other year Catalonia accumulates more output than inputs from corporate headquarters. In 2022, 811 moved and 630 new arrived, with 181 minus balance. Since 2017, the year of the 1-O referendum, nearly 5,000 headquarters have left, choosing instead to relocate to Catalonia during that time. 2,100 according to data from the Trade Registry. Inside Madrid The opposite is true, except last year, when there was a significant change with 376 departures and 373 arrivals in the last quarter.. During this period, the Spanish capital community has accumulated a positive balance of 1,733 offices as a result of 6,745 arriving in this region and 5,012 leaving. Last year the balance between entries and exits was positive: 191.
The negative balance in Catalonia, which culminated in 2017 with almost 2,000 escapes and barely 548 entries, contrasts with the descent of divisions and segments of companies, particularly multinationals that have chosen to set up research centers in Barcelona and the metropolitan area. development (R&D), innovation or digital “centres”. This is the case for ads run by Nestlé, Pepsico or Intel and Cisco.amongst others, in the heat of consolidation of Catalan capital as an entrepreneurial, technological and innovative hub and ecosystem.
This is a trend that has failed to avoid the particular image of slump gathered in a recent report in the ‘Financial Times’. The British newspaper concludes that the reputation of the Catalan capital has been weakened mainly due to the political environment. According to this publication, Barcelona would lose its economic and touristic appeal and “the pride of the city”.
In any case, good tourist information is added to the arrival of corporate centers of excellence. After 2022, when an accelerated tourist recovery was noted in the Catalan capital, with only 1.8 percentage points remaining from hotel overcrowding in 2019, a positive 2023 has emerged. In fact, the head of this organizationJordi Clos hopes to match historical data this yearwith the difference that record-breaking prices are weighing on higher-quality travelers.
There are other optimistic data as well. Last Friday, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) published a balance sheet that leaves Catalonia in better shape than Madrid. According to the year-end analysis, in 2022 the Compared to 1.1% in the Catalan territory, the company creation rate in the state-owned community decreased by 3.6%. And likewise, business closure It’s 14 points worse in Madrid, but there’s a huge difference in volume between one autonomy and the other: for reference, around 1,700 companies are dissolved annually in Catalonia, compared to around 7,000 in the Spanish capital. The texture is much denser there.
Therefore, the most obvious indicator of evolution (or not) is the internal comparison, reflecting that Madrid generally comes out much better in this comparison: with the exception of 2019, Madrid has always increased more than Catalonia over the last five years, for example, Number of new businesses opened. And although this victory is not usually reproduced in terms of purges, it was so even in 2021. This year, Catalonia won 2-0 (lower percentage drop in fundamentals, lower increase in closings) but the region continues to score goals in the field transfer area.
No action to shoot
Initially, the Government began to consider taking actions to re-attract headquarters from La Caixa’s multiple investments, such as Naturgy (Madrid) or CaixaBank (València), or the foundation itself and its business company and holding. criteria (Palma de Mallorca), to Banc Sabadell (Alicante). In any case, headquarters flights, especially large companies, were multi-sectoral: abertis, Quail, Planetary Group, Catalan West, rooster macaroni, Colonial, Bruixa d’Or, Agbar….
Initially, the Generalitat considered some actions to pull the reserved headquarters. That’s how the ‘president’ today came to declare it Father Aragones, While ‘vice-president’ in a speech at the Cercle d’Economia’s annual meeting in 2019. However, this option was eventually rejected because It would be “unfair” for companies that decide to stay in Catalonia According to sources from the Catalan Administration, its headquarters.
President of Foment del Treball, Josep Sanchez Llibre, was proposed as one of the challenges some social centers faced to obtain his reinstatement while running for election in his first term in 2018, and he reiterated this for this second term, when he was re-elected last July. For now, there are only two companies on the Ibex-35, the main stock market benchmark in Spain, based in Catalonia, Fluidra and Grífols.
With the growing appeal of the community to establish research and development (R&D) centers or joint service or excellence centers, the question about corporate headquarters continues to recur, and the question is repeated at shareholder meetings. companies that were headquartered in Barcelona at the time and which, although they actually transferred it to the registry, still own it.