Zara owner wins moral victory as critics crash in Spanish election
Foundation of Amancio Ortega, the world’s sixth-richest man, donated €310m to Spain's public health system
Madrid — One winner from Spain’s “Super Sunday” of three-way elections was Amancio Ortega, the owner of the Inditex SA clothing empire and the world’s sixth-richest man. Ortega, 83, had come under fire from the anti-establishment platform Podemos for his donations of expensive cancer-treatment machines to public hospitals. “A worthy democracy doesn’t accept alms from multimillionaires to equip its health service,” Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias said on Twitter ahead of the elections. “It makes them pay the taxes they should and respect workers’ rights.” Ortega might be forgiven a smile as he surveys the wreckage of Iglesias’s campaign for regional and local votes held across Spain on Sunday after an attempt fell flat to make the cancer-care donations a campaign issue. Podemos’s weak showing nationally was especially poor in Madrid, where a breakaway party led by Iglesias’s former ally, Inigo Errejon, split its vote. The performance may help convince acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanch...
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