Rosalía Mera, co-founder of the high street fashion chain Zara and the “wealthiest self-made woman on the planet” according to Forbes magazine, has died aged 69.
Ms Mera’s life was a classic rags-to-riches story. Her family were so poor she had to leave school at 11 to work as a seamstress, but when she died of a stroke on Thursday night while holidaying with her daughter Sandra in Menorca, she was Spain’s richest woman.
Her fortune was estimated at €4.7bn (£4bn), second only in Spain to that of her ex-husband, Amancio Ortega, with whom she began her entrepreneurial career by making dressing gowns and lingerie in their living room. They eventually founded Inditex, the parent company of fashion retailers Zara, Massimo Dutti and Bershka and now worth an estimated €15.9bn. Forbes ranked Ms Mera as the 66th most influential woman in the world.
She never forgot her working-class roots, however, and raised many eyebrows when she often described herself as left-wing. “You can’t be otherwise when you come from where I do,” she said in a television interview last year.
In 2011 she declared herself part of the “indignados”, a protest movement against perceived corruption in Spain’s political and business leaders. “Cuts in health and education do society no favours. You can’t take the easy way out and cut from the bottom,” she said at the time. Read on and comment » | Martin Roberts | Madrid | Friday, August 16, 2013
