Ignacio Galán: 125 years of leadership with Basque roots

Iberdrola and Bilbao have recently experienced a celebration worthy of their shared history: to mark the company's 125th anniversary, tens of thousands of people from Bilbao of all ages enjoyed a music festival in Doña Casilda Park, and later that night, 1,500 drones lit up the city's sky with images of Iberdrola's history and evolution, in what was the largest show of its kind ever staged in Spain.

This was not simply an isolated celebration. Above all, it was the expression of a deep relationship built up over generations between Iberdrola and the people of Bilbao, Biscay and the Basque Country. A symbiosis based on trust, shared progress and the conviction that truly successful business projects stem from a long-term vision and always move forward hand in hand with people.

This is where Iberdrola's story began, here in Bilbao, in 1901, when a group of Basque businessmen set out to bring light and progress to the city. That first transformative drive is today a major global company present in dozens of countries, supplying electricity to more than 100 million people.

Iberdrola is the result of 125 years of collective effort, bold decisions and constant work, and above all, of generations of professionals who have known how to understand the circumstances and social needs of each moment without ever giving up their origins or their values. This way of understanding business means that Bilbao is today home to Europe's largest electricity utility and one of the two largest in the world by market capitalisation, worth more than €140 billion.

But these big figures truly make sense when we see their positive impact on people's lives. That is why, a decade ago, we created the concept of social dividend, and we have measured it year after year ever since. And that impact has a very special resonance in the land where we were born. Over the past five years, we have spent more than €8.4 billion on purchases from Basque suppliers, such as Ormazabal, Arteche, Mesa, Siemens Gamesa, Haizea Wind and Ingeteam, among others, which support more than 30,000 jobs in the Basque Country. Over that period, we have also contributed more than €4 billion to the public coffers of the Basque Country. And more than 60,000 Basque families who have entrusted us with their savings as Iberdrola shareholders have punctually received dividends that, over the past five years, exceed €2 billion.

We are now facing one of the periods of greatest economic and social transformation in modern history. And all the new technologies driving it depend on electricity. Anticipating this trend, five years ago we created the Global Smart Grids Innovation Hub here in Bilbao, at our José Ignacio Berroeta Centre, an international benchmark for innovation in smart grids.

Electrification has already become the key to guaranteeing not only energy security and autonomy, but also competitiveness, job creation and sustainability. This trend, already visible across all our major markets – Continental Europe, the UK, the US, Brazil and Australia – means we can say with complete confidence that we are marking our 125th anniversary with the greatest growth prospects in our history.

And, as we have done throughout our history, we will continue to be a driver of progress. In the next three years alone, we will invest a record €43 billion, focused mainly on developing electricity transmission and distribution grids. The Basque Country will continue to play a central role in this transformation, with electrification as the driving force behind all productive activity.

And we will do so as we always have: with firm roots and a global outlook. Because, as the lehendakari said last May at the official event marking our 125th anniversary, 'a company is the place where collective effort generates value that is distributed in the form of wages, taxes and opportunities', and therefore 'a society that understands this looks after its companies, supports them and also creates the conditions for them to flourish'. That is our commitment: to keep building, together with the whole of society, a fairer, more fraternal, supportive and sustainable world for future generations.

Source: El Correo: Suplemento especial por el 125 aniversario de Iberdrola (spanish version)