SPAIN - In tutto il mondo VESPA All over the world

In September 1952, in the Madrid district of Ciudad Lineal, work begins on the construction of the factory in Motovespa S.A., a Piaggio subsidiary that will produce Vespas for the Spanish market. The first all-Spanish Vespa 125 CE with low headlight emerges from the Madrid factory in February 1953. Within 10 years, Motovespa has 622 employees on the payroll, and is manufacturing 110 Vespas per day. The Vespa passion does not leave the Spanish cold, and soon Vespa clubs are multiplying here too: on 2 September 1955, a delegation of 150 Vespa riders led by the president of the Vespa Club of Spain, Luis Serrano de Pablo, travels across Italy to Castelgandolfo, where they are welcomed by Pope Pius XII. Spain hosts the Eurovespa meeting for the first time in 1957 in Barcelona, and for the second time in 1962, in Madrid. Motovespa is the longest surviving Piaggio company abroad, above all to thanks to the success of the Vespino moped, on the market since 1968. Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, grandson of Enrico Piaggio, becomes the (very young) managing director of the company in the early 1990s. In 1996, Moto Vespa is entirely taken over by Piaggio, and becomes Piaggio Spain.