Fernández Pérez, 1997 and 2000; Zellweger, Nason and Nordqvist, 2012; and
Almaraz, 2016.
3. A previous work that advanced in that direction was that by Tagiuri and Davis (1992), which
also suggested that a family firm is the intersection of family and business.
4. Sharma and Salvato (2013) make it possible to dissociate the two components of a family busi-
ness: family and company. Almaraz (2016: 47) points out that, for business families, the two
dimensions (firm and family) ‘son fundamentales tanto por los lazos per se que estructuran a
las familias como por las relaciones parentales que en este caso representan el dispositivo so-
cial para constituir y dar continuidad a los negocios de una familia que ha trascendido históri-
camente. La familia empresarial se encuentra representada por la sucesión de lazos mercan-
tiles y la acumulación de capitales a través de empresas que pueden o no estar articuladas
entre sí, las cuales no necesariamente prevalecen en el tiempo’ (‘are essential, because of the
bonds articulating the family and the kin relationships that, in this case, act as the social mech-
anism creating and providing continuity to the business of a family that has transcended his-
tory. The business family is built on the commercial relationships and capital accumulation of
firms that may or may not be connected and that do not necessarily survive’).
Some of the literature on this topic confirms the difficulty of dissociating those elements,
which are intertwined, overlapped and interconnected (Aldrich and Cliff, The pervasive; Bakr
Ibrahim, McGuire and Soufani, An Empirical) to the point of becoming some sort of Moebius
strip (Litz, Two Sides; Ramírez and Almaraz, Entrando en materia).)
5. Sharma, Salvato and Reay (2014). Among the aspects related to the passing of time in family
businesses are the professional career and development of the CEO, the corporate trademark
strategies of the oldest family firms in the world and their business orientation, all changes
related to the founder’s retirement from the business, and the firm’s investment strategies.
Other time-related variables include the long-term orientation of the family firm, its survival or
longevity, and transgenerational entrepreneurship.
6. Acknowledging the lack of ‘a wide set of theoretical and methodological tools regarding time’,
Ancona, et al. (2001) underline the ‘fantastic opportunities to examine time-related issues for
present and future research’ (660).
7. Seven are the dimensions considered: strategy (continuity of the value proposition), owner-
ship/governance (preservation of the founder’s legacy as part of the history and future of the
business), leadership (only family members are candidates to head the business), cohesion (in
order to collectively retain the business), culture (a set of values only partially institutionalised,
which includes the relationship with a certain set of stakeholders and the treatment given to
employees, suppliers, costumers, communities, etc.), mission (why the business does what it
does, its transcendent purpose), independence (so the business can remain in the hands of the
founder’s descendants) Drozdow (1998, pp. 339–340).
8. One possible allocation of the seven dimensions to the three subsystems, assuming that some
of those dimensions are bivalent and could be assigned to more than one subsystem, would
be to associate the dimensions of leadership, cohesion and independence to the family; the
dimensions of ownership/governance, strategy and mission to the firm; and, finally, the dimen-
sions of culture and strategy to the business.
9. Sharma and Salvato (2013, p. 41) Regarding the life cycle of the company, that is, the debate on
whether a family firm must keep that feature throughout its life cycle or not, Mandl, Overview
of family, observed that the condition of family business should not be something considered
as a ‘fixed’ characteristic. Thus, business throughout their history may be transferred from fam-
ily firms to non-family ones and vice versa.
10. Fernández Pérez & Puig, 2007; Díaz, 1999 and 2002; Torres, 1998; Valdaliso, 2013; Ybarra, 1985;
Nadal, 1983 and 1992; Rodrigo, 2000 and 2010; Laguna and García, 1999; Germán, 1994. A dif-
ferent case is that of Cabana, 1993, which gives an account of the history of business families
and family firms from a descriptive point of view and finishes when family and firm separate or
one of them disappears.
11. For both examples, it would be possible to perform a business continuity study from the mo-
ment the families sacrificed ownership and control over their businesses. For Carbonell, this
happened in 1978, when the firm became the property of the Banco Hispano Americano (and,
later on, of other owners). In the case of Ybarra, the sacrifice took place in 2009, after the agree-
ment reached with Migasa. For further information on Carbonell, see Castejón, 1997, and, for
Ybarra, refer to the works of Sierra,1992 and 2000 and Ybarra Hidalgo,1985 and 1987, as well as
to those by Fernández-Roca, 2014 and Fernández-Roca, López-Manjón & Gutiérrez-Hidalgo,
2014 and 2018. As regards the wine sector in Andalusia, it is possible to give several examples,
such as that of González Byass, which remained under family control and within the same busi-
ness sector from 1834 to 1987/88. Fernández-Pérez, 1999.
12. There was also some stored information concerning the company Hijos de Luca de Tena.
13. For a synthesised chronological account of the consecutive firms, families, trademarks and fac-
tories related to the olive oil business, see Table 1.
14. In an interview conducted in March 2017, members of the third (Nicolás Luca de Tena Alfonso)
and fourth generations (Antonio Adalid Luca de Tena) insisted that their ancestors were al-
ready trading in olive oil back in the 18th century.
15. Historical Archive of the Province of Seville, Protocol Section, File 15439. There is also a memo-
randum of lease that reads: ‘Nicolás y Torcuato de Tena que bajo el nombre de ‘Tena Hermanos’
tiene establecimiento de librería en esta ciudad (…) aquellos del comercio de libros…’ (‘Nicolás
and Torcuato de Tena, who under the name ‘Tena Hermanos’, own a bookstore in this city […]
those of the book-selling business […]’. Historical Archive of the Province of Seville, Protocol
Section, File 917.
16. Report of the investigating judge on the bankruptcy. Mercantile Consulates Series. Archive of
the Chamber of Commerce of Seville.
17. Historical Archive of the Province of Seville, Protocol Section, File 1416.
18. Consulates Series, Files 109, 123, 208, 311, 330 and 479. Commercial Court of Seville, 1862.In
1860, Torcuato Luca de Tena had his residence in the Torreblanca colony, where he ‘owned a
chocolate factory’. Historical Archive of the Province of Seville, Protocol Section, File 3955. For
industrial colonies, see Dorel-Ferré, Les colonies. In 1872, the colony included twenty ‘comfort-
able and hygienic’ pavilions that served as single-family homes for the employees. The colony
also covered their educational needs at its school, where illiterate workers could attend classes
in the evenings. Gómez Zarzuela, 1872 ff.
19. ‘Ya en 1856 empiezan los protestos de letras los señores Tena, del comercio de libros’ (‘As early as
1856 were the first unpaid bill protests issued against Messrs. Tena, of the book-selling busi-
ness’). Historical Archive of the Province of Seville, Protocol Section, Files 15463 and 15466.
20. File 311. General archive of the Chamber of Commerce of Seville. Strangely enough, the bank-
ruptcy records do not mention the Tena brothers’ book-selling business or the printing house
they had acquired. They might have sold it before the actual bankruptcy. Consulates Series,
Files 109, 123, 208, 311, 330 and 479. Commercial Court of Seville, 1862.
21. Consulates Series, File 208, No. 1. Report elaborated at the request of Tena Hermanos (fifth
section). Commercial Court of Seville, 1862, No. 48.
22. Consulates Series, File 208, No. 1. Report elaborated at the request of Tena Hermanos (fifth
section). Commercial Court of Seville, 1862, No. 48.
23. More specifically, in Campana and Duque de la Victoria, No. 1. Gómez Zarzuela, Guía Oficial de
Sevilla, 1875.
24. Historical Archive of the Province of Seville, Protocol Section, File 12276, No. 575, Sheet 341.
25. Gómez Zarzuela, Guía Oficial de Sevilla, 1890. A power of attorney issued in 1889 by Nicolás
Luca de Tena y Reyna described him as ‘uno de los socios gerentes de la Compañía Fabril que gira
en la misma ciudad bajo la razón de ‘N. Lucca (sic) de Tena’ (‘one of the managing partners of the
manufacturing company that operates in the same city under the name ‘N. Lucca [sic] de Tena’).
Historical Archive of the Province of Spain, Protocol Section, File 1063, No. 16, Sheet 86.
26. The Luca de Tena family was the first to build a modern olive oil refining factory in Seville,
almost twenty years before its main competitor, the Ybarra family, did it. Fernández-Roca, 2014.
27. The deed specified that the other two legitimate sons of Nicolás Luca de Tena y Reyna, i.e.
Rafael and Gustavo Luca de Tena y Caño, would be admitted as managing partners when they
turned 25 years of age. Memorandum of association of the firm Hijos de Luca de Tena. Historical
Archive of the Province of Seville, Protocol Section, File 18782.
28. Memorandum of association of the firm Hijos de Luca de Tena. Historical Archive of the Province
of Seville, Protocol Section, File 18782. Fernández-Roca, The Strategies.
29. On interviews conducted in March and April 2017, Juan Ramón Guillén (owner of Acesur) and
Enriqueta Vila (Professor of History and wife of Nicolás Carretero Luca de Tena, nephew of
Nicolás Luca de Tena y Caño) insisted that the olive oil factory was never moved from
Torreblanca to Calle Almirante Espinosa. However, the municipal file recorded the move from
the latter address to the Huerta de la Salud area. On the other hand, the maps published by
Almuedo in Ciudad e industria, 123-124 and 135, reflect the existence of two different factories
operating under the name of Luca de Tena in both 1900 and 1930. The 1900 map showed a
pomace oil, soap and perfume factory in the city, and a pomace oil and carbon sulphide facto-
ry in the Huerta de la Salud area, outside the city walls. In the 1930 map, the first factory was
also mentioned as producing olive oil, soap, perfume and chocolate, while the second one re-
mained as it was in 1900.
30. Box 402. Alphabetical Series: Factories. Municipal Archive of Seville.
31. The technique implemented to extract pomace oil with carbon sulphide was the main innova-
tion introduced in this sector in Spain during the second half of the 19th century, and only one
factory in Seville (Viuda de Luis Borguet) was using it by the third quarter of that century.
Almuedo 1996
32. Other trademarks were: ‘Águila’, ‘León’, ‘La Sevillana’, ‘Carmela’, ‘La Andaluza’, ‘Pavo Real’, ‘H.L.T.’
(1909), ‘Iberia’, ‘Aceite Extra Fino’, ‘Rubial’ (1910), ‘La Bandera Española’ (1913) or ‘Ofelia’ (1914).
Historical Archive of the Spanish Office of Patents and Trademarks, Files 16721, 16722 and
31127. Website: http://historico.oepm.es/
33. Historical Archive of the Province of Seville. Protocol Section, File 24399.
34. Historical Archive of the Province of Seville. Protocol Section, File 24399.
35. http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/es ~ gualq.html. Last accessed on June 18, 2017.
36. Of the Longoria family’s oil business, the only remaining data is the volume of its exports,
while, of the shipping company operating under the same name, only some advertisements
filed in the archive of the Chamber of Commerce of Seville are left.
37. Historical website of the Spanish Office of Patents and Trademarks, http://historico.oepm.es/.
Accessed in December 2017.
38. The first-born, Nicolás Luca de Tena y Luca de Tena, had died earlier, in 1919. Interviews with
Nicolás Luca de Tena Alfonso conducted on March 24 2017 and May 11 2018. For further infor-
mation on see (Fernández-Roca, López-Manjón, & Gutiérrez-Hidalgo, 2014 and 2018); for
Carbonell, see Montijano (1977).
39. Interview with Nicolás Luca de Tena Alfonso conducted on March 24 2017.
40. The contract stipulated that ‘se comprende en la enajenación todos los cupos, marcas, derechos,
permisos, concesiones, contratos de suministros, etc.’ (‘the alienation includes all the quotas,
trademarks, rights, permits, concessions, supply contracts, etc.’). Contract of sale of the ‘Grease
Group’ signed by Hijos de Luca de Tena and Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena; Archives of Acesur.
The ‘Grease Group’ included olive oil (production, storage, refining and distillation), olive pom-
ace oil (extraction, splitting and refining), industrial oil (solvent extraction, splitting and refin-
ing), and animal grease (splitting and refining), as well as soap production. Report of Aceites y
Jabones Luca de Tena, Seville, 1948.
41. Deed of sale signed by Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A. and Aceites Giralda S.A. Archives of Acesur.
42. Notarial evidence of June 14, 1951, annexed to the accounting documents of Aceites y Jabones
Luca de Tena S.A. Archives of Acesur.
43. The definition of family provided by Hoy and Sharma, Entrepreneurial family firms, allows con-
sidering Manuel Alarcón de la Lastra as the continuator of the involvement of the Luca de Tena
family in the new company, all the more within a historical context where married women
lacked the autonomy to participate in business activities. As for the share distribution, see
Archives of Acesur, Inventory books of Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A.
44. The following are notable examples of it:
−− Report on the liquidation of assets in sale operations involving the firms Hijos de Luca de
Tena S.C. and Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A., issued on December 28 1948, by Joaquín
Soler Moltó, Professor of Commercial Law, who had been appointed as ‘arbitrator’ given the
lack of agreement between the two parties. It should be remarked that the ‘expert’ expressly
complained of that lack of understanding between the parties and had the intention of giving
up trying if this report were not accepted by both of them. This seems to indicate that this
was not the first report issued on the matter.
−− Arbitral award of 1949 issued by Eladio García de la Borbolla y Góngora (lawyer and professor
of Commercial Law), which mentioned a basic document issued in December 1947 and a
previous arbitral award dated on December 3 1948. A new report signed by Professor Moltó
was issued in August 1949 for the valuation of the hydrogenation and carpentry plants.
Archives of Acesur.
45. Although by that year Hijos de Luca de Tena had changed its name to Luca de Tena S.A., the
original name has been maintained in the text so as not confuse the reader.
46. Eumelio García’s name appeared for the first time in an application file (1953–1958) to move
the oil factory of Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena to new premises, which actually never hap-
pened. The director-manager of the firm by that time was Francisco Tallada Cuéllar. Archives of
Acesur, application file to move the factory to the Alfonso XIII Canal. The archives of Acesur in-
clude virtually all accounting documents of Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena (1947–1974).
47. The new share capital was fixed at 65 million pesetas. Notarial act recording the capital in-
crease of Aceites Giralda S.A. (document 4084). Archives of Acesur.
48. It is important to mention that Aceites Giralda S.A owned some land in the Polígono Industrial
La Palmera since its foundation, given that some of the firm’s partners (Antonio Herrera Martín
and the Puchal Sánchez brothers) did not make their contribution to the company’s share cap-
ital with money but with plots in that site. Memorandum of constitution of Aceites Giralda S.A.,
Archives of Acesur.
49. ‘La Giralda’ was registered for its use in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa
Rica, Cuba, Chile, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Morocco, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, United
Kingdom and the countries signatories of the Geneva agreement (Archives of Acesur).
50. Deed of sale signed by Aceites Giralda S.A. and Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A. Archives of
Acesur.
51. Francisco de Sales Núñez Naranjo (on behalf of Almacenes Núñez), José Núñez Naranjo
(Inmobiliaria Plaza de España), Renato García López (Inmobiliaria Huerta de la Salud) and Manuel
Jiménez Barberá (Inmobiliaria Prado de San Sebastián). Deed of dissolution of Aceites y Jabones
Luca de Tena S.A., Archives of Acesur.
52. Notarial act recording the change in the corporate name. Archives of Acesur.
53. Accounting documents of Aceites Giralda S.A., Archives of Acesur.
54. A loan was requested and a viability study performed in 1984 and 1985, while the new ma-
chines for the manufacture of containers were installed in 1987. Archives of Acesur.
55. Aceites del Sur, 1991.
56. Day book of Aceites y Jabones Luca de Tena S.A. of 1947, Archives of Acesur.
57. Aceites del Sur S.A., 1991.
58. Boletín Oficial de la Propiedad Industrial (Official Journal of Industrial Property), 1967 ff. The first
patent was that of a bottle, registered in 1971.
59. Historical website of the Spanish Office of Patents and Trademarks, http://sitadex.oepm.es/
SitadexWS/index.jsp?numExp = M0167616. He registered the same brand for rice.
60. ‘Consiste en la figura de una etiqueta rectangular dispuesta verticalmente que encierra la figura de
una mujer con falda larga en actitud de verter parte del contenido de una botella, coronando a esta
figura una banda curva en la que se lee la denominación ‘La Española’. (‘It consists of a rectangular
sticker that is vertically placed and shows the figure of a woman wearing a long skirt and pour-
ing part of the contents of a bottle, and this figure is crowned with a curved ribbon on which
the name ‘La Española’ is written’). Boletín Oficial de la Propiedad Industrial of July 16, 1970.
61. Minutes recording the constitution of the new board of administration of Olivarera Internacional
S.A., Archives of Acesur.
62. Notarial act recording the change in the board of administration of Olivarera Internacional S.A.,
Archives of Acesur.
63. Aceites del Sur S.A., 1991, and Boletín Oficial de la Propiedad Industrial.
64. Aceites del Sur S.A., 1991.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
This work was supported by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad
[HAR2014-52079-C2-1-P].
ORCID
Jesús D López-Manjón http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0075-3294
Fco. Javier Fernández-Roca https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2435-0622
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Business History

2021, VOL. 63, NO. 3, 421–442

Business must go on: 175 years of an olive oil business

Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement Address 2005

CONTACT Fco. Javier Fernández-Roca jfernandez@upo.es

2. Birth and consolidation of a family-owned olive oil business13

3. The first business transfer: the importance of the corporate and

4. Third phase: Aceites giralda

5. The last phase: Acesur, heirs of luca de tena

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