The founders of what is now Miquel y Costas & Miquel S.A., the Miquel i Costas brothers, were born into a family living in the paper manufacturing region of Capellades in Catalonia, Spain, where this industry had been established since the 18th century. There, the Miquel brothers gained the knowledge and experience required to set up and run their business. MCM remained a family firm for more than a century, until this began to change with the process of opening up the company in the mid-1960s, which was complete by the end of the 20th century. The Miquel brothers, following the local tradition, made paper by hand until the 1880s, at which point they introduced semi-mechanical processes. In 1914, the acquisition of a modern mill initiated a shift toward continuous manufacturing, with Barcelona as the production hub. The company's assets grew over the years, especially after a merger with the Valencian Payá Miralles in 1975. More recently, MCM has consolidated operations in its area of origin, while continuing as a small multinational enterprise with production assets abroad. Its scope of production has ranged from cigarette paper through diversification. The former was practically its only product before the period of autarky in Spain. From then on, to varying degrees and for different reasons, diversification has been a recurrent theme, until recently becoming a strategic approach. The firm's fundamentally export-oriented nature only changed during autarkic Spain, but since the early 1970s, MCM has been able to recover its former global reach. Its current success, following the turmoil of the second half of the 1980s and the early 1990s, is closely linked to the firm's historical legacy, and founded upon the pursuit of new horizons, prudence (although without risk aversion), and identification with its technical and human traditions.
