Do people buying a property ever think about the people selling it? Probably only if a compelling narrative exists. One such occurred in Spain in 2020, when an act of personal endeavor emerged as a story of heroic proportions.
The story was not universally reported, and few beyond Madrid are aware of it today. Nor is this because the protagonist is a shrinking violet, he is a leading European industrialist. The veil around the event occurs because it concerns something we’d all prefer to forget.
The ruination that the Covid-19 pandemic wrought across the globe is still reverberating as its aftershocks persist. But while governmental inquiries calculate lessons learned, what most people wish to do, if circumstances permit, is move on. Which is how stories can vanish.
A Phone Call
On the morning of Friday March 20, 2020, Clemente González Soler and his wife were breakfasting in their home near Madrid. Like millions of others, they watched as the television news showed hospitals collapse under the pressure of mounting Covid admissions, corridor floors commandeered as overflow emergency wards.
González Soler is the founder and executive president of the Alibérico Group, which comprises 17 industrial and technology companies. The list of prestigious professional and honorary civic roles he holds would require a scroll of inordinate length, added to which are several of Spain’s highest national awards.
On that Friday morning, he received a phone call from the regional prime minister. Within an hour he was leading the creation of a hospital from scratch—absolute point zero—that, 36 hours later, was a functioning unit with 1,500 beds, saving people’s lives.
González Soler’s team of architects and engineers, aided by a network of commercial and infrastructure support, worked without cessation, and at 6pm on Saturday March 21, the first 500 patients were admitted for treatment. The two-pavilion hospital, named Noah’s Ark, went on to save nearly 4,000 lives in six weeks. Patients were successfully discharged in half the time of other hospitals. Of the 1,000 health professionals who worked there, none was reported to have been infected.
A Singular Individual
If this is a story about a community forced by extreme exigency to subvert its civic protocols and procedures in order to achieve immediate levels of positive public good, it’s also about the capabilities of one extraordinary individual.
To make the Noah’s Ark project happen, González Soler needed his personal network of influential corporate leaders and decision-makers to align and work as one. That in itself required momentum from a single charismatic source.
Twenty years earlier, singularity of vision was also what inspired González Soler to commission the family home he created in the village of Las Rozas, 20 minutes northwest of Madrid. In 2000, or Y2K, as denizens of the World Wide Web liked to term it then, a global concern was whether contemporary IT could handle the shift of the clock from one millennium to the next. Since then, other factors have become signal for high-profile property purchasers of a certain echelon.
A Family Home
Starting with priorities, the gated community of Las Rozas is rated highly for its levels of security. It is a supremely private enclave favored for its international schools and high-quality lifestyle amenities. Its proximity to the center of Madrid (19 kilometers by motorway) affords quick and easy access to the city’s business and entertainment resources. The journey to Madrid Barajas airport is just 24 kilometers (15 miles).
With the choice of any neighborhood in the capital to call home, González Soler has chosen to own three properties in Las Rozas over the years. Now that his family are making their own generational futures, the sanctuary he built in 2000 is for sale.
The three-story villa is set on over 2,000 square meters (21,500 sq ft) of lush lawns, planted gardens, shady trees and landscape views of mountain peaks and trails. Seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, massage suite and a cornucopia of light, bright living areas make this a place for welcoming friends, family and colleagues with comfort and ease. There is on-site staff accommodation and garaging for six cars.
Also on the property stand three cypress trees that carry the special meaning of another story not widely known. Tradition has it that if one cypress is planted, a welcome awaits inside. Two means you will dine there. Three—as nurtured by Clemente González Soler and his family—and you will find yourself staying the night.
Or, perhaps, in future, staying much longer than that. The property is for sale at €3.7 million ($3.85 million) exclusively through Rimontgó.
Rimontgó is a founding partner of Forbes Global Properties, an invitation-only network of top-tier brokerages worldwide and the exclusive real estate partner of Forbes.
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