You were a manager of Barça; Why do soccer and billet rhyme?
There are usually managers who combine the two sectors, like me, now vice president of AE Prat, because both are capital intensive and transversal in management; They require relationships in various fields…
And risk a lot?
You must get along with the numbers of the banks and with the feelings of the partners and the interests of buyers, administration… They are infrastructures, but also people: networks of relationships and knowledge…
Like Espai Barça? What do you think of the club’s option for a Turkish construction company?
Honestly, and I am speaking as a former manager of Barça and as president of Construmat, I think it is not good that a Turkish construction company has to come to carry out the star civil works project of the century in Catalonia.
Because we have – the Panama Canal, the railway to Mecca – capable construction companies?
And some of them in Catalonia and Spain had already been working on the project for two years. It is surprising that in three months a Turkish construction company arrives and says that it will be able to finish it better, cheaper and in less time.
Will it comply?
Lots of things can happen; but when, during the execution of a work, a discrepancy is generated, a controversy, and it ends in litigation, the one who is inside has the power, and is the builder…
…in this case, Turk: could he be required to pay compensation for delays or cost overruns?
For each day of delay, yes. But these compensations are not automatic. If there are discrepancies, for example, in the interpretation of the deadlines for the execution of the project…
Where could they occur?
Is the rain “force majeure†or is it not? There can be many other controversial interpretations. And if we add to this risk of costly delay that the builder is not even from the EU… In short, the choice of the Turkish builder for Barça gives us food for thought about the motives that inspire it.
Don’t have a winning edge?
Barça only loses, because they will not be able to use their facilities while the works last and it does not seem feasible that they will last as long as they say. Putting deadlines and prices on paper does not mean that they are achievable.
Why do they seem unrealizable?
Because the construction companies here are very professional and offered the adjusted price of someone who knows the sector, the country, the costs, the risks well… And the Turks arrive and offer to do it for 30% less?
What dimensions does the project have?
It requires more than a thousand construction professionals to meet deadlines, and those thousand contracts must comply with the Barcelona agreement: also demanding. It is not believable.
Meanwhile, the lack of housing continues to be pressing in Barcelona.
Because the regulations approved by the City Council have proven ineffective.
Why are you so sure?
Because since these regulations came into force five years ago to increase the supply of affordable housing, only 52 homes have been built in Barcelona. That’s all.
And aren’t there more under construction?
I have said “that’s all”, because that figure includes finished and unfinished floors; in licensing process or half built. It has been the result of forcing 30% of all new homes to be officially protected.
Why have so few been built?
If you want flats built, you can’t legislate against builders. In addition, that 30% includes rehabilitations. If I take a building and want to renovate it, from the outset its value falls by 30%, because 30% of its homes must be officially protected in buildings of more than 600 m2, which are the majority.
And if we had to give time to the norm?
Housing policies cannot be made in the short term thinking of the next elections and in a sectarian way: they must be long-term and agreed upon by all so that each new government does not change them upon arrival.
What measures would you propose?
Today here, private builders, we build protection housing; the middle class and the high class…
And doesn’t it seem fair to reserve that 30% for the less affluent Barcelonans?
We know that the people of Nou Barris do not want to invest in a subsidized apartment in Pedralbes: they want to live in their neighbourhood, their schools, neighbors and friends, their shops at their prices…
Doesn’t that 30% official protection provided by the City Council avoid ghettos?
On paper it was an ideological initiative, but the reality is more complex, and the residents want to buy flats in their neighbourhood.
Hasn’t it worked in any neighborhood?
On the contrary, in the 22@ district they have achieved that almost all the new flats are officially protected: and where are the directors of these companies going to live? Housing requires a more diverse and transversal vision.
