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<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-22/vicente-madrigal.avif" alt="Vicente Madrigal" loading="lazy" />
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(Vicente Madrigal in bow tie, with Epidio Quirino (right) and Sergio Osmeña, (back left))
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<h4>
Early life
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Vicente Madrigal who grew up in Ligao, Albay, studied at <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/2884/the-history-of-colegio-de-san-juan-de-letran" class="news_link">Colegio de San Juan de Letran</a>, a Manila college known for its roster of half-Spanish Filipinos and for its location in the walled city of Intramuros, once the regional bastion of Spanish power. With his father depending on a small pension, the family exploited its military connections with the Escuela Nautica who were close with the friars who owned San Juan de Letran. 
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Madrigal graduated with the highest honors. His college classmates included individuals who would later become Presidents, namely <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/1265/today-in-philippine-history-august-19-1878-manuel-quezon-was-born-in-baler-aurora" class="news_link">Manuel Luis Quezon</a> and <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/1273/today-in-philippine-history-september-9-1878-sergio-osme-a-sr-was-born-in-cebu-city" class="news_link">Sergio Osmeña</a>.
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While in Manila, he came face-to-face with the staggering wealth of his maternal grandfather's family, that of Joaquin Pardo de Tavera and the Gorricho real estate portfolio spanning the Escolta and the ancestral house of the Gorricho-Pardo de Tavera. He was determined to match or even surpass the huge wealth of his Manila relatives, who did not recognize that he, his mother and his aunt existed.
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<h4>
Business career
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Madrigal established large businesses in coal, oil, sugar, cement, shipping and real estate.
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In the shipping business, his Madrigal Steamship Company did not begin to return profits until after his mother's death, frustrating his childhood dream of bringing his parents to Spain. He settled for treating his sister Rosario to an extended vacation aboard a Madrigal ship to Barcelona.
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In the cement business, he acquired Rizal Cement Corporation from Ynchausti y Compañía.
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In the coal business, Madrigal was criticized by contemporaries and modern commentators for having engaged in war profiteering, supplying coal to the Japanese navy during its occupation of the Philippines between 1942 and 1945. It appears that he did so under duress, as he was known to be patriotic and the approximately one million pesos he made in profit was a far smaller amount than he would have made by closing operations during the war. Madrigal attributed this situation to the loss of the good luck that his wife Susana brought to his life, for she died a few months before the war began and left him a widower raising five girls and two boys.
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Madrigal was a close friend of Manuel Luis Quezon, Commonwealth President of the country and a former classmate. He used this connection to acquire certificates to refineries from bankrupt Spanish-Filipino families, whose business had been devastated by the transfer of the Philippines from Spanish to American control. This allowed Madrigal to expand into the commodities market, selling sugar and palm oil, as well as claiming real estate, which he primarily disposed of to increase his shares in growing companies. 
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Vicente Madrigal, the first Filipino tycoon, was born on April 5, 1880, in Gumaca, Tayabas