A large Catalan industrial company was, a year ago, close to making the decision to return its headquarters to Barcelona; it has had it in Madrid since October 2017, but in the end it gave up due to the electric clash of pride between two of its more bellicose shareholders. Although the thing should not be considered lost and it may end up taking the unexpectedly postponed step. Things from the family business, so characteristic of Catalonia. Would they be an influential difference now, at this moment of critical negotiation for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez between socialists and independentists?
Who knows, it might have paved the way for some more who are in similar situations and who would have taken advantage of the stimulus to also pack their bags. A drag effect in the opposite direction to that which took place in that critical post-referendum week. Obviously minor, since it is ruled out that the two great engines of that march and references of the Catalan economy, Isidre Fainé's La Caixa and Josep Oliu's Banc Sabadell, have plans to do so. These large financial entities live on a tripod: social (and fiscal) headquarters in the Valencian Country; and two operational headquarters, the more financial one in Madrid and the traditional one in Barcelona.
Now in the Catalan capital there are many illustrious owners who regret having to take the AVE or the plane once a month to go to Madrid and meet in a council in which they find the same faces that they see every day in the office. the company in Barcelona. They even explain, in retrospect, that they believe there was no reason to approve what they approved, because in the end nothing happened. The then president of the Generalitat and today a refugee in Waterloo, Carles Puigdemont, made political fireworks for a few seconds but things remained exactly the same. There were neither street altercations nor practical decisions by the independentists; The supposed state structures that they claimed to have been preparing for years did not even appear. They think they let themselves be carried away by panic and the desire to express their discomfort at the political atmosphere in the streets of Barcelona. Something different in the case of banks, with clients withdrawing their money in droves.
The bourgeoisie felt defeated and fearfully fled. And they have to endure the condescending gaze of those who chose to stay and avoided shame and vilification.
But, of course, it would be going too far to extend that perception or to think that this is the dominant point of view among the businessmen who marched. The majority of those who left continue to think that they did the right thing and at the moment do not consider returning if the great political unknowns are not first cleared up, among them about the future behavior of the pro-independence forces and the possible unilaterality of their decisions.
For now, as long as there are no changes, returning would force them to give explanations, again, but in this case in the host city, about the reasons for leaving and without political cover with which to protect the new migration under the layer of a great political agreement and the protection of the flock. A nightmare, they think.
And the longer the situation lasts, the more difficult it will be for them to do so. Many companies have been staffing their management organization charts with executives from the state capital for a long time. Also hiring professional services of all kinds, generally of high quality and good pay, in that same city. A professional perspective that grips an important sector of the Catalan middle classes, who have always nurtured, without needing to change residence, these types of demands.
The pro-independence leaders have begun to acknowledge in public something that they only did in the strictest privacy or with stark irritation in response to businessmen or financiers when they announced their decision to leave, that what happened to the companies was a real tragedy for the Catalan economy.
But the political unknowns mentioned above do not refer only to the behavior of the independentistas. Although the majority of that Catalan bourgeois class voted for the PP in the last general elections, especially attracted by the fiscal candy of Madrid (and now Andalusia, Valencia, etc...), they also kept in mind that a government of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in partnership with Santiago Abascal, would have been true dynamite for Catalan politics and society. An additional reason not to return.
These days some Madrid media have raised the specter that an amnesty for the independence supporters of the future Sánchez government would be an additional stimulus to prevent companies from returning. However, you only need to talk for a while with businessmen, financiers and executives in Barcelona to discover the falsehood of that interpretation. Catalan businessmen are committed to turning the page and know that the amnesty is one of the main pages of this new process.
In fact, the large Catalan business organization, Foment, behind which are the bulk of the large Catalan companies that changed headquarters and chaired by the former Christian Democrat leader Josep Sánchez Llibre, has openly played that card. In the corridors of Catalan economic power, the possible pieces are moving so that the agreement is forged and the amnesty allows progress in the normalization of Catalan political life. They even try to ensure that, in the event that such a thing occurs, the announcement is accompanied by normalization movements on the part of the companies themselves.
