Corona beer founder helped his village, but he didn’t make everyone millionaires. Photo: IBTimes UK
I drink way too much beer. So does everyone I know, though, so it makes me feel as though I don’t. It’s not often that I drink Corona, but I sure do know a lot of people who do. Chances are good that pretty every surf trip you’ve ever been on has involved at least a couple of Coronas. Corona is a huge beer company, and the founder just died. Reports are circulating that he left everyone in his village a couple of million bucks in his will. That’s awesome… if it’s true. But it might not be.
According to Fox (so trustworthy!) Antonio Fernandez was born in a tiny village in Spain called Cerezales del Condado. There’s something like 80 people who live there, and it’s not the most affluent of communities. In 1949, when he was 32, he and his wife emigrated to Mexico to seek his fortune, and he found it in beer. By the time the ’70s rolled around in all their bell-bottomed glory, Antonio was the CEO of Grupo Modelo, which makes Corona, Modelo, and Pacifico. It’s owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, just like pretty much every other beer company on the planet.
By the time he died at the age of 99, he was a billionaire. But, according to the story, he never forgot his roots. Growing up, he lived in poverty with 13 brothers and sisters. He dropped out of school as a teen because his family couldn’t pay for it.
It’s a real rags-to-riches story, which always reads well. There’s more, too. When he died, he apparently left $210 million to the residents of Cerezales del Condado, making every single one of them a millionaire. Should we just leave it there and walk away feeling as though something nice happened in the world? Nah.
After the story blew up and started trending on Facebook (hey Mark Zuckerberg, here’s that fake news everyone’s talking about!), the IBTimes UK called up Vegas del Condado council in the Province of Leon and asked them if the reports were true. Sadly, they’re not. “While donations from the billionaire Antonino Fernández have indeed benefitted the region, which includes his home village,” they wrote, “there is no truth to reports that individual villagers have been made millionaires.”
