page_title: El Corte Inglés
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: El Corte Inglés / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Head offices of El Corte Inglés group (including Hipercor), at 112 Calle de Hermosilla (street) in Salamanca district in Madrid (Spain). Español: Oficinas centrales del grupo El Corte Inglés (incluyendo Hipercor), en el nº 112 de la Calle de Hermosilla de Madrid (España), en el distrito de Salamanca.
context_page_description: El Corte Inglés S.A., headquartered in Madrid, is the biggest department store group in Europe and ranks third worldwide. El Corte Inglés is Spain's only remaining department store chain.
context_section_description: In 1934, the founders Ramón Areces Rodriguez and Cesar Rodriguez Gonzalez bought a tailor shop (which had opened in 1890) located on one of Madrid's most central streets, calle Preciados, and made it into a limited company.  Around 1920, aged 15, Areces had gone to Havana, Cuba, and worked at the famous retail chain Almacenes El Encanto, where he learned the basics of department store business.  In 1940, he turned the tailor shop into the current corporation El Corte Inglés, S.A.. On the death of Areces in 1989, his nephews, Isidoro Álvarez, who later became the president, Luis Areces Rodriguez and David Gonzalez Fernandez were named his successors and quickly became some of the most powerful men in Spain. In 1995, El Corte Inglés bought out its only serious competitor, Galerías Preciados, which had entered bankruptcy.
  Stores tend to be very large in size and offer a wide range of products: stores may sell music, movies, portable and household electronics, furniture, hardware, books, clothes, groceries, gourmet food, cars and real estate.
  International expansion began in 2001 in Portugal, with a store in Lisbon, followed in 2006 with a store in Vila Nova de Gaia, opposite the city of Porto, and a third store was planned. In that same year of 2006 just as it  opened its second store outside of Spain (in Vila Nova de Gaia) the company announced expansion outside the Iberian Peninsula: Italy was to be the first country to host a store but, owing to the ongoing eurozone crisis, the plan was suspended, as well as the opening of the third store in Portugal. Various food products bearing the El Corte Inglés brand are marketed in Latin American stores.
  In 2009, David Gonzalez Fernandez, one of Cesar Rodriguez's descendants sold his 9% of stake to the company right after the Areces Fuentes Brothers sold their 3%.
  In October 2013, the firm sold a 51% stake in the financing department to Spanish banking group Grupo Santander for around €140 million. From 2014 to 2018 the CEO of the company was Dimas Gimeno.
caption: El Corte Inglés corporate head offices are located in Madrid at Calle de Hermosilla, 112
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