Hercesa celebrates its 50th anniversary collaborating in the tenth Real Estate Financing Meeting in Madrid (X EFIMAD)

The institutional opening of the tenth edition of EFIMAD was led by Álvaro González López, Councillor for Housing Policy of the Madrid City Council; Jorge Rodrigo, Regional Minister for Housing, Transport and Infrastructure of the Community of Madrid; and David Lucas, Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Agenda. Marc Benhamou, director of Corporate Banking at CaixaBank, and Carolina Roca, president of ASPRIMA, then welcomed the more than 600 attendees.

Álvaro González López has stated that “Madrid has a wide range of policies that have made it the second most attractive European city for investment in 2025. We are asking from the City Council for a regulatory framework that allows renting, the fight against squatting and public-private cooperation. Meanwhile, Jorge Rodrigo has stressed that “the housing problem requires coordinated and responsible action from all administrations, far from any ideological approach. This is what we have demonstrated with our policies in Madrid”. David Lucas emphasized that “fewer homes are being built than are needed” and stressed the importance of cooperation between administrations, the private sector and financial institutions to find solutions to the problem of access to housing.

In his welcoming speech, Marc Benhamou showed the company’s commitment to a key sector for the Spanish economy, adding that “we continue to strengthen CaixaBank’s collaboration with ASPRIMA in this very special edition of EFIMAD, in which we celebrate together 10 years of support for the real estate development sector”. Carolina Roca said that “we have built a legal and regulatory framework that is like a flourishing tree that we need to prune drastically in order to adapt the housing supply”.

After the opening, the first round table discussion was held, moderated by Daniel Caballero, Director of Real Estate Business and Developer at CaixaBank. Participants included Marco Colomer, President of Pryconsa; Ana Hernández, Business Director of Realia; Borja García-Egotxeaga, CEO of Neinor Homes; and David Martínez, CEO of AEDAS HOMES.

After the discussion and the presentation of Hercesa’s corporate video “Me gusta Cumplir” (I like celebrating) (https://youtu.be/CUybRttl6y0?si=gceqEaK1TO-u3cTK), an exclusive interview took place between Carolina Roca, President of ASPRIMA, and Juan José Cercadillo García, CEO of Hercesa, in which they chatted in a relaxed manner about the evolution of the real estate sector during Hercesa’s 50-year history, the company’s business model and their ideas to face the current and future challenges of the real estate sector.

Regarding the beginnings of Hercesa, Juanjo said, “We started with 200 pesetas and a lot of enthusiasm”. He recalled the first constructions and renovations for third parties, until they began to develop their own projects. He highlighted the work of his partners, Javier Solano and Eladio Catalán, who joined the project in the mid-80s. Carolina asked how they had experienced the different crises in the sector, to which Juanjo responded by listing them, from the oil war of 1975 to the one of 2007, from which Hercesa emerged with agreements with all the banks for the orderly repayment of its debts. They also talked about internationalization, because since 2004, the year in which Hercesa began to build in Romania, the company has grown to be present in 8 countries by 2025. Carolina Roca went on to ask about the key to good cooperation in a family business. Juanjo expressed his admiration for the work of his children, Juan José Cercadillo Calvo and Montse Cercadillo, and for the work of the children of his partners, extending the concept of family to the 500 people who make up the workforce.

The participants of the conference were able to see that José Cercadillo García is a visionary, for example by creating the Hercesa Foundation to train people in the construction industry in anticipation of the lack of workers, or by talking for decades about the industrialization of the construction industry. He concluded his speech by calling for the containment of land prices, new land in good locations and speed in procedures.

In a society that has made access to housing one of its main concerns, X EFIMAD proved to be the ideal forum for finding a solution, with 600 professionals contributing ideas.

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