Felip Massot (Belianes, 1945) is one of the promoters who has changed the map of Catalonia in the last 50 years. Barely recovering from surgery, he is as passionate about the public debate on access to housing as his company's business plans.
You founded Vertix and turned it into one of the largest companies in Barcelona.
I arrived in Barcelona in 1971, with 200 pesetas in my pocket and a suitcase. I am from Belianes, a town in Lleida, and my father, who was a merchant, went bankrupt when I was studying high school. I started working as an employee at a gas station in Andorra, and at the age of 17 I tried my luck in Germany, but I saw that that country was not for me. So you see I came to Barcelona and started working at La Ballena Alegre, the Viladecans campsite, which had a real estate department. There I learned the trade, while I continued my studies and started law. But very soon I set up my own promoter.
That's what I recommend to young people now. Better than accumulating master's degrees, you have to get to work, because the trade is learned by working. At 28 years old I was the general director of the company, and now at that age many have barely entered the world of work and live with their parents.
In the eighties, when Vertix grew the most, the real estate sector in Catalonia was in the hands of local entrepreneurs, like yourself.
The sector has changed a lot. Then there was Josep Lluís Núñez, who was very good. And the Marsà, father and son, who created a great company that is now The Golden Key. And Josep María Figueras, who created Habitat. I miss them very much. The merit of what they did has not been sufficiently valued.
Now these local groups have become small compared to the large listed real estate companies, owned by the funds, which build many more homes per year.
We build about 200 homes a year. We are an average company, without debt, and we have no interest in going faster, or in going public. As Josep Pla said, I now notice that my trip is ending. I don't have to answer to anyone. And I want to leave the company in order to my children and my grandchildren, make it easy for them, because they are the people I love.
Isn't it a handicap for a company to be so closely linked to a family?
It is true that a family business has a point of patriarchy, in which control is very clear, but it also has its other side: the company is the family and the people who work there. You know their family, their children and their partners. They are the people who have helped you make the company great. At Vertix there are people who have been with me for 43 years, many for 25 or 30. With the crisis, around 2010, we suffered a lot, like the entire sector, and I reinvested my own money in the company to shore it up and cover debts. And we did not make layoffs: we felt that our responsibility was also not to leave anyone behind.
Vertix has been a developer that has created entire neighborhoods, in Sant Cugat, El Prat, Gavà...
Since I founded the company in 1974, we have built nearly 14,000 homes. And we continue to develop land, but now it costs a lot. It is even difficult for us to replace the land we use every year in the homes we deliver.
Why is it difficult for them to create soil?
Now we have a governance problem. I am a historical convergent, and I long for the old Convergència. I think that now the big parties should agree and work together to improve the country. Or change the electoral system and go to formulas with a second round. In Catalonia I would like a kind of sociovergence. Because now in all the institutions, in the city councils, in the Generalitat, there are many parties and it is impossible to reach long-term agreements. But for things to work someone has to be in charge.
The real estate sector became the engine of the Spanish economy at the beginning of the century, but even in the eighties and nineties it had a much greater economic weight than now.
Fewer homes are sold because there is less need for them. 20 years ago in Catalonia between 50,000 and 60,000 homes were built a year, and now only 15,000. But then the people who came here found employment in the industry, were able to save and bought an apartment. And thanks to that today they do not pay rent and with the pension they can live.
Now, however, since 2020 Catalonia has gone from 6.8 to 8 million inhabitants. But those who arrive are foreigners, who find poorly paid jobs, with salaries that are only enough to pay rents of 300 or 400 euros, not to buy.
Public administrations, both the State and the Generalitat, intend to build social housing. Don't you think that could be the new engine of the sector?
There is no land to build these homes. In Catalonia we would need to build around 80,000 social rental homes in 15 years, between 5,000 and 6,000 each year. But to avoid creating the problems that exist in the Paris banlieue, they must be mixed with 50/50 free housing, as was done in the Strategic Residential Area (ARE) of El Prat de Llobregat. In one hectare of land, with a certain density, about 80 apartments can be built. And therefore in Catalonia we would need to have 2,800 hectares of developable and well-connected land to build 150,000 homes. That does not exist. There are even town councils, such as Sant Joan Despí, that also approved an ARE and have had it stopped for a decade. And neither the Generalitat nor the Provincial Council nor the Metropolitan Area rule over a city council.
You influence the lack of land. Don't you think that the greatest difficulty may be financial, since the social housing that is going to be promoted is for rent?
Building an apartment on land that already belongs to public administrations costs about 150,000 euros. If financing can be obtained from EU institutions, with loans at 3% for 30 years, town councils could pay the credit by charging rents of 600 euros. And administrations could give rent assistance to those who can only pay lower rents.
Therefore, I do not believe that the problem is financial. But you have to put it on. And it is urgent. The forecasts are that in 2035 Catalonia will have 10 million inhabitants. The housing problem then will be much greater than the one we have now.
We cannot let it happen to us like the drought: the lack of water could be seen coming and now we regret all the years we have spent doing nothing. Developing land and building housing is a slow process and so that the lack of housing does not create a social outbreak we must take action now. I long for the times when Artur Mas or José Montilla presided over the Generalitat. Now politicians are not interested in anything that forces us to look beyond 3 or 4 years
