The Latin business elite gains muscle in Madrid | Madrid News

He remembers it with special affection. After playing in a more than notable World Cup in Brazil, James Rodríguez, the brilliant new star of the Colombian team, appears in the summer of 2014 in front of his new fans. It doesn’t do it anyway. For the occasion, the Santiago Bernabéu opens its doors and dresses in its best clothes. The public responds: nearly 50,000 fans, the vast majority Colombians, dressed in the team’s tricolor shirt, receive their new idol, a young man born in Cúcuta, in the northeast of the country who, with his exquisite left foot, makes them feel a little closer to home.

Next to the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez, is, visibly moved, Fernando Carrillo, ambassador at that time for Colombia. He receives James in Madrid on behalf of all his compatriots. He himself has insisted on being there. A skilled negotiator, successful businessman and former minister, he knows the importance of symbols. Not in vain, he was one of the leaders of the student movement that negotiated the 1991 Constitution in Colombia, which tried to open a new stage in the country in the worst years of drug trafficking.

“We filled the stadium with Colombians in a few hours. This shows that when we unite, we have a gigantic force,” reflected Carrillo, current vice president of PRISA Groupeditor of EL PAÍS, at the Hyatt hotel in Madrid, this Saturday in a meeting organized by Alanna, a community with more than 2,500 Colombian professionals in the capital.

For more than four hours, nearly fifty entrepreneurs and senior executives shared their experiences about what migrating to Madrid has meant for them. They did it between Colombian coffee and glasses of wine. “Even if you migrate with all the comforts and privileges, it never stops being hard to be far from home. When I arrived, I was alone and I had to spend the pandemic in an apartment where natural light did not enter,” she said. Carolina Prietowho arrived in Spain in 2020 as director of Motorola. Now, she is the Chief Operating Officer of Google.

It is estimated that approximately one million people of Latin American origin live in the Community of Madrid, according to the latest data available from the INE. This number represents a significant part of the total population, which exceeds 6.8 million inhabitants. Of the million Latinos, about 20% are Colombians, the foreign population that has grown the most in the region in recent years, along with Venezuelans.

With the intention of creating a support network between entrepreneurs and high-profile professionals who are coming to the capital, Alanna was born a year ago by Martín Rodríguez and Juan Sebastián Díaz. These are two people from Bogotá who moved to Spain several years ago and whose goal is to create the largest community of migrants that exists in the country.

“We saw that there was a problem: the lack of effective support networks for Latin expatriates in Europe,” says Rodríguez, who lists just some of the challenges that this migrant population faces: support in legal processes, cultural integration, construction of professional networks and find accurate information about housing, jobs and businesses.

“We saw that communities were dispersed on social networks, that there was no centralized and solid platform that would facilitate access to this information and encourage the creation of meaningful connections,” says Díaz, who explains that the lack of support networks contributes to the social exclusion and limits the employment, business and professional growth opportunities of migrants. “Without an adequate support structure, migrants often experience isolation, difficulties adapting to new cultures and systems, and lack of access to essential resources,” they recall.

That’s where the idea of ​​creating Alanna came from. During this year, they have held six events like this Saturday so that people can get to know each other outside the networks. “More than 40 people have left here with jobs in Madrid. Alliances are created between very powerful companies and there is a giant support network for all members,” says Díaz.

One of the great conclusions of last Saturday’s event is that they would like to hold an exclusive conference of Latin multinational companies, companies of Latin American origin that, after exponential growth, also operate in other countries. The idea they have is for Madrid to become the center of foreign investment, taking alliances to the next level. The great Colombian businessmen are convinced that, united, they can remain very strong, even far from home.

“This meeting is important because of what you represent. They are at the top. This is the moment in which the Latin community has to influence,” said Carrillo, who explained that there are three stages during a period of adaptation after migrating: inclusion, integration into society and culture and, finally, time to be noticed and contribute.

Henry Bradford, who works as associate Dean BBVA at the IE Business University, focused on the challenge that migrating always entails. He himself experienced it firsthand two years ago, when he arrived in Madrid. “Even if it is done with work, the lack of support networks, family and the culture of the country of origin make it a difficult situation, and that is why building ties is so important.” At IE, 82% of the students are international, and one of the greatest efforts made by the educational community is to create community among students, he explained.

The problems of migrating are universal. Prieto illustrates this with an anecdote: the way his bosses corrected him when he used the word cell phone, coming from the cell American and extraordinarily widespread in Latin America, instead of the much more mobile Spanish: “I came to feel that they did not take me seriously.” For Nicolás Delgado, who works as Business Development Manager for Europe at Fiesta, something as basic as getting an apartment was an almost traumatic experience. “A Spanish friend told me not to call on the phone, because if they heard my accent, they wouldn’t rent the apartment to me,” she remembers. Juan Valdez international manager Karen Suárez simply lacked support: “I arrived two years ago and the business network that I have been able to build is thanks to my friends.”

“All the well-prepared profiles of Colombians who are coming to live in Madrid are a source of pride. Through Alanna, I have been able to help many of them get their papers or advise them on the best way to find where to live,” Delgado recalls. For Colombian Daniel González, co-founder and executive director of Capital Friends, a company that seeks real estate investment projects in Madrid, landing in the capital, on the other hand, has been almost like returning home: “I came from living in France, and arriving “Here it was like meeting again with a world that I had left behind.”

His company was born four years ago because he saw, in the company of his partner, that in Latin America many people were looking to invest abroad. Alanna, he comments, has given him the opportunity to meet similar profiles that are based on this thesis. “The Latin community in Madrid and the regional government’s incentives for foreign investment are two elements that have greatly encouraged us to grow,” says the businessman, who believes that these Latin companies are here to stay. “People come to bet on this country. Latino migrants are now playing local,” he says. They had the capital. Now, they also have the connections.