Monday the 20th, after the storm. Ten in the morning appears. The president of the businessmen, Antonio Garamendi, goes live on Cadena Ser. Seek to fix position. “It does not make any sense. We reject this attack outright and, furthermore, in our country,” he states. Hours earlier, at a Vox event held at noon on Sunday the 19th at Madrid’s Palacio de Vistalegre, the Argentine president, Javier Milei, had accused Begoña Gómez, Pedro Sánchez’s wife, of being “corrupt.” An offense that the Spanish Executive describes as a frontal attack on democracy and institutions.
In the wake of an intervention that sounds like an institutional declaration from the CEOE, some of the companies that on Saturday had shared breakfast and controversial photography (entirely male) with the Argentine president come to the fore on an individual basis; They even discreetly mobilize with the media so that their statements have reach. “They do not correspond to the relations of two friendly and brother countries, nor do they occur in the right place or place,” says Telefónica about the words of the Argentine president. They are followed, in the same vein, by Santander, BBVA, Naturgy and Iberia, among others.
The level of mobilization, not common in large Ibex companies accustomed to avoiding this type of conflict and channeling their positions through the employers’ association, suggests that on Sunday afternoon a rebuttal was called. “I know that there were movements on the part of La Moncloa. They didn’t reach everyone. They focused on those companies in which the State has a shareholding presence and, therefore, where the Executive has maximum influence,” say sources present at the meeting that Milei held with the main Spanish companies with commercial interests in Argentina. The Government not only faced the crisis opened by Milei with institutional ascendancy to demand business support, but it is present in some boards of directors: the place where decisions are made.
Sánchez closed the last legislature in open war with the business world. Banks and electricity companies roared about the new taxes, but the Botín, Galán or Roig complained, above all and behind the scenes, about the public criticism of the Executive for lack of commitment. They made too much money and didn’t pitch in. The President of the Government wanted to close that gap in one fell swoop as soon as the investiture was carried out. He even asked for forgiveness at some discreet meal with some of the victims. In parallel, he gained positions in Telefónica – the State already holds 10% of its capital and a seat on the board through the State Society of Industrial Participations (SEPI) -, while forging an unwritten agreement with CriteriaCaixa, based on the same industrial vision, to support national interests in firms such as Naturgy or Talgo.
A statement that has gone unnoticed supports the thesis of the Sunday maneuvers, before Garamendi officially gave the starting signal on Monday. With or without a call, the president of ACS, Florentino Pérez, must have smelled the toast: he has no doubt in his ability to anticipate the play. For the annals and for those who take note in La Moncloa, Abertis – in whose capital ACS has almost 50% – was the first company to take a step forward. It is not just any firm: Abertis controls the northern access to Buenos Aires, popularly known as the Pan-American Highway, and is in charge of managing the General Paz Highway, an important ring road for the city.
He did so with some lines that can still be read on his website, dated Sunday the 19th. “We want to express our condemnation of the statements made by President Milei in relation to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and his wife. This type of language and insults do not contribute to the coexistence of our societies and in no case should they be part of the political dialectic between two sister countries, with a long history of collaboration and defense of democracy,” the highway operator stressed. Difficult to be more forceful.
Before this statement was issued, ACS itself contacted the rest of the affected companies to try to put together a common position. According to the sources consulted, a joint note was proposed as a firewall between them and the river of lava that flowed from the media and social networks. Santander, Dia, Telefónica, Mapfre, Iberia, BBVA and Naturgy were accused of whitewashing the extreme right, in complete contrast to the offensive of the best of the German business community to stop it in the European elections. It was Sunday afternoon and the businessmen had changed their pace. Everyone opted for the CEOE to lead, on Monday, the response to the libertarian’s outbursts. But Abertis, with a direct order from its shareholders, did not stop going out alone.
The 15 in the photo
With or without a bad conscience, companies had to repair unintended damage, that of a snapshot. “The photograph of the businessmen with Milei on Saturday did a lot of damage in Moncloa,” says a senior executive of an Ibex company. It was understood as a support. “We were summoned by the Argentine embassy, which is the one that made the list, and whenever we are called from a country in which we have interests, we go. It is not about supporting anyone, much less an ideology. We were asked, however, for assistance at the highest level,” is stated by another of the companies present.
The invitation to the economic event with Milei had been extended days before by the Argentine ambassador to Spain, Roberto Bosch. In La Moncloa the details were known, “including which companies had been called and, more or less, who would attend,” says one of the people who had to deal within his entity with the compromising appointment. The truth is that not all those summoned were clear about whether they should expose their presidents or CEOs at a time of tension.
Relations between the Casa Rosada and La Moncloa were clouded days before Milei’s tour due to a statement by Spanish Minister Óscar Puente at a public event, in which he suggested that the president could be a consumer of some type of “substances.” The Spanish Executive apologized; Puente showed, in his own way, repentance, and everything seemed to return to normal despite the ideological ocean that separates the governments of both countries. But Milei came to Madrid with that dagger stuck in him, in addition to needing to divert attention from his own internal problems and his difficulties in carrying out the State scrapping law in the time that had been proposed. The businessmen were aware of all this, and some claim that they found themselves between a rock and a hard place. There was a strong swell.
On Friday, in the afternoon before the meeting, there were therefore many doubts in the headquarters of the large corporations about the level of representation, perhaps fearing a trap. It may not be a coincidence that, upon the presentation of Milei’s economic program, known as the chainsawthe Pallete, Botín, Huertas or Reynés did not attend, although the president of Iberia, Marco Sansavini, and the CEOs of Santander, Abertis and Dia –Héctor Grisi, José Aljaro and Martín Tolcachir, respectively – did as senior profiles.
Various business sources confirm that the photograph of those present was created and distributed by the embassy itself. Everyone thought it was protocol, and even logical, “although there were no elbows for occupying the front positions,” according to one of those portrayed. After the crisis that broke out on Sunday, knowledgeable sources explain that there was an exchange of messages in which some companies were less conciliatory: “We have all been used.”
The next morning the image of the 15 managers around Milei illustrated the first page of this newspaper. To make matters worse, without any women among those attending the event. In public, in any case, the message was the canonical one. “We went to an economic event. It is an element of normality (…) and even more so considering the impact we have on employment, on the creation of wealth, on the connectivity between Spain and Argentina. Think that we are going to have three daily flights between Spain and Argentina,” Marco Sansavini justified on Monday during the CREO 2024 economic forum organized by Cinco Días. The executive took advantage of the event to flatly reject Milei’s positions on the president of the Spanish Government and his wife at the European far-right convention organized by Vox in Madrid. He also asked for respect and the president of Naturgy, Francisco Reynés, joined the CEOE’s position. It was precisely in that forum in which Sánchez demanded from businessmen a more resounding mobilization against the extreme right.
Institutional attention to the call of the president of the third Latin American country by GDP is the mantra repeated by those who agreed to meet with Milei. Many of them have strong interests at stake. This is the Abertis case, with a dispute under arbitration by the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an entity of the World Bank, due to the loss of value of its listed concessionaires Ausol and Grupo Concesionario Oeste (GCO) due to the blockade of previous governments to update rates. Five years ago, the loss for Abertis was valued at 750 million dollars (692 million euros), but the Spanish company’s intention is to reach an agreement prior to the arbitration ruling that will allow it to recover that amount and the performance granted by the contracts. in Argentina, linked to inflation.
Spain and Argentina have an agreement for the Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investments that dates back to 1991 and to which Abertis’ defense clings. Telefónica, Repsol, Aguas de Barcelona, BBVA, Naturgy and Endesa join the list of Spanish companies that have had conflicts with Argentina in the last two decades.
Santander is another of the Spanish companies that maintains a strong position in the southern country: it employs 8,400 workers spread across 318 branches. Its Argentine business generated a profit of 386 million euros in 2023 (3.5% of its total profits). Mapfre, with a presence in Argentina since 1986, provides insurance coverage to 350,000 clients from 190 offices, with which it defends a market share of 2.3% (which makes it the fifteenth insurer in the Argentine ranking).
Dia, the supermarket leader in the sector, has greater weight in its sector. retail Argentine, a market in which it has been selling for almost 30 years. And Iberia has its third market in Latin America by volume of travelers in the southern country. His first flight between Spain and America, on September 22, 1946, was covered by a DC-4 plane that departed from Madrid-Barajas and landed in Buenos Aires after 36 hours of travel with stops. That was the seed of the subsequent regular flights.
Uncontrolled inflation, the drift of the currency or political fluctuations are worrying its boards of directors, hence the interest in the reforms that Milei promises to undertake and that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has already applauded.
For its top executives, the question is what now? “If they leave us alone, the issue will calm down. The best example is what happened with Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico. Of course, it is better not to continue pouring gasoline,” emphasizes another of the victims. Indeed, the Mexican president has not been shy when it comes to criticizing Spain and Spanish companies during specific moments of his mandate, opening major institutional crises. “Spanish companies supported by the political power of both Spain and Mexico abused our country and our people,” he went on to say, pointing directly to Iberdrola and Repsol. Of course, these were not defamations directed at the wife of the President of the Government. She did not enter into personal territory.
“It is very difficult for unilateral measures to be taken between Argentina and Spain with so many jobs at stake, even though we are facing two roosters,” another company involved concludes. Time and diplomacy. At least for companies, which have been summoned by Sánchez to mobilize against populism.
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