When the Seat-Volkswagen battery gigafactory was presented a few weeks ago, this newspaper already explained that the excellence of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) was key for the automobile multinational to choose Sagunt to be located. It has also been for the arrival of another, HP, visiting Valencia this Thursday, and it will be for the arrival of another large company, soon, which promises nearly 4,000 jobs.
"We have an enviable talent and the nod from Seat-Volkswagen has been very important," says José Francisco Montserrat, Vice-Rector for Internationalization and Communication at the UPV.
The academic center is a pole of attraction for large technology companies and, in fact, these days it is filtering professional profiles due to the demand of a large North American industrial and technological company, which is preparing its arrival in Valencia.
Without giving the name of the company yet -"we can't", he explains-, from the UPV they are articulating the jobs that will be needed in this new work center. "They are looking for industrial engineers, they have specific curricular profiles and they even ask us how many graduates there will be in the market in the next five years," explains Montserrat, who adds that similar planning was done with Seat-Volkswagen: "It was very specific, with mapping of specific qualifications, hand in hand with the Presidency of the Generalitat Valenciana". This is how they prepared their arrival in the Valencian Community.
It is understood in this context that this Thursday, during its visit to Valencia and reception with the mayor, Joan Ribó, the company HP has signed an agreement with the UPV for the creation of a chair at the Higher Technical School of Computer Engineering.
Through this chair, UPV students will be able to carry out internships in the new center that HP has set up in the center of Valencia, where staff are already being hired. The visit of the multinational team has been led by the general manager of HP, Daniel Martínez, and by other managers of the company.
The technology company has already activated a center in the Valencian capital for software development and innovation for nearly 400 professionals, with profiles linked to Information Technology, and with knowledge in the development of cloud applications, data science, artificial intelligence and software quality.
And here the Polytechnic University of Valencia also has a lot to do, as the vice-rector explains: Enrique Lores, CEO and president of HP, is a graduate of the UPV. Lores trained as an electronic engineer in the classrooms of the Higher Technical School of Industrial Engineering, where he graduated in 1989.
"They were looking to relocate the software centers from India and he wanted to bring them to Europe and València came up," he says. Thus, the UPV presented its capabilities to the multinational, which even showed interest in establishing itself within the university campus, impossible given the high occupancy they already have.
The Valencia City Council worked in the search for spaces, especially València Activa, promoter of the VLC Tech City project that seeks to attract large companies and promote the Valencian technological ecosystem.
They explain from the Universitat Politècnica that every week they are contacted by some large company to set up in its vicinity and they blame it on the fact that one of the "obsessions" of the UPV has been and is "work for transfer and for taking advantage of the technological cluster, to that it be a hive of production, at a high level of technology", describes José Francisco Montserrat.
To this, add the post-pandemic effect, the search for sustainable energy solutions and also the growing boom in Valencia. "I always say that this is the second Valencian Renaissance", settles the vice-rector.
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