Catalan metallurgist Pere Barrios, a great sports fan, is motivated by challenges, and leading the pro-independence list to run for the presidency of Pimec in the elections to be held this Tuesday is his latest adventure. He already participated in the secessionist conquest of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce together with Joan Canadell in 2019 -he is one of its vice presidents-, and both share the impetus and impudence of the self-made businessman who has achieved a comfortable life.
Born on November 2, 1961, married and with two children, he began 2021 with his particular journey through the desert, which could well be a metaphor for the challenge of his project to conquer Pimec after the withdrawal of the one who has been its president since its creation. three decades ago, Josep González. And it is that Barrios participated for the first time in the Dakar, which took place in Saudi Arabia from January 3 to 15.
Thus, he changed his running shoes – his sports ceiling until now was the half marathon – for a rally SUV with more than 25 years old that he bought second-hand to drive between dunes and scree together with the co-driver Maria Helena Tarruell, niece of Rafael Tibau, one of the most experienced drivers in the truck category, with 28 races.
The idea of the businessman, a friend of the Tibau family, was to enjoy the Dakar as one of the experiences that you have to live at least once in your life. And it is that he already tried in 1997, but then finally it could not be. The second time was the charm, and he was in 14th position in his category in a race in which reaching the finish line is already a victory. Because he likes to compete, and he likes to win.
Barrios is a proud resident of Caldes de Montbui (Barcelona), where he has sponsored and chaired the local hockey team since 2015, which is in the top 3 of the OK Liga standings this season. Also in Caldes is the headquarters of the business group that he founded in 1991 and that he chairs, Recam Laser.
He vindicates his entrepreneurial side because he created the company with the capitalization of the unemployment subsidy, and it is currently a medium-sized company with a multinational presence, made up of 11 companies and more than 350 employees, which has participated in projects such as the Olympic torch for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in 2016 -it was already a supplier to the Barcelona ’92 Olympic Games- or the respirators that Seat manufactured at the start of the pandemic.
And following the modus operandi applied by the Eines de País candidacy to capture the pro-independence vote in the Barcelona Chamber and which earned it an absolute majority, Eines Pimec has deployed the entire support network of the National Assembly of Catalonia (ANC) to seek Pimec partners and make it easier for them to vote for Barrios, in an intense offensive on social networks -although Barrios does not have an official Twitter profile- and with acts throughout the territory.
In this deployment, Barrios has applied what he learned in his marketing and political communication studies, and also his internal knowledge of Pimec, since although he attacks his rival in the elections, Antoni Cañete, for representing the continuity line in the employers’ association, he It has also been in its governing bodies for decades.
In fact, until he joined Canadell’s candidacy for the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce in 2019, he was president of Pimec Metal and Pimec in Vallès Oriental, and is currently still a member of the outgoing board of directors of the employer’s association.
But, what does it offer Pimec partners to count on their vote? Its economic program does not shine for its innovation, since it focuses on the challenges facing the economy as a whole: digitization, internationalization, administrative simplification, environmental sustainability, industry 4.0, equality, aid for survival and reactivation after pandemic, dual FP… Thus, the differential value is its defense of the independence of Catalonia. And about this the ANC is clear: “It is very important that a power structure in the economic sphere such as Pimec has an independentist government prepared to support the times that the country is experiencing and in all those that will come”, he exposes on the web by Eines Pimec.
Pay more taxes?
Likewise, the electoral program includes a surprising proposal coming from an employer: help the Generalitat to collect more taxes to promote the so-called Catalan Treasury.
Barrios defends contributing to increasing the Generalitat’s own collection capacity “as one of the basic structures of the country”; collaborate with the Department of Economy and Finance of the Generalitat when it comes to claiming the strengthening of the Catalan Treasury, both to increase collection and to improve public investment in Catalonia, and “ensure correct information and quantification of the fiscal deficit that Catalonia supports among the group of self-employed businessmen and professionals and develop this sensitivity”.
And the same sovereignist idea is repeated in the propaganda of the Eines Pimec candidacy on social networks, where they encourage “aligning” forces this spring through the secessionist control of the government of the Generalitat, the Chamber of Barcelona, Pimec and the Barcelona Soccer Club.
To achieve this, Eines Pimec has videos of support from the famous regulars of the cultural independence orbit, such as the actors Joel Joan and Toni Albà, the comedian La Lloll and the cartoonist Pilarín Bayés, among others, while Barrios is sowing doubts about alleged irregularities in the electoral procedure as a dialectical precedent in which to establish their manifest intention to challenge the results if they are not to their liking.
But Barrios is not alone in this adventure towards the bosses’ Ithaca, with aspirations as high as pretending to be the only representative Catalan business entity — arguing that SMEs are 99.8% of the companies in Catalonia.
He is accompanied by 44 more people in the candidacy of Eines Pimec, among them the lawyer Antoni Fitó, member of the group promoting a Catalan Constitution and member of the Electoral Syndicate of 1-O for the Barcelona demarcation.
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