“What makes a company great are its values,” says Ignacio Galán upon receiving the Award for the Promotion of Spain

“What makes a company great are its values,” said Iberdrola chairman Ignacio Galán during his speech as he collected the Spanish Projection Award in the Business category, presented to the company by the Spanish newspaper El Debate. These values, he said, are embodied by “the people of Iberdrola giving their all during the DANAS storms in Valencia, the storms in Scotland and the floods in Brazil”.

Galán received the award “on behalf of the 44,000 people who make up Iberdrola and who truly deserve it’ and highlighted that many have been ‘the architects of the Group’s international expansion.”

The third edition of the Premios a la Proyección de España (Awards for the Promotion of Spain) was held in Madrid and brought together personalities from the worlds of politics, justice, business and culture. The awards were created by the daily El Debate to recognise institutions and individuals who have made a significant contribution to the positive image of Spain. The award has three categories: institution or company, media or communications professional, and entity or personality in the field of arts and literature.

As Europe’s largest electricity company and one of the two largest in the world by market capitalisation, Iberdrola has undergone a process of international expansion in less than 25 years, always taking Spanish and local companies with it wherever it operates and generating hundreds of thousands of quality jobs in Spain and around the world.

In his speech, the Chairman of Iberdrola reflected on the meaning of the word “project”. In his opinion, “it has a lot to do with what Iberdrola is.” “It is making something visible. Something that needs light to be seen on a surface.”

But projecting also “means drawing up a plan to carry out a project.” “Engineers project in order to transform ideas into reality, and that is what we have done throughout our history, carrying out major energy projects, in which we have invested more than €175 billion over the last 20 years, 25 of which I have been involved in, in order to expand throughout the world.”

Finally, “designing is driving or moving forward, advancing, and that is why we are proud that with each of our projects we promote activity.” In this sense, he said, “we support our employees, our customers, our suppliers, our partners, our shareholders and the local communities where we operate.”

All this work has placed Iberdrola in its current position of leadership. “Today we are proud to be pioneers and to be developing the latest international interconnection technologies. In the United Kingdom, specifically, we have the largest submarine connection lines in the world; in Australia, the largest batteries for hybridising our wind farms. Or the large hydroelectric projects in Spain and Portugal, and the first offshore wind farm in the United States off the coast of Massachusetts.” Behind these achievements “are thousands of suppliers who have accompanied us,” which is why “our success is the success of those who work with us.”

Ignacio Galán recalled that the company brings electricity to 100 million people “from Australia to the United States, from the United Kingdom to Germany and Italy, and from Brazil to Mexico.”

The Chairman ended his speech by thanking El Debate “for allowing us to share with all of you what this company and the people who work here are doing to meet the world’s current energy demands, and to create and continue creating development and wealth for people and contribute to building a more united, fairer and more sustainable world.”