The dinner was held at the Bancaixa headquarters in Valencia one night in June 2010, days before the “cold merger” between the Valencian entity and, among others, Caja Madrid became official. José Luís Olivas, former Valencian president and at that time president of the Valencian bank, invited a group of directors and media delegates to defend the advantages of the creation of Bankia. The writer of this argued in the end the argument that the disappearance of Bancaixa, which would be accompanied by Banco de València and the Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, CAM, was going to be a hard blow for the Valencian financial ecosystem, with direct effects on the Valencian productive fabric. Olivas, currently accused in the Erial case and who was already convicted of falsifying an invoice of 500,000 euros, responded to me that “you have no idea, this is the best for Valencians.” At that time it began to become evident that what was happening in the Valencian savings banks was due to the disastrous management of their managers, in some cases criminal, in the midst of the brick boom.
Over time, the entire Valencian financial system, which until then had the third and fifth savings banks in Spain, collapsed. Added to the creation of Bankia was the purchase of Banco de València, known as the “jewel in the Crown” by CaixaBank, and that of CAM by Banco de Sabadell. “The Catalans buy the Valencian banks,” some local media headlined at the time. They were turbulent times: to the financial crisis due to the brick crisis was added the outbreak of corruption cases of the PP that governed all Valencian institutions. Some of these judicial instructions targeted the managers of the Valencian entities. The same ones that were, de facto, intervened by the political power after the change of the Savings Law promoted by Eduardo Zaplana in 1996. They became instruments at the service of the PP administration to finance ruinous projectors such as Terra Mítica, and the private operators who acted in the real estate market, with enormously risky investments that ended up blowing them up; the famous Integrated Action Plans, PAI.
There was no opinion against “the Catalans”, who on the contrary ended up being a palliative solution to weave extensive networks of complicity into the business fabric. Even more so since they decided to move their headquarters to Valencia, in the case of CaixaBank, and Alicante, in the case of Sabadell, at the start of the political crisis of the process in Catalonia. The possible merger of BBVA with Banc de Sabadell has shaken the Valencian financial scene, generating deep concern. President Carlos Mazón, who is also from Alicante, did not hesitate on Friday to move aware of what the loss of Sabadell's headquarters could mean for that province and, even more so, of the work of the Catalan entity in the social field. . A concern that the main officials of the Valencian employers' associations conveyed to this newspaper last Thursday at the event organized by La Vanguardia in Valencia, concerned about the banking "concentration" and its translation into the loss of options, and competition, in the banking market. credit.
Bancaixa and Banc de Sabadell currently have a huge market share in the Valencian Community. In some way, the Catalan entities have become “Valencianized”, the “Catalan enemy” sometimes encouraged by anti-Catalan sectors does not exist in this case. Now the possible departure of Sabadell, due to the possible merger, has reopened the old wound from 2010, the one that was exposed at that dinner and which reflected the failure of the Valencian political class to sustain a financial system that had been exemplary and that ended up falling apart. with the mergers while in other autonomies the resistance was greater. It is still curious that, in a certain way, Catalan and Valencian businessmen, as well as the political systems of both autonomies, share the same concern and the same interests. We will soon know how all this ends.
PS: When the Catalan independence movement threatened Catalan financial entities with sanctions if they did not return to Catalonia, there was strong response and opposition in the Valencian Community. Important to remember.
