Career Path

I was offered a position in another tourism company within the group, Mundicolor, working in the inbound department in Madrid, where I was responsible for receiving and attending to clients. After four months, feeling the role lacked responsibility, I requested to manage a branch to increase my responsibilities. They offered me the choice of Alicante or Ibiza, and I chose Mundicolor Ibiza. Throughout the summer, I was in charge of reservations, attending to clients and selling excursions. I was managing different nationalities with two people under my supervision.

During the winter of 1981, I performed the same role at Mundicolor Gran Canaria, specifically in the south, in the San Agustin/Playa del Inglés area, for the entire winter.

I decided to pursue a Master's in Marketing in the United States, in Stamford, but just before leaving, the French multinational adventure travel company Nouvelles Frontières (Nuevas Fronteras), opened offices in Madrid and Barcelona.

As a global leader in cheap flights around the world and the largest adventure travel company, which aligned with one of my passions, I decided to swap the marketing master's for my love of adventure and joined the company for the office opening. I didn’t hesitate and became their commercial manager.

I worked in sales for a year, during which we launched numerous promotional campaigns nationwide, establishing many adventure travel destinations from Spain.

In 1985, the members of the company and I, believed that the world of adventure travel was just beginning in Spain, and it was an excellent alternative. So, we decided to create our own adventure travel agency called Entalpía, a Spanish agency for Spanish clients.

For five years, we introduced the concept of adventure travel for Spaniards to destinations such as Asia, South America, some parts of Europe, but especially Africa—both Arab and Sub-Saharan Africa—using 4x4 vehicles, trucks, Land Rovers, and similar, crossing the Trans-Saharan routes, and exploring Kenya, Tanzania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Zaire, and many more. We also offered a variety of hiking, trekking and other adventure activities. Our success was such that we created a wholesale brand, Aventura en el Mundo. It wasn’t the type of product suited for traditional travel agencies, so unfortunately, it didn’t achieve the expected success.

As a music lover, I came up with the idea of creating a brand within Entalpía, which I named Música sobre ruedas (Music on Wheels). The concept was to offer trips to cities where pop/rock top musicians were having concerts. We were able to transport a large numbers of attendees to these concert venues by providing buses and tickets.

We sold directly to customers or through record stores across the country, providing buses, guides and concert tickets.

The Zona de Baile was a musical magazine project led by one of Entalpía’s partners, Manuel González de la Peña. It was founded to introduce the new electronic music that was emerging in Spain in the late 80s. It was very successful, they published several issues of the magazine and let to the creation of a TV music contest called La Quinta Marcha, where people like Penélope Cruz and Jesús Vázquez began their careers.

During three years, I worked on the magazine commercial team.

The name Cereza stands for CEntral de REservas de alojamientos en la naturaleZA (Accommodation Booking Center in Nature).

In 1990, I embarked on a new project: the study, development, and launch of a rural tourism wholesaler.

For 6 months I studied, analysed and carried out a project feasibility budget to see if a new Rural Travel Wholesaler would be profitable as an innovative product in the tourism market. I was supported and mentored by the renowned hotel consultant Daniel Gutiérrez.He already had Minitours, a wholesaler for traditional hotel and aparthotel accommodations throughout Spain.

Over the course of four years, we created CEREZA, a program featuring the best charming hotels across Spain, as well as a wide range of accommodations such as villas, country houses, rural farmhouses, and other types of rural tourism products, targeting both Spanish and foreign tourists.

The key was expanding this offer to the Central European market, which was accustomed to traveling for at least a week during several months of the year. This product marked a significant turning point in the offering and development of rural tourism across Spain.

In 1990, following the closure MiniTours group companies, I was offered the opportunity to create the Secret Europe program and oversee all inbound tourism for Spain for the wholesaler Catai Tours (a pioneer for many years in travel to the Middle East and long-haul destinations). With Matilde Torres, we developed and established two program options: Secret Europe, for the national outbound market, aimed at all Spanish travel agencies; and a mid-to-high-end product focused on luxury, catering to high-end inbound tourism with top-class hotels, circuits, and bespoke options for elite clients, mainly from Asia.

The program was designed to encourage traveling to Spain for the Asian and Middle Eastern markets. Over the years, these two products have been highly successful within Catai Tours.