Jamie Botin and Iberdrola are teaming up in photovoltaics after a lucrative involvement in the industry.

Octogenarian Jaime Botín-Sans de Sotuola García de los Ríos, along with his children, is at the head of the Botín family branch, brother of the late Emilio Botín. They have teamed up with Iberdrola for a photovoltaic project in Extremadura and continue to work on several solar power plants.

The Botins are carrying out these plans through Aleph, a risk capital management company, under the leadership of Alfonso Botin, Jaime Botin's son. They do this through a company named after a Greek mythical creature with features of a man, fish and horse - Ictiocentauros SL. According to the latest available reports, the assets of this company reached 38.7 million euros in 2022. Approximately 33% of its shares are held by Cartival.''Through this holding, the Botins control about 24% of Bankinter, Spain's fifth-largest bank, and 19.15% of insurance company Línea Directa.

At the end of last year, Ictiocentauros was the owner of seven companies involved in the promotion of photo energy. These include Ictio Solar Boreal, SL, which in July 2022 became a shareholder of Solar Majada Alta SL, a company of Iberdrola that owns the Majada Alta and San Antonio solar photovoltaic plants in Cedillo (Caceres) with a total capacity of 100 megawatts (MW). According to Iberdrola's report on the profitability of its investments in green projects, Aleph became a shareholder in this project in Extremadura last July, buying a "49.9% participation" from the energy multinational. Botins and Iberdrola do not comment on this operation, which for Aleph, namely the sale of assets, not their''acquisition, is significant. In Iberdrola's case, the deal is in line with its asset rotation strategy.

In recent years, the energy company has transferred part of its stakes in many renewable energy projects to various investors in order to raise additional funds while retaining control of these installations. Ictiocentauros also includes Ictio solar Casiopea SL, which is developing the PF Ictio Alcántara project, a small 26.6 MW solar park in the city of Alcántara (Cáceres).

In response to questions from ElDiario.es, Aleph does not specify which projects are in the pipeline because by policy it does not speak to the press. This portfolio could cover several hundred MW.

In the town of Cedillo, the other''Ictiocentauros company, Ictio Solar Aries SL, has finally decided to create a conflict for its 250 MW photovoltaic project before the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), after they were denied a connection by Red Electricity, as the proposed connection was deemed "impossible". The CNMC rejected Botin's company's conflict because it was filed outside the deadline.

Numerous Ictiocentauros projects have changed hands in recent years without making them see the light of day, allowing their owners to earn millions of dollars in dividends. In March 2019, the CNMC authorized the sale to Australian fund Macquarie, Canada's OpTrust and Bruc Energy (which is owned by Juan Behar, a former employee of Ferrovial, Citigroup and the FCC) of nine photovoltaic projects with a combined capacity of 380 MW,''which were developed by the company Botina in Toledo, Ciudad Real and Cáceres. Macquarie carried out this operation through Gnowee Iberia, which again refers to mythology (in this case, indigenous).

After the sale, Ictiocentauros paid a dividend of 21.2 million euros to its shareholders that year, according to its accounts for the period. A year later, they paid another 16.15 million after selling Cartival-related projects to Cobra, then a subsidiary of ACS, which at the time sold 75% of its photovoltaic energy business in Spain to Portuguese oil company Galp. Galp has since owned 100% of this portfolio, originally developed by Botins. Galp paid 140 million for the remaining 25% in this joint venture with ACS, managed by''Cobra, a subsidiary that Florentino Perez's construction company sold to French company Vinci in 2021.

Among the companies wholly owned by Galp and developed by Aleph are Ictio Solar Orion SLU, promoting a 150 MW park in Torrecillas de la Tisa and Aldeasentenera, Cáceres, which received a favorable environmental opinion from the Ministry of Environmental Reorientation in May 2022. In the same month, Galp announced the launch of three stations at the same capacity in Alcázar de San Juan (ciudad Real) - the Ictio Alcázar I, II and III projects that Aleph Capital has developed in this Manche city.

The manager of Ictiocentauros and its affiliates is Eduardo Aguado, partner and CEO of Aleph Capital, who explains on his website that he has been investing in renewable energy projects since 2005 through funds in Spain, Mexico and Italy. The first fund focused on Spain was Aleph Sun Capital, launched in 2005 to develop a 30-megawatt photovoltaic plant in Olmedilla (Cuenca) with an investment of one million euros, which increased 37 times in 2007.

These companies are behind Cartival, the holding company of Jaime Botín and his children. The 87-year-old pensioner has had to face the court several times in recent years. As you know,''The former president of Bankinter and uncle of Santander's current president, Ana Botin, was sentenced in 2020 to a three-year prison term and a fine of 91.7 million euros for smuggling after trying to smuggle a Picasso painting out of Spain. He avoided jail for medical reasons.

Botin is also facing a lawsuit after committing tax fraud in the purchase of a private jet through a scheme with several offshore companies, as revealed by "El Diario.es" in 2014. A few months ago, the Audiencia of the National Court of Justice confirmed to a large extent the fine imposed on his holding for deducting close to 650,000 euros in expenses for private security for the house of Botín and his children by the Tax Agency.

The banker is a permanent''a member of the list of Spain's largest wealthy people, although he is not included in the latest ranking of the country's 100 richest people that Forbes has just published. He is also one of the largest land owners in Spain. In 2020, El Mundo reported his ownership of 8,557 hectares of hunting fruit in Ciudad Real, Cáceres and Madrid. Several of these plots are owned by El Retamoso de la Mancha 2 SLU, which owns Cartival, which owns 50% of Pista la Perdiz, SL, which owns a private airfield in Torre de Juan Abad (Ciudad Real). The Botines own about 2,000 hectares of plots in Campo de Montiel in the vicinity of this town of about 1,000 inhabitants. In 2016, the airfield for private planes attracted attention. Here, the Spanish Guard detained a Swiss citizen on suspicion of smuggling,''who tried to smuggle into Spain a painting worth 160,000 euros that he had smuggled on a private plane from Switzerland. The administrator of Pista la Perdiz SL is Javier Juan Medem de la Torriente, who belongs to a wealthy family that had direct ties to dictator Franco. The administrator runs La Nava Farm, an exclusive accommodation on a hunting ground in the neighboring town of Castellar de Sanyago, in the foothills of the Sierra Morena, which for years has attracted Spanish and foreign wealthy people with a passion for hunting. "La Nava is the only private hunting and events organization in Spain that has its own paved private airstrip from which to take domestic and international flights to''any express plane,'" the estate notes on its website. There you can read high praise for financier Henry Kravis (co-founder of venture capital fund KKR) and deceased French billionaire Olivier Dassault.