Núria Aymerich, General Secretary of the Sabadell Manufacturers Guild, points out the challenge of consolidating innovation and professional training, as well as implementing infrastructure such as the Mediterranean Corridor and modernizing the estates
PerNúria Aymerich and Rocavert,Secretary General of the Guild of Manufacturers of Sabadell
Rivers of ink have been poured into talking about the industry in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. Although its importance is unquestionable, it is necessary to take a broader look and pay attention to the industry of this region. The reasons for using a broader focus on industry in the metropolitan region of Barcelona are two: The first is to talk rigorously about industry, and the second is to talk about industry in the real area that mostly hosts it in our country.
Industry is really the economic engine of this Mediterranean region. To speak only of the metropolitan area of Barcelona is short and unfulfilled, since the AMB is an administrative unit that leaves aside important areas such as a large part of Valais, Bages or Maresme, as well as Martorell with an industrial center as important as SEAT in the Baix Llobregat.
In the second half of the 20th century, the textile industry and with it the metallurgical industry were the economic engine of Catalonia. Factories grew on the banks of the Ripoll, Ter and Llobregat rivers and the industrial economic chain was built. Thousands of jobs were created, which by diversifying into other branches, have been the seed and essence of our economy. Today, the industry represents 61.51%1 of the GDP of the metropolitan region of Barcelona and occupies almost 10%2 of the Catalan population.
There have been years in which industry was considered an activity from another era, although it has been shown that it has been and is a more stable job creator than services. We are a country that has been distracted by paying more attention to services than to industry, without realizing that industry is what underpins most services. In short, it is a value chain, which starts in industry, which diversifies into different specialties (chemistry, textiles and fashion, metallurgy,...) and has an impact on other economic sectors (logistics, commerce, services), thus creating countless jobs.
Currently, the products that are manufactured in the metropolitan region of Barcelona reach anywhere on the planet and compete with industries in the most advanced and industrially consolidated areas. Our area has reached export levels relevant to the total of Spanish exports.
Therefore, talking today about the weight of our region's industry does not remain only in the rhetoric of words, but the figures on the volumes of business, export and production define it by themselves.
The industry is getting cleaner and will be cleaner; our companies are clearly committed to the environment. Industrialists know that environmental sustainability as well as human and economic sustainability are closely linked, since if the planet and people are not respected, their future is threatened. That is why industrialists have been trained and educated knowing that the final object is the economic sustainability of their companies. They value knowledge and talent, and know that the competitive industry is one that knows how to incorporate and retain talent.
The industry in our region has been modernized and therefore digitized. Today it is natural to talk about Industry 4.0 in many of them, with different intensity depending on their needs and activities. If only three years ago, industrial SMEs saw digitization as a difficult challenge to achieve, today they have incorporated it as normal, knowing that this way they are more competitive.
The idea that industry pollutes rivers and the environment, as well as the perception of dirty and cumbersome workplaces, must be left behind forever. It is time to become aware that employment in the industry requires knowledge. Engineers, computer scientists, designers are the ones who make our companies work, but also young people with professional training are eagerly awaited to be hired. Therefore, today the metropolitan region of Barcelona has a solid industry, increasingly cleaner and more sustainable, which employs knowledge and creates jobs.
| "It's time to become aware that employment in the industry requires knowledge" |
All of this forces us to rethink both the offer and the methodology for professional training. We need training programs that can be adapted to the needs of companies with practices in the work center and to quickly update the training programs, for the most part still designed and located in places that respond to the needs of other times.
The metropolitan region of Barcelona is like a Basque Country around the capital. Baix Llobregat surpasses Guipúscoa, just as Vallès is more powerful than Biscay. We are not a simple periphery of a global capital, we are the dimension that allows Barcelona to compare itself with the metropolises with a productive base.
Of course, the Basque Country has come a long way because for many years the different levels of government and administration, together with businessmen, knew how to make agreements and a clear commitment to make an industrial country. So their economy is stronger today because their industry is stronger. While we have ahead of us the challenges of consolidating innovation and professional training, as well as the implementation and completion of infrastructure such as the Mediterranean Corridor and the improvement of the estates, among others, that modernize our industrial base. A horizon that we will only reach if we share the will to integrate the industrial fact into the metropolitan reality, so that the services of the center of Barcelona are not seen as alien to the regional reality, but as part of the same project.
It is time to realize that industry is a relevant part of our country's economy and that an important part of industry is modern, digitized and clean. It is essential to incorporate industry as the main pillar in the economic and productive discourse. Let's note that the wealthiest areas that create the most wealth did this many years ago. Let's look at what we have and become aware of its value and let's not fall back into forgetting that the industry deserves all the political attention and that to achieve the best goals we need to respect it, facilitate it and learn from the culture of public-private collaboration. Listening to industrialists and those who really know about industry is essential to define support policies that make it excel, just like the industrial centers of Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, or the Nordic countries do.