Mondragón Cooperative Corporation

Mondragon Co-operative Corporation

Type	Worker cooperative federation
Founded	1956
Founder	José María Arizmendiarrieta
Headquarters	Mondragón, Basque Country, Spain
Area served	International
Key people	Javier Sotil (president of the General Council)
Revenue	€ 12,110 million (2015)
Total assets	€ 24,725 million (2014)
Number of employees	74,335 (2015)
Divisions	Finance, Industry, Retail, Knowledge
Website	mondragon-corporation.com

The Mondragon Corporation is a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. It was founded in the town of Mondragoe in 1956 by graduates of a local technical college. Its first product was paraffin heaters. It is the tenth-largest Spanish company in terms of asset turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people in 257 companies and organizations in four areas of activity: finance, industry, retail and knowledge. By 2015, 74,335 people were employed.

Mondragon cooperatives operate in accordance with Statement on the Co-operative Identity maintained by the International Co-operative Alliance.

In 1941 José María Arizmendiarrieta a young Catholic priest settled in Mondragón, a town with a population of 7,000 that had not yet recovered from the poverty, hunger, exile, and tension of the Spanish Civil War. In 1943, Arizmendiarrieta established a technical college which became a training ground for managers, engineers and skilled labour for local companies, and primarily for the co-operatives. Arizmendiarrieta spent a number of years educating young people about a form of humanism based on solidarity and participation, in harmony with Catholic social teaching, and the importance of acquiring the necessary technical knowledge before creating the first co-operative. In 1955, he selected five young people to set up the first company of the co-operative and industrial beginning of the Mondragon Corporation. The company was called Talleres Ulgor, an acronym derived from the surnames of Usatorre, Larrañaga, Gorroñogoitia, Ormaechea, and Ortubay, known today as @Fagor Electrodomésticos".