SEPU or Sepu was Spain's first department store

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

. SEPU was founded in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 9 January 1934 by Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 citizens of Jewish

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 origins, Henry Reisembach and Edouard Worms; it later opened branches in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 and Zaragoza

Zaragoza

Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...

. Their slogan was "Quien calcula compra en SEPU" ("He who calculates buys at SEPU").

During the Second Spanish Republic

Second Spanish Republic

The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....

, SEPU was attacked by the Falangist

Falange

The Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive , known simply as the Falange, is the name assigned to several political movements and parties dating from the 1930s, most particularly the original fascist movement in Spain. The word means phalanx formation in Spanish....

 newspaper Arriba

Arriba (newspaper)

Arriba was a Spanish daily newspaper. It was founded in Madrid 21 March 1935 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera as the official weekly newspaper of the Spanish Falange. On 5 March 1936 it was suspended by the government of the Second Spanish Republic. The suspension continued through the Spanish...

(and, indeed, its premises were physically attacked by Falangists and/or their sympathizers).

SEPU was purchased in 2000 by Australian retailer Rodd Partridge

Rodd Partridge

Rodd Partridge is an Australian born retailer and private investor.Partridge is regarded as intensely private and somewhat reclusive, his only recent media interview was with Spanish newspaper Cinco Dias after his group's acquisition of the retailing group SEPU...

; it was a failing company at the time. The company closed in 2002 because of previous management's massive undisclosed accumulated tax debts. These could not be negotiated and the company was forced to close.