In the early 1950s, he was sent to Asturias to revive an ailing apple-product plant in Villanueva, which he bought in 1958. "I saw sweets didn't suit their main consumers, children. They got their hands sticky and ran into trouble with their parents," he explained. "So I stuck a sweet on a stick".

He called his firm Chupa Chups (something like Sucky Sucks), constructed his own machinery, hired Salvador Dalí to design the logo, and sold the striped round sweets on wooden sticks at one peseta each. Bernat's lollipop did not melt in the heat of kids' hands or Spanish summers.

Bernat built a huge empire on this simple idea. Today Chupa Chups is a multinational with 2,000 employees, sales in 150 countries and an annual €500m turnover.

In 1958, Spain's economy was just about to take off: wages were still very low due to the Franco dictatorship and the country was opening up to foreign investment and trade. Chupa Chups was typical of many Catalan companies: Bernat never borrowed from banks and ran everything within the family.

Bernat went international in 1970. By 1996, about 20m Chupa Chups products a day were consumed world-wide. The company has diversified into some 40 lolly flavours and other sweets such as Smint mini-mints. Today only 10% of sales are in Spain and its most successful foreign market is Germany.

The falling 1980s birth-rate meant fewer children to suck Bernat's sweets. So, boldly, he linked lollies to anti-smoking campaigns. Johan Cruyff, then Barcelona Football Club's manager quit smoking after a 1991 heart attack and began chain-sucking Chupa Chups on the bench. In the late 1990s Chupa Chups had reached Australia, with state backing for its slogan, "Smoke Chupa Chups". The lollies also went into Russia and China - and on to a 1995 space shuttle.

In the 1980s, despite his canny business instinct, Bernat succumbed to the common desire of Spanish industrialists to own an investment bank. Though backed by the Catalan conservative government, Bernat failed in his take-over attempts and lost money. Fruit of this venture, though, was his ownership of Gaudi's Casa Batlló, an art nouveau jewel on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia.

In 1991, Bernat relinquished formal control of Chupa Chups to his children, who last year had to cede family control when they ran into undercapitalisation difficulties in China. It was the last tribute to Bernat's achievement that the only bank securities required to raise money were the Chupa Chups brand itself and his Gaudi house.

He is survived by his wife and five children, including Xavier, the president of Chupa Chups.

· Enric Bernat i Fontlladosa, businessman, born October 20 1923; died December 27 2003