The news broke yesterday, in the middle of the Mobile Congress, when talking about the future and drag economies, one of the big Spanish companies decides that enough is enough to continue in a country that is not growing and that is hindering its growth.

Spain loses at the moment 285 million in taxes that Ferrovial pays in Spain among different concepts, but loses above all a company that made the flag of what must be done and that is to go out and grow abroad, and not only in Latin America, how they did the great company homeland, but to Anglo-Saxon markets, which is where the money really is and where it has also been shown that we Spaniards can rub shoulders, compete and manage infrastructures and services like few others.

Ferrovial decides to leave for various reasons, one and not least is that the Netherlands is a Triple A, that is, the financing cost of 8,000 million that it can finance each year or even in a single project is much lower than in Spain. Since 2018, the international operations were already carrying out from Amsterdam, so it is nothing new. But going to the Netherlands also has another derivative, a multitude of investment funds and pension funds that as a rule only invest in companies that are domiciled in countries with a Triple A rating, they will see how now they can increase their shares in the family company Of the pine.

Ferrovial’s departure says a lot, specifically it tells us that what is going to suffer in the coming years is going to be investment, when the cuts come or when it is seen that pensions accumulate most of social spending (now it is happening, but it will go further), what the current government is going to sacrifice is investment in infrastructure and capital goods, because this is where Ferrovial also sees that there is less and less cake, projects of barely 100 million euros, which on top of that they charge them with many delays. Nothing to do with what is going to happen in the US with the infrastructure plan, where 2,000 million projects come out and where the companies that work there, if they are listed on the stock market (that is why they want to be listed in the US) receive the approval of investors institutional.

See how Ferrovial has done since 2014, it has gone from trading at 9 euros to the 26 that is currently trading. It has tripled its value once discounting dividends.

In an environment of rate hikes by the ECB, being in a solvent country with greater legal certainty than Spain will bring benefits in project financing.

In this context, Ferrovial has obtained the support of the investment funds that are among its shareholders and that account for 93% of the capital that is not controlled by the Del Pino family. And who value the management of the current Management of the company.

This movement should make the government nervous, because in the middle of the results season, we see how some of our large companies are having more than 80% of the profits outside of Spain and the government does nothing but put obstacles, new taxes and bad statements. These leaders should think about what would happen if the big companies in the country left?

Well, Ferrovial is leaving. The reasons are purely economic, do not doubt it, but the current policy does not help to keep companies anchored in the country. You cannot criticize the big companies that generate wealth, quality work and innovation that we so need.

Can you imagine a BBVA, Iberdrola, Ferrovial or a Mercadona? It would be a disaster of prestige and resources for the country. Who tells you that Juan Roig decides to sell Mercadona because he is fed up with the declarations of a part of the government and decides to sell it to an investment fund that is domiciled in Luxembourg.

We need to lay out a red carpet for foreign investment, improve our legal certainty, not treat companies as if they were guilty in advance before any tax inspection, social security, APD… Spain needs its companies and we must help them so that be bigger and more influential and help us improve our GDP.

I show you some graphs that we include almost daily in the stock market today so that you understand what Ferrovial is moving away from in Spain.

This is one of the problems that our economy has, our productivity is a disaster compared to other geographical areas like the US or countries like Germany.