Economia Digital has asked for my opinion on the upcoming restructuring process of IBERIA.
Iberia is at
risk of disappearing due to its past, and its strategic conception,
which has never been revised over time. A company which was born during a
military dictatorship and which also grew suckling on the teat of a
dictatorship, has given greater value to geopolitical considerations
than to those of economic feasibility, taking the company to its present
position, which is a cul-de-sac.
Iberia was
founded in 1927 by the Basque businessman Echevarrieta, and was given
impulse by the then dictator, Primo de Rivera, with a monopoly on
Spanish air transport. In 1929 it was obliged to provide its routes and
planes to the recently created CLASSA (
Concesionaria de Líneas Aéreas Subvencionadas, or Subsidised Airline Concession) ,
under the direction of the Directorio Militar, to create a monopoly
with a single company. With the arrival of the Second Spanish Republic
in 1931, CLASSA was dissolved and LAPE was created. In those years,
Iberia was a company without any real activity. In 1937, during the
Spanish Civil War, Iberia was reactivated and was converted into the
airline of the Nationalist side, having its headquarters in Salamanca.
It soon became part of the network, with Mussolini-esque airs, of the
INI(Instituto Nacional de Industria).
When, eventually, the Spanish transition came, the diverse governments
at the time dealt with the privatisation process - demanded if Spain
were to enter the then EEC – late and inefficiently. Whoever has been in
power in Spain, be it UCD, PSOE o PP, privatisations have happened in a
way which has centralised and concentrated power in Madrid, handing the
jewels of the crown to a reduced oligarchical caste.
In this
context, at the beginning of the 1990’s the directorship of the INI,
majority shareholders in Iberia’s capital, pursued a strategy of growth
of the company towards the South American market, to prepare the
liberalisation of air markets in the European Union. The result of this
strategy of recolonisation of the Americas was a failure. There were
important losses for Iberia. INI, via the Spanish government, had to
apply for two capital injections.
The year 2001
represented a watershed moment for the company. Its process of
privatisation culminated in its’ going public in April of that year. It
became part of the Oneworld alliance, along with British Airways and
American Airlines, among others. Its shares were traded in the Ibex 35,
until fusion came in 2011. The result, a holding called International
Airlines Group(IAG), is that which is now imposing, for the first time
in 85 years, a restructuring process using economic criteria, which may
lead to the dissolution of the company, according to some experts.
As a user,
virtually by obligation, of Iberia, I promise that I will not "cry for
thee, Iberia". A company created and nurtured by the state, and which
has systematically joined inefficiency with politically motivated
prejudices in its policy-making and decisions, is a diplodocus which
cannot evolve. AENA’s protected company (or is AENA an organism in the
service of Iberia?) has demonstrated its preference for Madrid’s
airport, in detriment of that of Barcelona. Iberia has disguised its
shame next to Iberia, given that, until the year 2010, AENA had not
presented its declaration of profit and loss, in relation to each of the
airports in its network. Iberia has decided to abandon El Prat
(Barcelona’s airport) entirely, leaving it as a secondary airport, and a
hub for low-cost airlines. Albeit, conserving the Air Bridge linking
Barcelona and Madrid, the second most profitable in the world. (Are you
asking yourselves why this anomaly is allowed to persist? Essentially it
is because of the political dependence of Catalonia, the Iberian
Peninsula’s most productive region, on Madrid). I lived at first hand
the unfair play practised in unison by the duo AENA/Iberia when it was
discovered that in at least twelve cases AENA had authorised and
encouraged stopovers in Madrid of international companies, expressly
excluding Barcelona. One could denounce the case of Singapore Airlines,
which had an agreement for more than two years with Spanair, which
enabled stopovers in Barcelona on its routes to Sao Paolo. AENA impeded
this agreement and finally, this particular prey was ceded to Iberia.
The creation of the hub in Miami also formed part of this strategy in
favour of Barajas. There has been a systematic blockage of direct
flights from Barcelona to the USA, allowing US companies to cover this
profitable route, in which the flights, at the end of the first year,
were planned to double in frequency. I could go on, but there is not
sufficient space.
To sum up, and
regretting the limbo in which thousands of workers may find themselves, I
would insist that a company conceived as a weapon of the Madrid
oligarchy, and not as an instrument of public service, which ought to be
efficient and equitable for all Spanish citizens, deserves to be
consumed by the British. Seen from Catalonia, at least British
imperialism is more pragmatic and economically efficient.
Josep Huguet i Biosca
Minister of Innovation, Universities and Enterprise (2006-2010)
Minister of Trade, Tourism and Consumer Affairs (2004-2006)
President of the Josep Irla Foundation
@Josep_Huguet
Minister of Trade, Tourism and Consumer Affairs (2004-2006)
President of the Josep Irla Foundation
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