Juan Roig is the businessman with the best reputation in Spain for the seventh consecutive year.

Juan Roig is, indisputably, the businessman with the best reputation in Spain , with a perfect score for the past seven years. This is evident from the latest edition of the ' Merco 100 Leaders Spain 2025 ranking ', published by ABC. This ranking, which has been conducted since the beginning of the century, aims to measure the popularity of Spain's leading business leaders among executives, journalists, academics , and opinion leaders in the business world.

Following Juan Roig, the undisputed winner, are illustrious names such as Ana Botín , president of Banco Santander, as well as Amancio and Marta Ortega , founder and president of the Inditex Group, and Florentino Pérez , president of ACS and Real Madrid, among other high-level business leaders.

Merco's ranking is compiled through telephone surveys, initially conducted among executives of companies with a turnover of more than €50 million in Spain . Once the provisional ranking of the 100 most reputable leaders is completed, it is refined, incorporating business professors , journalists, corporate communications directors , and various opinion leaders from the Spanish business world. Therefore, this is a survey in which professionals from the business sector participate.

Juan Roig , the founder of Mercadona and born in Valencia in 1949, has had a perfect score in the rankings since 2019. Despite always being a media entrepreneur, known for his numerous public appearances, this year his presence in the media has been even greater, but for a particularly tragic reason. The DANA (Basque Natural Disaster), which severely affected a large part of the province of Valencia in early November, as well as areas of Aragon, Castilla-La Mancha, Andalusia, and Catalonia, prompted the businessman to focus on reconstruction and providing reparations to victims from the private sector.

Through an entrepreneurial ecosystem he launched, called Marina de Empresas , Roig distributed a total of €35 million in non-refundable aid to 4,600 businesses affected by the DANA. Similarly, on March 11, 2025, the Valencian businessman became emotional when recalling the catastrophe at Mercadona's annual press conference, remembering the 224 people killed, including " four business friends of his ."

In second place, with a score of 9.424, is Ana Botín , the same as last year's president of Banco Santander. The Spanish economist and banker succeeded her father, Emilio Botín , as president of the group eleven years ago, and has since led Santander, appearing among the top 10 on Forbes' list of the world's most powerful women since 2016, among other rankings.

Praise for Ana Botín's work has come from various quarters over the years, including from US President Donald Trump , who stated last January at the World Economic Forum in Davos , Switzerland, that he knows the Spanish executive very well. In a space shared by the two, Trump declared that he "knows her bank very well," in addition to publicly praising her work. In this way, one of the most powerful men in the world recognized Botín's work at the helm of the Santander Group.

In third and fourth place, respectively, are Amancio and Marta Ortega , with a score difference of more than a point and a half between them, with 9,304 and 7,782 respectively, surely due to the experience gap between father and daughter. The founder and president of the Inditex group remain at the top of the ranking, oblivious to the textile group's modest results in 2025, which reflected a considerable slowdown in the pace of growth.

The Galician businessman has left the helm of Inditex to his daughter, Marta, who is preparing a revolution on the group's board of directors. José Arnau, vice president of Inditex since 2012 and Amancio Ortega's right-hand man for several decades, will leave his position at the company on July 15. Roberto Cibeira, current CEO of Pontegadea, will be chosen to take over, working alongside Marta Ortega, the new president, and Óscar García Maceiras , the group's new CEO.

In fifth place, one of the biggest gains in the ranking, is Ignacio Sánchez Galán , CEO of Iberdrola, who rose from eighth place with a score of 7.082. Electricity and energy companies have been in the news in recent weeks due to the massive blackout on April 28, which left the entire Iberian Peninsula without power for almost a day.

Although we still don't know the exact causes of the blackout, Sánchez Galán has spoken out in recent days about the responsibilities arising from the incident. The president of Iberdrola stated that the system operator, Red Eléctrica, should provide an explanation as to what caused the incident. "Red Eléctrica is responsible for keeping the lights on," declared Sánchez Galán, shifting the responsibility to the operator's president, Beatriz Corredor .

The following positions in the ranking are occupied by Florentino Pérez , president of the construction company ACS and of Real Madrid, with 6,991 points, Josu Jon Imaz , CEO of Repsol, with 6,961 points, María Dolores Dancausa , non-executive president of Bankinter, with 6,697 points, Isidre Fainé , president of Fundación La Caixa, with 6,498 points, and Pablo Isla , former CEO of Inditex, now vice president of Nestlé, with 6,491 points.