Elvira Vázquez

In the 1990s she was general director of the pasta company Pastas La Familia and was well known for her promotion of women’s tennis. As managing director of the leisure company Ociopuro, Elvira Vázquez was one of the leaders in the project of renovating El Molino after 1999, when the enterprise bought this emblematic music hall on El Paral·lel. She subsequently set up the El Molino Foundation (FEM) in order to channel support from the professional and business sphere and institutional backing for the project, which not only envisaged the material refurbishment of El Molino but also planned to turn it into the mainstay of the commercial, cultural, leisure and urban planning revitalisation of El Paral·lel and the neighbourhood as a whole. In 2011 she was awarded the Barcelona Medal of Honour in recognition of her work in initiating and inspiring the endeavour to recover El Molino and bring about the revitalisation of El Paral·lel and its environs.