The latest closings of Nissan in Barcelona and Alcoa in Lugo add to the long list of companies that have ceased their activity in recent years due to the deindustrialization process that the country is undergoing and that the current Government has not been able to stop. Since June 2018, when Pedro Sánchez arrived in Moncloa, a total of 6,794 companies dedicated to the manufacturing or extractive industry have closed in Spain, as recorded in the Social Security records. They make up 6% of the local industrial fabric.

The coronavirus has been the final sentence for many of them, afflicted for years with chronic ballasts that have reduced their competitiveness. During the months of March and April alone, more than 4,500 industrial companies that were already at the limit have disappeared, adding to the long record of 91,000 corporate deaths linked to the health pandemic.

But before the virus turned everything upside down, the phenomenon of deindustrialization had already carried 2,280 companies in the secondary sector of the economy in the Sánchez era and more than 14,500 in the last decade. “The lack of a medium and long-term industrial policy and strategy as a country has devastating effects on employment. The low participation of the manufacturing industry in GDP (12.6% in 2018), below the average of the EU countries (14.5% in 2018), places Spain in a weak position to face situations crisis ”, lament from the industrial branch of the CCOO union.

The closures mainly affect small factories with between 6 and 50 employees that have been left out of the market by foreign competition, mainly from Asia, and the loss of competitiveness at the local level due to burdens such as the high price of energy. In addition to the small ones, since 2011 a total of 32 companies with more than 50 employees have disappeared .

Unions and companies have been denouncing the lack of a real industrial plan for years and regret that governments and political parties only approach the sector when it is necessary to seek fishing grounds for provincial votes before the next elections. “The government's commitment during the transition period and until the last legislative elections of 2019 went through the profusion of decrees. Until then, the government took a run and in one month presented the constitution of three Agendas for Industrial Sectors in two months, "denounces the latest report on the situation of the sector prepared by CCOO. However, the minister of the branch, Reyes Maroto , recognized yesterday in a tribune in EL MUNDO that the execution of these plans was stalled by the political blockade that the country is suffering and the inability of the Government to carry out its own Budgets.

The future for the sector in Spain looks pretty black since the withdrawal at the local level also makes it lose weight in the global industry value chain, where the country only contributed 1.3% last year. And to the four companies that shut down each day on average, there is a low level of entrepreneurship in an area that requires having technical knowledge in the workforce and sufficient base to compete in a globalized market. In 2019, for each industrial company that was born in the country, another 20 dedicated to the field of construction were founded.

Seven industrial employers have recently constituted a platform to raise their voices in defense of the sector and propose measures to curb its bleeding and improve its global competitiveness. These groups have demanded in recent years the Government to avoid creating uncertainty with their feints of tax increases or the demonization of diesel , and now they claim to avoid any tax increase that affects consumption in the face of the country's economic reconstruction.

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  • Spain
  • CCOO
  • Social Security
  • Reyes Maroto
  • Pedro Sánchez
  • GDP
  • Lugo
  • Barcelona
  • Asia

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