Pontegadea is unstoppable. The news, revealed by specialized media, that Amancio Ortega’s real estate company is negotiating the purchase of Facebook’s future headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, has almost reached the category of paradigm. It is a monumental operation ($550 million, according to published figures) in a year of great investment activity for the richest man in Spain. And the new object of desire, a high-end office complex, is not an extravagance at all for a man who has known for years what it is like to be the landlord of the largest technology companies.
If the operation is completed, Facebook would not be a new tenant for Pontegadea. The real estate company with which Ortega, founder of the Inditex fashion group (Zara, Bershka, Massimo Dutti and more) manages his investments, and from which he obtains the bulk of his wealth, already rents offices to Facebook in Madrid and Seattle. The Seattle offices were acquired in 2019 for $415 million. In Madrid, the capital of Spain, Pontegadea welcomed the social network in its building at 35 Castellana Boulevard, a shared block of seven floors (plus three more underground, for parking) that until last spring was also the headquarters of the law firm DLA Piper.
