Speech by President of the Government at visit to Mahou-San Miguel brewery

Alovera (Guadalajara)

Mr CEO, Eduardo Petrossi; Madam Minister; ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

I wanted to start my speech by thanking you for receiving me here. It is an honour for me to visit this company. I know that things are going well for you and I hope they will continue to do so in the future, as indeed for Spain, for the Spanish people, in terms of job creation and what this means to increasing general wealth and well-being. And, for the same reasons, I hope that there will be many entrepreneurs and business leaders in all sectors because this will undoubtedly be good for everyone.

I want to congratulate you on your past, on your present and what I am sure will also be a successful future. Mahou is a Spanish company that now has 126 years of history behind it. It is a leading company in its sector. It has a market share of 35% and the figures it has presented in recent years are assuredly very positive figures for the company, but also very positive figures for the people of Spain as a whole.

The profits from last year, from 2015, were 11.5% up on the previous year; turnover increased to stand at its highest level for the last five years. And there is another important figure: 95% of your suppliers are Spanish.

Internationalisation is key: the company is present in more than 70 countries. This is good for our foreign trade sector and for our balance of payments; it shows that we are competitive. And the company has 2,800 workers; 96% on a permanent employment contract - another figure that should undoubtedly encourage us looking to the future - the number of women hired has tripled, and in the latest rounds of recruitment, 50% of new hirings were women, added to which 50% of the members of the Board of Directors are women.

These are all very positive figures and the issue now is to maintain them and indeed improve them in the future.

As you know, job creation is the main national target. It has been for the last four years and it must also continue to be so for the next four. Spain has gone through an economic crisis, the worst in decades and for six long years our country was constantly, in a ceaseless manner, shedding jobs. 2014 and 2015 have been good years; in 2014 Spanish society created 440,000 jobs, in 2015 it created 575,000 jobs and 2016, at least thus far, is going well.

Today we have seen the figures for recorded unemployment and National Insurance affiliation. These figures are good but, above all, they spur us on for the future and show that we can achieve this major national goal over the next four years of ensuring half a million more people in work each year, during the present year - 2016 - and in 2017, 2018 and 2019. To achieve that, naturally, we must maintain the policies we have set in motion in recent years and which have proven to be so positive for the people of Spain as a whole.

The figures for this month, which we have seen today, are very positive: unemployment has fallen by 124,000. It is now falling in Spain at a year-on-year rate of 8.57% overall and among young people, at a year-on-year rate of 12%. And, I repeat, all of this should spur us on to continue working hard with an eye on the future.

The National Insurance figures are also very good: more than 98,000 Spaniards have joined the Social Security system during the course of this last month - three times the figure for the same month last year. And in the first six months of this year, 450,000 people have joined up to the Social Security system.

There is another positive figure, which is that the number of permanent employment contracts has grown by 17% on last year.
Now, the challenge is to maintain this, and two things are needed, in my opinion, in order to maintain this: first, entrepreneurs, people who take risks, who work hard and who create a level of well-being and wealth such as we can see here at Mahou-San Miguel, where today's visit is taking place; and secondly, we also need a stable framework from an administrative point of view. At present, what this translates to is the need to form a government.

Spain cannot allow elections to be held again. This would be an extraordinarily reckless scenario. Hence, what we need is a government and we need this government to be formed as soon as possible. And we not only need a government, and for this to be formed as soon as possible, but we also need a government that is in a position to govern.

Between us all, we need to agree on the main objectives for the coming years, objectives that must fall within the constitutional framework and it is absolutely essential that an understanding and an agreement be reached to set some of these objectives. In the first place, I am referring to the General State Budget for the year 2017, the ceiling on spending, meeting our European commitments and providing the government with the greatest stability possible and reaching an agreement, at least a minimal agreement, on the normal functioning of this government in Parliament. On other issues we will need to undertake those on which we are in agreement and leave to one side those areas on which we disagree.

I repeat, if we have a stable government that can effectively govern, we will generate confidence and with the help of entrepreneurs, in whom it is very important to place our trust, we will achieve the main national goal of creating two million jobs. That is what we are working towards and I would point out again what I said earlier: the ideal situation is for this to be done quickly and for us to create a situation of political and institutional stability, which is key for entrepreneurs to have a suitable framework in which to meet their social function.

I will end as I began. At the start I said that I was pleased to see things going well, and this is true, and it is good for everyone. I also pointed out that I would like to see more companies in Spain, more entrepreneurs and for jobs to continue to be created in our country.

We implemented the Entrepreneurship and Youth Employment Strategy, with the fundamental goal of helping our young people to have opportunities. As you are aware, the rate of youth unemployment in Spain is very high, but this has been reduced somewhat in recent times. The goal is for more young people to be able to find a job. To do that, it is necessary for them to receive good training, to have more opportunities, to have entrepreneurs that create jobs and a government that is capable of creating the right conditions for this to happen.

This strategy has worked and today we are going to give the stamp of this Entrepreneurship and Youth Employment Strategy to Mahou-San Miguel because you have hired many people, because you have provided training to many people and because, aside from working as a company that seeks to make a profit, which is inherent to the very existence of a company, the company has met its social function, which the government is grateful for and it wishes to announce this publicly.

That is why we are here and we are grateful for this invitation. Thank you.