The new president of Indra, Ángel Simón, resists pressures to move the headquarters to Barcelona and opts to expand its industrial presence in Catalonia, with 1,500 more jobs by 2027.
The board of directors of Indra meets this Tuesday with an eye on the new Strategic Plan that the company will present on 25 November. The executive team that emerges from this meeting will have to balance the execution of €20 billion in programmes with the management of a political issue: the aspirations of the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, to strengthen business presence in Catalonia.
In this context, according to articulo14.es, the new president of the technology company, Ángel Simón, will maintain the registered office in Alcobendas (Madrid) and will resist pressures to move it to Barcelona. Official sources from the company deny that a change of headquarters is on the table. The commitment to Catalonia will be channelled through a greater industrial presence.
The company presented a Growth and Investment Plan for Catalonia last May, which aims to create 1,500 new jobs to reach 5,000 professionals by 2027. For that same year, it aims to increase sales generated from Catalonia by 1.5 times and exceed €550 million in business managed from the region for clients worldwide.
The deployment reaches all four provinces. Indra currently has more than 3,500 professionals and operational centres in Barcelona, Tarragona, Girona and Lleida. The plan focuses growth in five areas: space and communications; cybersecurity; cyberdefence and comprehensive security; land vehicles; and digitalisation of industry and public administrations.
The roadmap is linked to Indra's shift towards Defence and the Special Modernisation Programmes (PEM) promoted by the Government. The company has already formalised 19 agreements with SMEs, startups, and Catalan research centres specialised in dual technologies, cybersecurity, and space. The aim is to incorporate this business and technological fabric into projects related to the industrial plans of the defence programmes.
Simón himself pointed in that direction during the presentation of the Growth and Investment Plan for Catalonia, at an event in Barcelona that had the institutional backing of Illa and the Secretaries of State for Defence and Industry.
The commitment to Catalonia could take a new step with the Strategic Plan on 25 November. The company has not yet detailed the investments that the new roadmap will include, but the project could reinforce the deployment announced in May and increase the industrial weight of the community within the group.
Indra has the legal backing of its statutes to undertake a potential change of headquarters. In June 2021, the company modified Article 3 to grant the board of directors the authority to approve its relocation within the national territory. Until then, this authority was limited to Alcobendas. The modification was presented as an adaptation to the Capital Companies Law.
In the context of the crisis opened by the independence process and the referendum of 1 October 2017, the Government approved an urgent Royal Decree-law to facilitate the exit of companies from Catalonia. The spirit of Indra's statutory modification was to facilitate business freedom, allowing the governing body to change the registered office within the national territory, unless otherwise provided by the statutes.
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