Manouchehr Farhangi was born in Kerman, Iran in 1926. He was a kind and self-made man who, along with his two brothers Ardeshir and Mehraban, founded two successful businesses in his youth: Dehkadeh Saheli, a vast resort town by the shores of the Caspian sea, and Atra Co., one of the first pharmaceutical factories in Iran.
In 1980 following the Islamic revolution in Iran, Manouchehr decided that he would not stand for a regime that promoted religious discrimination and injustice. At the age of 54 he left his beloved country and all his possessions to move to Spain – a country similar in culture and warmth to prerevolutionary Iran.
Determined to help the students of Iranzamin, whose school was threatened to be closed by the new regime, Manouchehr started a new school in Spain to allow these students continuity of education albeit in a different country. With few resources and little experience he founded International College Spain (ICS), by renting one floor of a local Spanish school in the coastal village of Estepona and bringing over a group of educators from Iran. In 1983 ICS relocated to Madrid with the aim of incorporating a wider range of students and becoming an institution that would promote international understanding and open-mindedness amongst it students.
At the time of Manouchehr’s death in 2008, ICS had 700 students from 60 different nationalities and was considered as one of the leading international schools in the world.
In the school’s 1990 yearbook, Manouchehr shared his vision with his students:
