The clash of Spain’s culture
and business
EL PAÍS
Newcomers to Spain are often
confronted by the leisurely way of Spanish life, and if expatriate weblogs were
any indicator, Spain’s business culture would be characterised by siestas and
slowness. Yet this Spanish stereotype belies a hard-working culture long
established in Spain’s major cities and large companies. But as the transition
is not yet consistent across the country, smaller companies still struggle to
operate in a country where culture clashes with modernised work schedules.
New business owner Santiago
Revert experienced this clash when he received a sizeable order from Germany
just as Spain’s summer slowdown was starting to hit. He was less than ecstatic
when he couldn’t find a logistics company to deliver the order on time. Many
were closed for the summer.
Spain’s businesses are
particularly affected during July and August when many small companies either
shut down, have reduced staff or shorten work hours to finish at 3pm, more so
in rural areas and civil services. “For us it’s an inconvenience because the
other countries keep working,” Mr Revert said. “In some industries, they even
tell you to pick up small orders yourself.”
Mr Revert became a joint
business owner of furniture exporter Imoa last year. Yet even though his
company has struggled to attract sales in Spain’s recessed economy, Mr Revert
also closed for two weeks this August because his clients were doing the same.
“We stayed open last year but we couldn’t do our normal activity because the
decision-makers were not there. We would not be more successful if we stayed
open unless our clients did the same. But for that everybody would have to get
into the same philosophy,” he said.
The continued practice of
closing for summer holidays stands against Spain’s economic contraction of 1.6
per cent in the second quarter, and one of the highest unemployment rates in
Europe at 26.6 per cent. Mr Revert said, however, that crises and globalisation
were forcing Spain’s market to slowly change.
“A lot of companies aren’t
closing any more during August because they’re scared they won’t be around in
September. But in the near future it will change more because the world is
changing and it’s just not effective to be closed for even two weeks,” he said.
British expatriate Navinya Lee
was also surprised when she took a job with an event management company in
Madrid and found the company did not even have a schedule to monitor employee
holidays. “There was such a large loss of time due to everyone taking holidays
in the same months. Summer had a major impact as it seemed that the whole
country came to a stand still, and you get a lot of 'out of office' replies.
With everyone away, the lack of sales in those months affected our targets.”
Ms Lee said in her native
country she was used to taking holidays throughout the year so work life could
continue as usual. “The summer months should be no different to the other 10
months of the year. The world does not stop because it’s summer,” she said.
Tabarca Technologies CEO Jose
Luis Cayuela, however, describes a work culture in stark contrast to the one
often associated with the Spanish stereotype of extended lunch breaks, siestas,
late starts, and long vacations. Siestas, he said, disappeared from his
workplace more than 20 years ago, and his vacations were far from the ‘sacred
Spanish summer’.
“Ten years ago I used to plan
my vacation time to spend a full three or four weeks with my family at the
beach. Now even my holiday time is split between working from 7am to 11am each
morning and spending time with my family in the afternoon.”
“Even then, I’m always available
through this,” said Mr Cayuela, waving his telephone.
Additionally, he said the
practice of long lunches was relative to a workday of more than 10 to 12 hours.
“I start early and finish just before dinner – Spanish time [9–10pm] –so it’s
not a problem to use two or three hours for lunch. Sometimes I take just 20
minutes. We spend a lot of time at work so the productivity per hour is slower,
but we might spend 14 hours a day so the final performance is not bad. The
problem is we are not efficient uses of our time,” said Mr Cayuela.
Instead, he said he had
experienced a large capacity of the Spanish working culture to reinvent itself
to adapt to environment changes. “It’s very curious because we have the Latin
Mediterranean culture, with siestas and a casual lifestyle, but on the opposite
side we have the most successful and efficient companies in the world, such as
Santander, Repsol, Endesa, Telfonica and Indra."
“We are not as disciplined as
the Anglo Saxon people, but we have the capacity for creativity and
self-innovation,” he said.
Mr Cayuela, however, said it
would be difficult to mesh the contrasting sides of Spain’s working culture.
“It’s a hard path because there are big gaps between the Mediterranean culture
in provinces and the international professional culture in corporations.
Considering that 95 percent of Spanish companies are smaller, the differences
between the big and small companies are too high.”
Mr Cayuela, however, advocates
that the Spanish culture has some positive points to add to the executive
world. “If you are integrated in a multinational company and you take the best
of that working culture and put in the Mediterranean side, the mix is very
good.What we have to do is know what are our positives and negatives are, and
try to reduce the bad things and take advantage of our values.”