Dmytro Rukin: Barcelona as a bridge between European technology and Latin America

For a company working on both sides of the Atlantic, Barcelona has the language sorted and boasts a huge Latin American community within its tech sector. Moreover, European afternoons coincide with mornings in São Paulo or Mexico City, and it’s hard to find another city on the continent that offers all of this at once.

I run Victo Postanova from Barcelona. Part of the team is in Europe and many of our clients are on the other side of the ocean. At first, I saw it as a quirk of our business, but over the years I’ve met many companies in the city that operate exactly the same way.

Is speaking Spanish enough to work with Latin America?

It helps a lot. A company from Bogotá coming to Europe can negotiate and sign in their language from the first meeting, and a Spanish company looking towards America experiences the same in the opposite direction.

Problems arise when someone confuses language with market. A consumer in Mexico City buys and pays very differently than one in Santiago, and each country has its own regulator. I’ve seen more than one company discover this after spending a good part of their first-year budget. There are many Latin American professionals living in Barcelona who know both sides well, and I’ve found those people to be more useful for business than the shared language.

What advantage does Barcelona's time zone offer?

There is a four or five-hour difference between Barcelona and São Paulo depending on the time of year, and with Mexico City, it’s seven or eight. Almost all of continental Europe shares that time frame, so Berlin or Milan have the same window. The difference is that in Barcelona, those afternoon hours can be covered by people who speak the client’s language and have already worked in their country.

At Victo Postanova, we organise the day around this. Mornings are for data analysis and calls with clients from America are scheduled for after lunch, when the day begins there, so no one has to connect at dawn.

What does Barcelona have that other tech cities lack?

Many years of accumulated work. The 22@ district has been gathering software and data companies for over two decades in what was once the industrial Poblenou. The Mobile World Congress brings executives from around the world every year, and many Latin Americans take advantage of the trip to meet with European partners. Many executives who later lead companies in Bogotá, Lima, or Santiago pass through the classrooms of IESE and Esade.

This has formed a network of contacts that existed long before anyone sought it. When a Latin American company looks for its first partner in Europe, it often ends up in Barcelona because someone from their team studied here or met someone at the MWC.

What does each side contribute?

The Latin American companies I work with usually take away from Europe the discipline in processes and data protection, which the GDPR makes mandatory. European teams, on the other hand, learn a lot from the pace of the other side. In Brazil, millions of people pay every day with Pix from their mobile, and launching a product there requires moving much faster than a European company is used to.

The projects that have worked best for us combine both: a product carefully designed from here and tested as soon as possible with Latin American users. In Barcelona, that mix happens almost naturally, as both profiles often share an office.

What would you say to a company wanting to cross the bridge?

To a Spanish company looking towards Latin America, I would ask them to choose a country and truly commit to it. A serious operation in Mexico or Brazil opens more doors than a plan with five flags on a slide. I would also recommend hiring someone from that country early on, rather than someone who has only read about it.

If the journey is the other way around, it’s important to take data protection seriously from day one. Several Latin American countries have their own laws, like Brazil's LGPD, but in Spain, the AEPD frequently imposes fines, and contracts with European clients reflect this.