Madrid, October 7, 2021 – DigitalES, Spanish Association for Digitalization, has participated this morning in the dialogues on the future of digitalization organized by the National Office of Foresight and Strategy between today and tomorrow in Barcelona.

It was at a round table on the digital transformation of companies, with the participation of Javier Faus (president of the Cercle d’Economia), Andreu Vilamitjana (general manager of Cisco Spain) and Marc Murtra (president of Indra), moderated by Carmen Sánchez, director of Regulation and Public Affairs at DigitalES. Carme Artigas (Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence) was finally unable to attend the event.

During the morning sessions, most of the participants were grateful for the opportunity to take part in a long-range foresight exercise, which allows them to look at the present and the past in order to lay the foundations for the future.

An exercise for which Carmen Sánchez has resorted to the cinematographic simile of ‘Back to the future’, which Andreu Vilamitjana has picked up: “Historically, in Spain we have been a little behind other European countries in digitization. Now we have a historic opportunity to change that. We have the desire, we have the capabilities and we have the money,” he stressed.

Marc Murtra highlighted Spain’s potential not only as a consumer of technology, but also as a producer: “There are niches where we are ultra-competitive, but there is a brand dissociation and some people find it difficult to associate Spain with technology”.

On his side, Javier Faus pointed to the stigmatization that still exists in Spain today around the figure of the entrepreneur. “It is just as productive a company in Spain as in Germany, but in Germany there are many more large companies,” he pointed out.

Shortage of technological talent

All the speakers agreed that the greatest current challenge for digitalization in Spain is talent. “If we want to be more digital, we are going to need more engineers. And right now there are a lot of them,” said Indra’s CEO. “There is not enough talent to meet the needs of technology companies,” agreed Vilamitjana.

The shortage of technology professionals in Spain exceeds 70,000 jobs, according to estimates made by the employers’ association DigitalES in June of this year.

From DigitalES, we collaborate with the National Office of Foresight and Strategy with contributions for a vision of Spain 2050 where digitalization plays a role [aún más] dynamizing productivity, competitiveness and social prosperity.

 

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