Our cooperative has its antecedents in the Agrarian Colonization Union Groups of the early forties, and therefore, it is a figure that responds to the dictates of the agrarian policy of the Francoist postwar period. In a context of international war conflict due to the Second World War, shortage of basic infrastructures for agricultural production, production paralysis and above all, a serious food shortage situation, the policies aimed at rural development had to go towards the promotion of cooperation formulas between farmers and stockbreeders to encourage mutual support actions.

It was in 1954 when the legal form of the trade union group of colonization in Minaya changed and it became the Cooperativa Vitivininicola Santiago El Mayor, in honor of this outstanding Apostle of Jesus of Nazareth. It groups the viticultural activity of the whole town with its approximately 700 members who cultivate mainly white grapes of the Airen variety and in less quantity red grapes of the Moravias and Garnachas varieties. It is when this cooperative is sized to collect about 10 million kgs of grapes, which translated into wine produced, is 8 million liters.

At present, with the new General Law of Cooperatives 20/2002, this society is renamed Santiago El Mayor, Sociedad Cooperativa de Castilla - La Mancha. Different sections begin to be defined within the cooperative to meet the needs of the agricultural sector of the town of Minaya (and surrounding villages): cellar section, phytosanitary, cereal collection, insurance, diesel, hardware, wine dispatch, cereal cleaning. Even a section of own grape harvester to collect the grapes at the time of optimum ripeness.