Manuel Azaña, president of the Second Spanish Republic, was the name of the Flebasa ferry, the company whose destructuring gave rise to the Valencian Baleària. The Merchant Navy had paralyzed the ship and the employees demonstrated, demonstrating a “spectacular involvement” with the company, says one of its employees, who would later move to the foundation of what is now the first Spanish shipping company.
It is one of the anecdotes contained in the documentary A 25-year journey, presented on June 16 at the shipping company’s headquarters in Dénia in front of 300 people coinciding with the anniversary of the company’s foundation.
And it is that it was the workers of Flebasa who, headed by Adolfo Utor, created the current company. “I noticed a spectacular involvement of my colleagues with the company, we all went to save what they fed us,” says Teresa Costa, currently responsible for Consignments in Eivissa, in the film.
Adolfo Utor also spoke about these beginnings during the celebration of the 25th anniversary that took place in the last edition of Fitur, since the company has been celebrating various commemorative events for its silver anniversary for a whole year.
The audiovisual tells the story of the company through the testimony of 14 people, including experts in the shipping world and first-person testimonies of the company’s entire history. With a duration of 45 minutes, it details the beginnings of the shipping company, the decisions that boosted its growth and the most complex moments of its trajectory, without forgetting the look to the future.
Baleària has relied on the Valencian company Crea Concepto for the production of the documentary, whose production has been carried out in Eivissa, Menorca, Barcelona, ??Dénia, Tangiers and Miami. The 25 years of history are reflected in this documentary that draws on the Baleària archive and the personal documents of its workers, as well as the media such as Diario de Ibiza, Canfali and Televisió d’Eivissa i Formentera.
The main decisions that have marked the course of the shipping company are also reported. One in which several of the testimonies coincide was the start-up of the Federico García Lorca fast ferry. “This flagship was a turning point and a change of mentality in the company,” recalls Pedro Puertas, one of the company’s historical captains.
“It was an opportunity, an American financier believed in our project and made it possible for this company to build the first ship”, highlights Utor, who also points out as decisive the merger by absorption of the shipping division of the Matutes Group, which allowed Baleària to “win in size and prestige.
In the documentary, the president of Baleària recalls the 2008 crisis as one of the moments of “extreme difficulty”, which caught the shipping company in the middle of building four new ships: “These ferries, which compromised our viability and liquidity so much, were at the same time those who helped us get out of the situation”, he highlights.
Utor also underlines the milestone of the “jump to the Caribbean” which, despite being a project that has been slowed down by the pandemic, believes that “it will bring a lot of news in the future” and highlights as the last of the relevant decisions the unification of the actions of Baleària in his person.
