 The company was founded in 1954 as Barreiros Diesel S.A. by Eduardo Barreiros and based in Madrid.Established initially as a producer of diesel engines, at Ourense the company then expanded to make commercial vehicles, reaching licensing agreements with French Berliet (truck cabs), British AEC (buses and coaches), and German Hanomag (agricultural tractors) and Vidal & Sohn Tempo-Werke GmbH (light vans and trucks), all of them driven by Barreiros's own engines.Additionally a pay-in-kind contract with Polish Star was active in the late 1950s, by which engineless Star chassis-cab trucks were exported to Spain, while Barreiros engines were sent to Poland; the whole resulted in Barreiros-engined Star tractors being sold in China (and Polish trucks in Spain).