Javier Catena

Javier Catena is the chief executive (consejero delegado) of El Corte Ingles, appointed on 19 June 2026 by a unanimous decision of the group's board on the proposal of chairwoman Cristina Alvarez. A real estate and operations specialist with close to three decades of experience in property investment, development and large-scale asset transformation, Catena is responsible for implementing the Spanish retail group's strategic plan, with the group's business units reporting to him and the management committee under his direction.

Catena returns to El Corte Ingles from Ginkgo, the pan-European urban regeneration investment platform associated with Edmond de Rothschild Private Equity, where he served as director general for Spain and Portugal from March 2026, leading the platform's Iberian operations, investment structuring and capital raising. Before that he was a senior executive at El Corte Ingles, serving as chief operating officer with responsibility for supply chain, logistics and real estate. In that role he led the group's large-scale property strategy, including the transformation of emblematic assets and complex urban regeneration initiatives, before leaving the family-owned retailer at the end of 2025. His wider career spans real estate investment and development across retail, residential, logistics, office and hospitality assets.

Career History

• Chief Executive (Consejero Delegado), El Corte Ingles (2026 to present)
• Director General, Spain and Portugal, Ginkgo (2026)
• Chief Operating Officer, supply chain, logistics and real estate, El Corte Ingles (until 2025)

What Javier Catena brings to the chief executive role at El Corte Ingles: verified operational depth across the group's own supply chain, logistics and property portfolio, combined with investor-side experience at a pan-European real estate platform. That profile maps directly to the mandate he has been given: implementing an updated strategic plan for a group whose department store real estate is among its most valuable assets, and doing so with the execution discipline of an operator who already knows the company from the inside.