The pigs that ruined Cruyff

Josep Vilella points to the road again. “There were six or eight cars, I don’t remember anymore. Cruyff came with an entire escort”. The peasant is 75 years old, the same years that Cruyff would have turned this Monday. His memories of the Dutchman’s visit date back to 1978. “But nobody has forgotten him here. The great Cruyff came from Barcelona and everything… It was an event”.

It was a car trip of about 140 kilometers from Barcelona along, in those days, a one-lane road in each direction. Two kilometers north of Foradada (la Noguera) is the castle of Montsonís, very well preserved. Below, the sanctuary of the Mare de Déu del Salgar. Behind it is a green plain with the long, low sheds of a pig farm.

The official name is Granja La Rourera. But on the maps of the region it still appears as Granja Grupeco. Grupeco was the name of the holding company in which Johan Cruyff, a Barça player since 1973, Michel Basilevitch, a former model, and businessman Gabriel Giménez Pardo had brought together several companies. The most important: Ganadera Catalana, which was going to build a modern pig farm in Foradada.

“We were delighted with such a large investment. Rural lands have always been undervalued, despite the fact that they are essential for life, the food of the people of the city. So when they come from Barcelona to inject money into the region, they are welcome,” says Carme Díaz, who runs La Botiga de Montsonís.

The idea came from Basilevitch, a Frenchman with Belarusian parents who had befriended Johan and Danny Cruyff. He gained the trust of the couple and took the place of Cor Coster, Danny’s father, as Johan’s agent. Cruyff was determined to leave football after his contract with Barça ended, in the summer of 1978, despite the fact that he was only 31 years old. Basilevitch convinced him of the need not to leave all the money he had earned with Ajax and Barcelona in the bank; it was time to invest his fortune. In vegetables, in palm trees, in a real estate project in Ibiza but, for the most part, in a pig farm.

In his 2016 autobiography, Cruyff describes his business nonsense: “One of your acquaintances tells you something and you go along with it, without having the slightest knowledge. It is also, and that is the stupidest thing, a thing with which you have no affinity. And others take advantage of it. Because where there is money, the rats come out. I invested in a pig farm. How did it occur to me…?!”. For Cruyff it was always the biggest mistake of his life.

It was Coster who, on a visit to Barcelona, ​​discovered that his son-in-law’s bank accounts were almost at zero, an amount, in pesetas, of about 4.5 million euros had evaporated. All savings from him. Coster blamed Basilevitch, who denied it; There was never any complaint by Cruyff against his former partner.

Years later, in 1996, Basilevitch pointed out in El Mundo Deportivo another presumed culprit for the failure, Xavier Aguilar, the Barça treasurer. “He is one of the people who did the most to ruin Cruyff in 78 & rdquor ;, said the Frenchman.

Aguilar was in the seventies the deputy to the director Javier de la Rosa at the prestigious Banco Garriga Nogués, Banesto’s subsidiary in Catalonia. Basilevitch: “It was the two of them who tricked Cruyff and me into that pig business. I will always remember how Aguilar, in front of De la Rosa, granted us in cash, ticket after ticket, a loan of 15 million pesetas.”

Aguilar was founder of the Grupeco holding company and transferred it to Cruyff and Basilevitch. He was barely 30 years old, just like De la Rosa. A few years later, De la Rosa would be fired by Banesto for his dubious management of Banco Garriga Nogués, justice investigated the huge economic hole he left; a preview of what he would repeat later in other companies.

Banesto was one of Grupeco’s creditors when the holding company collapsed like a house of cards just when the farm had been built and the pigsties were waiting for the 3,000 pigs. The peasant Josep Vilella compares it to what happened to the Baron of Albí in the middle of the last century. That nobleman, Carles de Montoliu, lived in the castle of Montsonís, and many hectares of land were owned by him. “Everyone here worked for him & rdquor ;, Vilella recalls. “When mechanization arrived, the baron decided that it would be the tractors that would do all the work. But the tractor drivers didn’t know how to till the land, and the crops failed. Something similar happened to Cruyff; he knew a lot about soccer, he was a genius, but about pigs, nothing at all & rdquor ;.

Jaume Abellana, with his company Premier Pigs, is one of the largest entrepreneurs in the pig industry in Lleida and Aragón. He lived closely what happened in 1978. “To maintain the language of football,” he says, “they made Cruyff a pipe and then they scored a penalty goal for the top corner.” What do you mean by that? “People see A very large investor appears, from Barcelona, ​​with a lot of money. Then other prices begin to be set.

An example: someone from the region paid, for example, 100,000 pesetas for a job, land, management, whatever. But an outsider from the faraway city would be charged double or triple for the same work, land, or management. Builders, pallets, carpenters, plumbers… Many suddenly billed other prices when Cruyff’s millions spread like manna over the area. It is said in the region that more than one could build a villa with the profits, although others were left with unpaid bills: a dozen businessmen from Artesa de Segre claimed in 1986, when Cruyff returned to Barcelona as a coach, the payment of money that he still owed them.

From Grupeco, with the office on Passeig de Gràcia, there was hardly any control of what was happening in Lleida. Requests continually came from Noguera that more money was needed. Until the accounts were empty. It was the moment that Cor Coster discovered the disastrous administration. Get this over with, he told his son-in-law.

“Cruyff himself has never been able to see any pig on his farm & rdquor ;, says Abellana, who has been the owner of the ‘Cruyff farm’ since 2014. While the Dutchman, forced by bankruptcy, decided to continue his football career in the United States to earn money again, Basilevitch tried to sell the farm in 1979, but no buyer wanted to take on a debt of 2.5 million euros.

Finally, the facilities were auctioned in order to pay the creditors. The buyer was a surprise: Grupo Zeta, the recently founded communication company, took over the pig business despite the fact that, like Cruyff, it had no knowledge of the sector. It did not work, and after a couple of decades of abandonment, it left the management in the hands of a cooperative in Artesa.

Johan Cruyff never saw his farm again. And for some years the last trace of his presence in Foradada has also been lost. In the castle of Montsonís there was a photo of the baron, who died last year, posing with the famous footballer. Since the castle was opened to the public, none of all the valuable things, including many paintings, have ever disappeared. Except for that photo of Cruyff.