The bullfighter Vicente Barrera will have to take a step back in his business activities when he assumes the vice presidency of the Generalitat that Vox has agreed with the Popular Party. Articles 6 and 30 of the Valencian Government Law prohibit the regional president and the councilors from making public office compatible with any professional or commercial activity, which will force the next person in charge of the Culture area of the Consell to resign as sole administrator of five limited companies and as a director of the commercial company Unión Vitivinícola, the La Rioja winery that markets the Marqués de Cáceres wine brand. The usual thing in these cases is that the incompatible positions delegate all the powers of their companies to third parties, without having to part with the shares, in order to later recover them when they leave public activity..

The right-hander, who has not hidden his sympathy for the Franco regime on social networks and where he boasts of being the “grandson of the winners” of the Civil War, is a descendant on his mother's side of one of the founding families of Marqués de Cáceres, the Simó, who in turn were for many years a textile industrialist in the Valencian town of Ontinyent through the company Mantas Paduana. The business was founded in 1919 by José Simó Marín, but the Asian competition crisis, which affected many manufacturers in the sector at the beginning of the 20th century, also dragged down Paduana. The family ended up getting rid of the business and selling the plots and warehouses for the construction of homes in 2006, when the real estate boom was in its final years..

From that original activity the necessary capital arose to participate in new businesses. One of them was the Marqués de Cáceres winery, where several founding shareholder families live and in which Barrera has represented the Simó family as a member of the board of directors, a position that he will have to resign from when he joins the Council. chaired by the popular Carlos Mazón. His salary as vice president, if there are no changes by the new Executive, will be 66,311.28 euros per year. This is what the vice presidents of Compromís, Aitana Mas, and Unidas Podemos, Héctor Illueca, charged.

That of the Riojan winery is not, however, the main business activity of Vicente Barrera. The matador administers a group of companies with registered office on Calle Cronista Carreres in Valencia. The company that bears his name, Vicente Barrera Simó SL, is still active with a share capital of around 350,000 euros and with which he managed the promotion and development of the services necessary for the exercise of the profession of bullfighter. This company also has livestock and agricultural exploitation as its corporate purpose..

However, the company with the largest assets, and in which he also appears as the sole administrator, is a company called Edificaciones Formabil, whose corporate purpose is the purchase and sale of real estate.. This company, established in 2003, presented its latest accounts in 2021 with a net worth of 4.1 million euros. That year he had no direct turnover, although he obtained just over 262,000 euros from other operating income (396,000 in 2020) and closed the year with a profit of 60,169 euros..

Edificaciones Formabil has a stake in another company linked to the brick business, Naves Industriales Viator, although this company is currently in a situation of registration closure for not submitting the accounts on time. Vicente Barrera, in turn, is the sole administrator of Clariflor, another company dedicated to the exploitation of all kinds of rural or urban properties, with a net worth of 530,000 euros and barely 32,615 of operating income.. The year 2021 closed with 942 euros of losses. Barrera also appears as administrator of Import Pesca VLC, founded in 2013 and dedicated to the import and export of food products, especially fish, shellfish and other marine products..

The bullfighter left the bullring in 2011 to continue with the family business. That same year, he was seen in political acts of the PP of Francisco Camps, whom he came to accompany to give support to the Valencian TSJ when he was tried in 2012 for the suit case, from which he was acquitted.. After approaching Rosa Díez's UPyD party, Barrera joined Vox in 2018, where he served as regional coordinator for a few months. A year later, he held a testimonial position on the municipal list of Valencia, the city where he was born in 1968.. He repeated in seventh place on May 28, without obtaining representation.

Nobody noticed him because of his speech or his political activity until he appeared last week together with Carlos Flores and Ignacio Gil Lázaro in the negotiating group for the Vox pact with the PP to govern jointly in the Valencian Community. Reducing Flores to the list to Congress by Valencia after the veto of the PP for his sentence to one year in prison for psychological abuse and harassment of his ex-wife, the party of Santiago Abascal opted for the symbolism of Barrera to position him as its strong man in the Mazon Council.

The political profile of the former bullfighter is unknown. Since last week's announcement, he has not made any public appearance or offered to answer questions before the media.. According to the curriculum that Vox released after his unofficial appointment as vice president with powers of Culture, Barrera finished his law studies in Valencia (although he has never practiced as a lawyer) and, after leaving the arena, his professional career “has led him to manage companies linked to the agri-food industry, the restaurant and hotel industry and the real estate world”. “He is a lover of the countryside, of tradition and of the rural world,” Vox highlighted in his presentation. The link with bullfighting is the only cultural affiliation that is publicly known.