Volume 2, Number 1, 266-275, July-December 2016 doi.org/10.1344/JESB2016.2.j019 Online ISSN: 2385-7137 COPE Committee on Publication Ethics http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/JESB Creative Commons License 4.0 266 Paloma Fernández Pérez University of Barcelona (Spain) Laboratorios Andrómaco: origins of the first subsidiary of a Spanish pharmaceutical multinational in the United States (1928–1946) 1 Abstract Laboratorios Andrómaco was a Spanish pharmaceutical company that opened a commercial subsidiary in the United States in the early months of 1928. It was located right in the heart of Manhattan, at 11 West 42 nd Street, in front of the New York Public Library. Despite the Wall Street crash, it remained open until 1946. The owner was the pharmacist-entrepreneur Fernando Rubió Tudurí (1900–1994). It was the first foreign direct investment made by a Spanish pharmaceutical multinational in the United States, using a maquila-style operation to export Spanish products made in the USA to Central American markets. Nothing has been published about this until now. Only interviews with Enrique and Mercè Rubió Boada (son and daughter of Fernando Rubió), digitalized sources from the company held by the Fundació Rubió Tudurí in Mahón, Minorca, and hard-to-access secondary sources have made the recovery of this history possible. The company closed its doors in the US and expanded in South American markets after World War II, but the short history of their investment in the United States reveals the potential and international capabilities of Spanish pharmaceutical companies before the Spanish Civil War. Moreover, it reveals how the Spanish Civil War was a disaster for millions of people but in some special cases it became an opportunity for companies in the science industries. Few pharmaceutical firms like Andrómaco, with entrepreneurs, resources, and a long-term vision, took the decision to invest in the most profitable (though also the most difficult) market for pharmaceutical products in the world: the United States. Andrómaco was created in Barcelona in 1923 by two scientist-entrepreneurs (Raul Roviralta and Fernando Rubió Tudurí). A nutritional product called 1 This research is ongoing and has been made possible thanks to the Fundación BBVA’s I Ayudas a la Investigación en Socio-economía (2014–2016), within the research project ‘Multinacionales innovadoras españolas en Estados Unidos y Alemania’ (Innovative Spani sh multinationals in the United States and Germany). Corresponding author. E-mail: palomafernandez@ub.edu Received 23 June 2016 - Accepted 04 July 2016