Electronics engineer José Luis Nevado founded Grupo Vive in 2004, a company with more than fifty employees and which has sold more than six thousand properties in its 21 years of existence. Master of the San Telmo Institute, this … An entrepreneur, he held management positions at Abengoa and developed pioneering software for production processes before starting his own business in an area like real estate about which he knew almost nothing. Two decades later, after what he admits were a “very difficult” start, he can say he has survived several global crises and a pandemic, last year winning awards such as best national real estate consultancy and management.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the generation gap that has opened up in Spain between parents and children because they cannot live like their parents, which has never happened before. And it is also said that young people feel discriminated against compared to their elders because of their low salaries, which are often lower than average retirement pensions. What is your opinion?
-I read an interview with a president or a senior executive, I don’t remember who now, who said in this regard that young people, to achieve what their parents had, had to work, work and work. We constantly post job openings, we start from minimum wage and add variables based on productivity. If you want to work, you can. But today, it is true that many people want to reconcile their quality of life. There is a lot of leisure. I believe that society has become very accustomed to leisure. A society grows when it emerges from a crisis and in times of prosperity, society weakens. Since I founded my company, we have gone through one crisis after another. We had more than 40 offices but we had to restructure. I joined some business groups that got up at 6:30 a.m. every day. We work a lot in promotion consulting and we are also involved with promoters. We sold a building of almost 14,000 square meters in Seville for the development of a hotel with around 200 rooms. We also sold the Abengoa building in Buhaira and we are negotiating the sale in Cordoba of a palace in which 32 tourist apartments will be located. But to come back to your question, we were unable to fill the positions we offered last year and we are far from the hiring target that we expected. People don’t want to work mornings and afternoons and we considered making hours more flexible, which is difficult in this sector and something we hadn’t thought about until now.
– ¿Is there a cultural change among new generations regarding work?
-Yeah. It’s a cultural change. I’m not saying it’s worse or better than our generation, but there is a big change. They are also the result of their situation. Our young people were hit by a pandemic and we were in classes of over 40 students, up to 45, with no air conditioning or heat, and we didn’t complain. Now, classes represent half of the students. We went to class in the morning and afternoon. Technology has also had a lot of influence. Everything has its pros and cons.
-You are an athlete. Why do you recommend sport to young people?
-Yes, I recommend it to everyone. For me, sport has always been a grounding cable. Just like friends. It is very important to manage stress. It’s the game of life.
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