Since the war broke out two years ago, thousands of Russian and Ukrainian citizens have gone into exile in search of a quiet place to rebuild their lives. Designers, engineers, consultants, entrepreneurs… workers of all kinds have arrived in Barcelona.
Last Saturday, more than a hundred of them gathered at the Bostik warehouse, in La Sagrera, for the first edition of the De Zero a U festival, which had the objective of vindicating the role of the Russian-speaking community in the local economy . One of the main attractions was the presentation of the awards for the best business initiative. In the first phase, 184 entrepreneurs were nominated and in the second, one hundred were selected. Among the chosen projects, companies that market spirit drinks brands stood out, such as Moonshine or Master Distiller, the digital application Learn Cat, developed for learning Catalan, the cosmetics brand Minimalist, the publishing house Ruskniga, the office of Archtree architecture, the SBC Squash club or the Wawa design studio.
Behind the organization of the event is Sergei Safronov, a freelancer specialized in legal consulting services; Alena Shakina, who has a social media and marketing agency and Nikita Krupskiy, who works in the world of human resources. The promoters have received the support of Jordi Bosch, businessman and former delegate in Moscow of the public agency Catalunya Trade.
Safronov explains that the organizers have rejected the collaboration of the embassies and consulates of their respective countries since they prefer to leave the initiative outside of politics and their interests. “Many of us are highly qualified professionals and we want to integrate into the local business fabric, highlighting the particularities of the Russian-speaking community,” says Safronov, who welcomes expatriates from other former Soviet countries, from Lithuania to Kazakhstan.
With this objective, the organizers plan to establish an association that also claims their needs. According to a survey carried out with more than a hundred people from the group, the main difficulties they encounter in setting up their business in Barcelona are: the heavy tax burden (57%), the administrative bureaucracy (30%) and the lack of purchasing power of the population (30%).
