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Corona beer founder makes everyone in his village a millionaire with generous will Corona founder didn't actually leave all his money to us, village residents confirm
(35 minutes later)
Update: Following the publication of this story by numerous media outlets around the world, including the Daily Telegraph, Mail Online, the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, Time and the Press Association's digital service SNAP.PA, villagers in Cerezales del Condado have denied that they have all been made millionaires by the death of the former Corona boss, Antonino Fernandez. The founder of Corona didn't actually make everyone in his hometown a millionaire. But that doesn't mean that they're not very grateful.
Lucia Alaejos, from the Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia, a local agency for regional development founded by Mr Fernandez, told The Local: "It’s simply not true, unfortunately. It seems someone got the wrong end of the stick and the story has just grown and grown. It’s got completely out of hand.” This week, a story flew around the internet that Antonino Fernandez, the billionaire founder of the brewery who died this year, had left €2 million to every person in his home village. The story was reported by many major UK news organisations, including The Independent, the BBC and the Press Association, as well as internationally – but it wasn't strictly true.
  But those people in the village have said that the story has got "completely out of hand", and that they're not actually millionaires. They haven't received any money directly from Mr Fernandez, they said.
The founder of Corona beer has left £2m in his will to each resident of the small Spanish village in which he grew up. But Mr Fernandez did leave a huge amount of money with his hometown, and has paid for everything from cultural institutions to churches. And he did leave money to his family in Spain, who visit the village every year and help to keep its economy going.
Antonino Fernández, who died aged 98 in August, left £169m to the 80 residents of the small village of Cerezales del Condado in north west Spain, The Telegraph reports. “It’s simply not true, unfortunately,” said Lucia Alaejos from the Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia, a cultural centre that was founded in the village with the benefit of money from the foundations.
The owner of the only bar in the village, Maximino Sanchez told the Diario de León newspaper: "We never had any money before. "It seems someone got the wrong end of the stick and the story has just grown and grown," she told the Local Spain. "It’s got completely out of hand.”
"I don’t know, what we would have done without Antonino." Rather than going to people in the vilage, Mr Fernandez, who had no children of his own, actually left a huge part of his fortune to the descendents of his siblings. As one child of 13, the Corona founder had a large number of nieces and nephews, and so did help to make a large number of them rich.
Mr Fernández first moved to Mexico in 1949 aged 32 where he started working for the Grupo Modelo brewery. “Many of them still visit for some months each summer, so it is great for the village and keeps it alive,” Ms Alaejos told the Local. “But the villagers won’t be sharing in that inheritance directly.”
He rose through the ranks and was in large part responsible for making the company's beers, including Corona, some of the best selling in the world.
He served as the brewery's CEO from 1971 through to 1997.
A noted philanthropist, Mr Fernández established a company in his home province of León which provided jobs for those with disabilities before replicating the same model in the Mexican state of Puebla.
For his charity work, King Juan Carlos of Spain awarded him the Order of Isabella the Catholic.