To understand the importance of the tile industry in Castellón, it is enough to admire the recently refurbished, shining stadium of the Villarreal Club de Fútbol. In gleaming bright yellow, the field formerly called El Madrigal was renamed in 2017 Estadio de la Cerámica, a material that covers the home of the yellow submarine, a team led by the magnate of the tile industry, Fernando Roig, who is also president of Pamesa Cerámica.

Roig’s companies, and many others, dot the landscape of Castellón, where the working chimneys discover that, although production has fallen due to the large increase in the price of gas, it has not yet completely stopped them. Fortunately.

First thing in the morning, there are trucks that circulate and employees that go in and out of bars like the one in the Onda industrial estate that this newspaper visits, where although it is already late for lunch, there are still those who ask for a tortilla skewer and a wine and soda before to continue the day. This is the case of José Vicente, a transporter, who parks the truck during this break before continuing each day’s journey. For years he has been traveling daily from La Plana to the Port of Valencia, where he unloads containers full of Castellón tiles, but it has been a while since the trips have been fewer.

“The work has dropped a lot. Before I made three trips a day, today I make one at most and with groupage, which means that the orders from the companies are grouped,” he details while sipping the black coffee. He explains that he has noticed this “slump” “in his wages, because before he could save every month and now it is very difficult.” And he wonders how other people will do it who, unlike him, do have to support a family.

It is restlessness and uncertainty that he breathes in this visit to the industrial sector of Castellón, the Spanish province where industry has the greatest weight, since almost 40% of the GDP (36.6%) of the area depends on it. There are 73,000 jobs that depend on it, according to the figures put on the table by the president of the CEV Castellón, Luis Martí, when last Wednesday he went with some thirty associations to present the president Ximo Puig in Valencia with the so-called “Manifesto for the maintenance of the economy of Castellón”. In it they launch an SOS through the province, so that the central government activates direct aid that allows them to compete in the international market and ultimately save companies and thousands of jobs.

“We are in a moment of restlessness, we don’t know what is really going to happen,” explains Antonio Blanco, head of the construction sector at UGT-PV. The union is one of the signatories of said manifesto, which also traveled to Madrid on Thursday.

The sector met with the Minister of Industry Héctor Gómez in what his ministry described as a “very productive meeting”. He also assured the Executive in the same proposals had been shared “always with the objective that the sector continues to be competitive for Spain.” The balance made later by Ascer, the tile employers, highlighted the “receptivity” shown by the new head of Industry, who promised to hold a new meeting in the coming weeks. The key is working with “other ministries”, since the main stumbling block for the aid to arrive is in the Delinquency Law, and the powers are from the Economy, directed by Nadia Calviño.

But far from the ministerial offices, the working class is corroded by concern about whether this perception that things “are getting ugly” could end up being much worse. María, an employee of one of the bars in the industrial estate, notices this, where the trays of sausages and steaming tortillas remind us that every morning there are dozens of workers who come to have lunch.

He explains that the customers don’t complain to him, but he hears them comment, between dishes and coffee served, that they are restless. “There are many people in ERTE and when they come for lunch, there are already many who bring the sandwich from home,” she points out. Consequently, her level of work has also decreased and that, deep down, also worries her.

In ERTE they were also in the company of another manager who explains his experience. At his company’s factory, which has a turnover of around 15 million euros and has a workforce of less than fifty people, they left the ERTE a few months ago but are now producing at half. “In August of last year, with the rise in the price of gas, every day we manufactured we were losing money and we couldn’t pay the bill,” he explains. For this reason, with the current scenario, he has “little confidence” that the aid claimed from the State will arrive.

However, the sector does not decline because there are effects that are already palpable. The fact that the lists of those affected by the effect that the war in Ukraine has on the ceramic sector is growing is corroborated by the UGT-PV, which estimates that 1,000 employees have already been laid off in the last year. There are also 10,000 employees who have gone through an ERTE. Collective layoffs of 170 or 150 people in certain companies who prefer not to mention that they scratch the memory of the last great crisis. She is remembered by the person in charge of a whirlpool bath factory and with 20 years of experience in the sector.

In January of this year, the ERTE in which the staff had entered six months earlier ended and now she says, relieved and smiling, that the request of a foreign hotel has saved them, “at least until the summer”. She says that she breathes “uncertainty” and knows of many friends who are still in ERTE or who have not been paid for many months, “what we had in the previous crisis …”. At that time, she ate the savings and now says that she lives from hand to mouth because “there is no other choice.” Resignation is what remains.