Obtaining a battery factory in Spain was one of the first commitments of the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Reyes Maroto (Medina del Campo, Valladolid, 1973), upon her arrival in the Government. Four years later, with the help of the Next Generation funds, the country has two projects, although none of them in Asturias, despite the fact that the Executive had pointed out that the Principality was an ideal place to host one of these facilities . The socialist attends in Madrid to “El Periódico de España”, from the same editorial group of LA NUEVA ESPAÑA.
–Acciona and Envision announced on Friday the installation of a battery factory in Extremadura. Was the government involved in this project?
–Acciona and Envision were put in contact when we saw that Envision was interested in investing in Spain. For us it was very important to have a Spanish “partner” in all the projects. We not only have the Volkswagen group, which announced the first gigafactory, but we will also have a second gigafactory in Navalmoral de la Mata (Extremadura). This shows that Spain had the capacity to do it and it was only necessary to find the financial instruments and the actors.
–The call for projects for the PERTE of the electric car has just ended (on Saturday, at 00.00 hours). How many companies have applied?
–This week we learned about the incorporation of the Renault group into PERTE, Mercedes, Stellantis… and even Irizar, with the future “hub” that is going to be located in the Zona Franca (Barcelona). In total, 13 tractor projects have been presented, from 13 groups, with a budget to be executed of 5,927 million euros. The process will be resolved before the end of the year.
-There are territories that have remained in the background in this race for the electric car.
-I think the other way around. The projects structure the territory. For example, in the case of the Volkswagen group, the investment is not only made in Sagunto, but in nine autonomous communities. One of the great beneficiaries are the two plants that Volkswagen has in our country, Martorell and Navarra, where we are clearly going to change all the platforms to convert them to electric ones. Therefore, I believe that PERTE will represent an important boost, not only because of Volkswagen, but also because the project to electrify the Nissan plants is also part of the project. They are two projects that are born from the Catalan ecosystem.
–But they are left without a battery factory.
–The location of the battery factory is an issue that we have not influenced. We have accompanied companies to choose the best locations. Rather than talk about losers, I would talk about winners. The challenge was for Extremadura to have an industrial project because it was disconnecting a bit from the industry. All the autonomous communities win and the sector wins because we will be at the forefront of all this change. We all won, although I would put Extremadura as one of the big winners of this PERTE.
-What has changed? There was a lot of social reluctance to extract lithium from the Cáceres mine.
-There were reluctance not to extract but to only have extraction. Now we are talking about a value chain that is going to be created in Extremadura. That there is a development of industrial capabilities completely changes the paradigm. Only the battery factory is 3,000 jobs and, therefore, the reception of Extremaduran society I hope will be positive.
–So there will be two battery factories in Spain? There will be no more?
-Two are already a success. With having achieved the first we would all be satisfied.
-President Sánchez has gone to Davos to look for investors for the PERTE of microchips. Has he found Them?
-The ambition is great, but the actors are few because there are barely three manufacturers of semiconductors smaller than 5 nanometers. We are not starting from scratch. In fact, Intel has already announced that it was going to make an initial investment of 200 million euros in the Barcelona supercomputer. We have eleven projects that the European Commission is evaluating in the field of the European microelectronics project. The most ambitious is that of Barcelona, that of the National Supercomputing Center. The Davos meetings were very constructive. There was Intel, Cisco, Qualcom, with whom I established contact in Washington, and Sánchez met with his CEO in Davos. We believe that one of the ecosystems that can be generated around the PERTE chip can be in Galicia. Another will clearly be in Catalonia and another in Malaga. There may be more, but we have identified at least those three “clusters” as a starting point to start working on a larger scale.
-What expectations do you have for the arrival of tourists this summer?
–I think we are going to recover the pre-pandemic levels month by month. Another thing is the end of the year, I think that in spending we will be at pre-pandemic levels, but in volume we will have to wait until 2023.
–And in July and August will we recover all the tourists?
I would go more in the fall. As happened last year, we are extending the summer season with the months of October and November. But we have to be careful. We are still in a context of war, with inflation as an element that can reduce competitiveness and reduce the number of days that one travels.
–Why isn’t there a PERTE for tourism?–There is a PERTE for tourism. It is true that we have not called it that, but the Competitiveness and Modernization Plan for the tourism sector, 3,400 million euros, but it is the fourth most important investment in the recovery plan.