Despite having lost an eye in an accident during his youth, Arizmendi became a voracious reader and keen observer of human action. Arizmendi escaped execution only because of a last-minute administrative fluke. Soon after, he began his seminary studies for ordination to the Catholic priesthood. This was yet another providential moment. What was immediately obviously to Arizmendi was that the townsfolk were caught in a vicious cycle of poverty, with only petty work available following the Civil War and no practical investment in education or industry.
The war was destructive both materially and spiritually. Arizmendi thought deeply about how to break this cycle. Beyond his catechesis to locals about Catholic social teaching e. He initially worked with a local Basque factory to provide some practical training, but both parties eventually had a falling out. From its humble beginnings of providing mostly blue-collar training to underemployed rural adults, the university now offers full-time bachelors, masters, and doctorate programs in the fields of engineering, material sciences, business, communications, IT, and education to thousands of students from around the world.
Arizmendi wanted to do more than merely connect his students to other businesses for employment. It was then that:. Hence along with the worker-owners of the first cooperative venture, Arizmendi dedicated their new business to minor industrial machinery and, most of all, domestic appliances.
Over the next few decades, with added capital reinvestment from a booming Spanish economy throughout the s and early s, a dozen or so more cooperatives were created to form a robust Arizmendi Corporation. Among the key new ventures in food retail was the highly performant and still existing Eroski Supermarket chain which currently has 1, stores in Spain and in France.
Over the next few decades, as globalization advanced, the Arizmendi Corporation portfolio flourished and expanded to multiple new sectors: finance, insurance retail, and knowledge industries. Examples include the credit union Laboral Kutxa and insurance company Seguros Lagun Aro and private pension and disability pay-protection group Lagun Aro.
