Speech by the President of the Government of Spain at the laying of the foundation stone of the Grifols factory in Lliçà de Vall (Barcelona)

Lliçà de Vall (Barcelona)

SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN, PEDRO SÁNCHEZ

Minister for Industry and Tourism, dear Jordi; delegate of the Government of Catalonia; of course, the Mayor of Lliçà de Vall; the Vice-president and Board Member of Grifols; and of course, all the workers in this important industry.

Ladies and Gentlemen. First of all, good morning to you all. It is a pleasure to share this special moment with you, which continues the journey towards the most advanced biomedicine in Catalonia and Spain.

Today we are laying the foundation stone for a qualitative leap in the history of Grifols. In little more than a century this family business has become, as mentioned above, a leading multinational in plasma-derived medicines and, thanks to a firm commitment to grow in Spain and beyond and its courageous internationalisation strategy, I believe that the results are more than visible.

The future plant to be built on this site will be equipped with the most advanced technology: robotic systems, artificial intelligence; clean technologies to which the mayor also referred. In short, as has been said, it will involve an investment of 160 million euros, which will create 400 direct jobs and more than a thousand indirect jobs.

This is a real boost for the economy of Lliçà de Vall and also, logically, for the whole Vallès Oriental region.

This project will also contribute, as the Vice-president said earlier, to strengthening Europe's open strategic autonomy. And it is going to do so in three ways that I would simply like to point out in concluding this brief speech. The first is health related. The second is industrial and finally, technological.

Because the pharmaceutical sector generates quality jobs, with high salaries, with diversity and also with equality and integration. It is a very competitive sector that contributes around 1.9% of Spain's gross domestic product and is highly internationalised, with 80% of its production exported.

In this context, Catalonia is the second largest pharmaceutical ecosystem in Europe in terms of the number of jobs. We are talking about 90,000 ahead of regions as important as Frankfurt, such as Lombardy. In short, the sector is contributing 7.8 billion euros to the Catalan GDP.

Spain and the central government are going to continue to support this fundamental sector with this new deeptech strategy, the Spain Grows Fund, and the final processing of the draft Medicines Bill. All this is within the framework of "ambitious joint public-private governance", which is reflected in the Pharmaceutical Industry Strategy.

So congratulations once again to Grifols for this important milestone, and I believe that together, as the mayor pointed out earlier, between the public and private sectors, we will continue to support the future of an industry that is so important for Catalonia and Spain, such as the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

Congratulations. Best of luck and keep going.

(Transcript edited by the State Secretariat for Communication)