More of 300,000 companies closed in Spain since 2021, due to covid, supply or labor cost overruns, lack of sales and the crisis, without any help that would allow them to get ahead.
Why this company yes and so many others no? The question, stimulated by the blurry “Case Delcy» and due to the ties of a part of the Government with the Venezuelan regime, he has not received a response so far.
The debate has managed, after a year and a half of investigations, to gain access to the report prepared by the Government of Pedro Sanchez to grant a million to a company that had the help denied to so many other firms today buried in the cemetery of extinct companies.
It is a document of 22 pagesunder the seal of Confidential, signed by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, then headed by José Luis Ábalosdismissed last summer in a sudden way by Sánchez, without any explanation in this regard.
The first surprising thing in history is how weathered the Government, and the company itself, to make public a file that, if it had not been faulted, should have been released in real time to justify the injection of such bulky aid to public opinion.
For a year and a half, both parties have used different stratagems to hide the report, appealing to the Official Secrets Actto the judicialization of the case or the supposed confidentiality that should protect the entire procedure.
The reason for so much obscurantism It can be inferred, when the arguments put forward by the Executive to approve the operation are finally known: Plus Ultra was an irrelevant company in the sector, which had been losing money since its inception, which was not in crisis due to covid as required by the rules to blow up a fortune and that, even, lacked its own planes.
Some of these certainties were intuited, others had even been published, but never before could it be shown that the Government consisted all this, that he recognized it in an official report hidden in a drawer and that, despite all this, he proceeded to transfer a millionaire to him, considering it a “strategic” company for Spain.
The rescue of Plus Ultra, signed on March 9, 2021, coincided with the bankruptcy of firms as well known as majoricathe world’s leading Spanish company in cultured pearls, or with the closure of other illustrious companies with a strong presence in our country: from Pullmantur to Imaginarium or Kodak, they dug their grave with the shovel of a crisis aggravated by the pandemic, like so many others of lesser fame that left entire families in ruin.
This was not the case with the airline, despite the fact that in the secret report to which El Debate has access, things like this are recognized: «Plus Ultra has been showing a weak position in results from the beginning of its operations. Since 2015, every year it has closed its financial years with losses. Such losses were especially negative in 2017.”
The written confession of the Ministry itself is relevant because it overturns, from the outset, the justification that the law imposed to proceed with injections of public money: the rescued companies must have entered into a crisis due to the influence on their activity of the coronavirus and the subsequent restrictions, but Plus Ultra was already in that situation for five years before the pandemic broke out.
losses forever
The Covid Fund was created, as established by the RDL 25/2020 of July 3 in its article 2.2, to support companies “that are going through severe temporary difficulties as a result of the pandemic of covid and that are considered strategic for the national or regional productive fabric (…) ». The Plus Ultra crisis was his natural state long before, despite which he received a “prize” of 9,000 million old pesetas.
It is one of the “jewels” of the report, which writes each of its pages under the stamp “Confidential» due to the difficulty, probably, in publicly defending the justification for a bailout denied to so many others, with the case of Abengoa so recently, a giant with 11,000 jobs in suspense ignored by SEPI, the same body that pampered Plus Ultra despite having little “strategic”, another of the requirements to receive public money.
The Ministry itself acknowledges this in the report, when glossing the company’s extremely poor turnover, customers and market presence: “It has a share of 0.2% in relation to the volume of passengers (…) and this share is located in the 0.1% in terms of income.
To get an idea of the irrelevance of the company, there is no need to create stories: it is enough to consult what the Ministry of Transportation collected in his report, a fierce portrait of the reality of Plus Ultra.
No matter how much effort those responsible for the report try to make up reality, their own statistical conclusions are devastating: Plus Ultra seems to under even from smaller airlines, when not unknown to the general public, such as Wamos Air, Evelop, Canary Fly or Volotea, all of them with passenger figures between three and ten times higher.
«This volume of activity places the company in 77th place in the ranking of companies in 2019 (the year used as reference) in Spain, with a share of less than 0.1% of traffic of passengers in the AENA network», confesses the secret study.
«Plus Ultra’s turnover is far from that of other Spanish companies, not only at the level of Iberia, Air Europa or Vueling, but also in the segment of companies with a turnover of around 500 million euros ( such as Iberia Express, Air Nostrum or Volotea). With regard to companies such as Wamos or Evelop, the billing It is around half of the previous ones, ”adds the report.
In other words, for the Ministry itself, the airline was marginal, it had accumulated losses since its inception, it barely had passengerswas surpassed by all “type A” companies (this is how those that can carry out commercial passenger, cargo and/or mail air services are classified)… and yet it deserved 53 million public money.
Not even the argument that, despite the disastrous general picture, it was strategic due to the exclusive nature of the service, supports the opinion that the Ministry itself pours in its mandatory report to release the millionaire.
Because, in an almost hilarious way, it tries to justify the value of the company by arguing that “focusing on the south of the American continent, it can be said that Plus Ultra is the only company company that operates regularly in the Madrid-Latin America market.
But then add a definitive sentence: «Besides of the companies of the Iberia and Air Europa network, although as has been indicated, with a much lower volume of activity». In other words, Plus Ultra had alternatives and, in fact, compared to them, its passenger volume was negligible.
To make it even clearer, and make the rescue more extravagant, the Ministry is also forced to recognize its irrelevance compared to more competitors: «Its presence in the Madrid hub is minoritywell below the large Spanish (Iberia and Air Europa) and Latin American companies that offer regular connections from their flag countries to Madrid (Avianca, LATAM Airlines, Aeroméxico and Aerolineas Argentinas) and the tour operators Evelop and Wamos Air».
And one more curious fact: “If the analysis focuses solely on the links that the company operates, its shares are low compared to its competitors. Only in the case of Venezuela (with connection to some of the company’s shareholders), the presence of Plus Ultra takes on some relevance, reaching a 19.4% share).
The conclusions of the department of Ábalos do not improve the panorama either and make even more inexplicable the assistance provided to a company dominated by SnipAviation mostly, the society in which entrepreneurs with long experience in Venezuela are located:
«(…) A complicated situation for the company in order to face the recovery during the next few years, due to its high exposure to long-haul with Latin America, a market for which a slower recovery is anticipated than for other international markets (…)».
With a past of losses, a modest present and a dark future, in the words of the Government itself, why did it agree to an unapproachable “gift” for so many and why was all of it classified as confidential? Those answers are still pending. Perhaps José Luis Ábalos, dismissed shortly after this operation, or Maria Jesus MonteroMinister of Finance, new number 2 of the PSOE and final head of SEPI, from where the juicy check was extended.
