In 1941, as a young Catholic priest, Arizmendiarrieta settled in Mondragón, a town with a population of 7,000 that had not yet recovered from the poverty, hunger, exile, and tension of the Spanish Civil War.

[6][7] In 1943, Arizmendiarrieta established a technical college which became a training ground for managers, engineers and skilled labour for local companies, and primarily for the co-operatives.

[8] Arizmendiarrieta spent a number of years educating young people about a form of humanism based on solidarity and participation, in harmony with Catholic social teaching, and the importance of acquiring the necessary technical knowledge before creating the first co-operative.

[11] With Spain scheduled to join the European Economic Community in 1986, it was decided in 1984 to establish the "Mondragon Co-operative Group", the forerunner of the current corporation.

[12][non-primary source needed] On the international stage, the aim was to respond to growing globalisation, expanding abroad by establishing production plants in a number of countries.

The goals were to increase competitiveness and market share, bring component supply closer to customers' plants, especially in the automotive and domestic appliance sectors, and to strengthen employment in the Basque Country by promoting exports of co-operatives' products by means of new platforms.

[15] On 26 March 2012, the USW, Mondragon, and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC) announced their detailed union co-op model.

Cata pledged to create 705 direct jobs in the Basque Country and to continue the brand names Fagor, Edesa, Aspes, and Splendid.

[24][non-primary source needed] This framework of business culture has been structured based on a common culture derived from the 10 Basic Co-operative Principles, in which Mondragon is rooted: Open Admission, Democratic Organisation, the Sovereignty of Labour, Instrumental and Subordinate Nature of Capital, Participatory Management, Payment Solidarity, Inter-cooperation, Social Transformation, Universality and Education.

[25][non-primary source needed] This philosophy is complemented by four corporate values: Co-operation, acting as owners and protagonists; Participation, which takes shape as a commitment to management; Social Responsibility, by means of the distribution of wealth based on solidarity; and Innovation, focusing on constant renewal in all areas.

[26] This business culture translates into compliance with a number of Basic Objectives (Customer Focus, Development, Innovation, Profitability, People in Co-operation and Involvement in the Community) and General Policies approved by the Co-operative Congress, which are taken on board at all the corporation's organisational levels and incorporated into the four-year strategic plans and the annual business plans of the individual co-operatives, divisions, and the corporation as a whole.

The yield obtained from this fund is used to cover long-term retirement, widowhood, and invalidity benefits, complementary to those offered by the Spanish social security system.

It has different business units such as brakes, axles, suspension, transmission, engines, aluminium wheel rims, fluid conduction, and other internal and external vehicle components.

It also produces components for the main domestic appliance manufacturers in three business areas: white goods, home comfort, and electronics.

And it manufactures flanges and pipe accessories for processing oil-gas, petrochemical plants and power generation, copper and aluminium electrical conductors, and components for conveyors.

It designs and builds large metallic (URSSA), laminated wood and prefabricated concrete structures; supplies prefabricated parts in polymer concrete; offers solutions[buzzword] for formwork and structures (ULMA Group) as well as public works machinery and the industrialization of the construction process, including engineering and assembly services.

Training-education is mainly linked to the dynamism of Mondragon University, the significant role that Politeknika Ikastegia Txorierri, Arizmendi Ikastola and Lea Artibai Ikastetxea play in their respective areas and the activity of the Management and Co-operative Development Centre Otalora.

[48] In 2013 its network of technology centers and R&D units provided employment for 1,700 people and the commitment to R&D&I matters amounted to 136 million Euros, 8.5% of added value.

[39] In 2012, Richard D. Wolff, an American professor of economics, hailed the Mondragon set of enterprises, including the good wages it provides for employees, the empowerment of ordinary workers in decision making, and the measure of equality for female workers, as a major success and cited it as a working model of an alternative to the capitalist mode of production.

If you’re in a system where you must make a profit in order to survive, you're compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.Vicenç Navarro wrote that, from a business perspective, Mondragon is successful in matching efficiency with solidarity and democracy.

However, he writes that the number of employees who are not owners has increased more rapidly than worker-owners, to a point that in some companies, for example in the supermarket chains owned by Mondragon, the first is a much larger group than the second.

The connection felt by the latter group has somewhat weakened, however, exposing a vulnerable point for the cooperative.The Mondragon system is one of four case studies analyzed in Capital and the Debt Trap, which summarized evidence claiming that cooperatives tend to last longer and are less susceptible to perverse incentives and other problems of organizational governance than more traditionally managed organizations.

[53] The Mondragon Accord is controlled by means of a network of AIs running on quantum computers, and rules large parts of the Solar System, including Mercury and most of the moons of the gas giants; only part of Earth, and its colonies in space, retain remnants of capitalist economies, while Mars has withdrawn from the Accord in the century preceding the story.