Many will be surprised that the origin of Bayer in Spain bears the name Federico. But, of course, first, one must place oneself in the year 1899, when foreign words were not as welcome as today. Then, one must think that the founder of the pharmaceutical company was named Friedrich and that, when he landed in Barcelona at the end of the 19th century, his name was translated and became Federico Bayer y Cía. This is how the history of the German multinational began for more than 125 years in the country, where it expanded to different cities, but with Barcelona, and then Sant Joan Despí, as the main center of activity.
If the name Federico is surprising, so will be the thought that Bayer does more than just aspirins, that infallible cure for any ailment for an entire generation. Precisely, when it arrived in the Catalan capital, it was to establish a company that would commercialize its chemical products. As Benjamin Cosculluela, a Bayer executive who started working at the company 35 years ago, indicates, the long Catalan textile tradition positioned it as a good region ---today we call it a hub--- for this industry, which had discovered synthetic dyes for dyeing, especially fabrics, but also tanned leather and paper. A leg of the business that Bayer gradually reduced over the years.
With this first company called Federico, things were more rudimentary than now. Bayer landed in Spain with its chemical products, but it soon also brought the main derivative they had obtained from dyes, acetylsalicylic acid. In the first decades of the 20th century, the German company's aspirins were made at home, by the neighbors of a pharmacy in Plaza Regomir, in the Gòtic district, which received all the raw material and distributed it among the surrounding areas for compaction. At that time, the company first had offices on Ausiàs March street and later on Bailén street with Diputación, in a chalet known as Torre Bayer, where the Santa Anna school is now located.
Knowing how unsophisticated the method was, the company outsourced production to a third party, Serra Pàmies laboratories in Reus, until it bought its own factory in 1940. It was located on Calabria Street, next to the Industrial School, active until the early 2000s. The company's workers recall how it was said that for a long time women predominated in the factory's workforce, considering that they had finer hands, and that they only worked when they were single, leaving their posts when they got married.
After the closure of the Calabria plant, real estate companies Amrey and Vertix bought the land to build apartments, preserving a chimney on the corner with Paris. In addition to the factory in the middle of the urban fabric, Bayer established its corporate headquarters in Pau Claris, on the corner with Corsica, bought by Núñez y Navarro when they moved to Sant Joan Despí, where the headquarters for Spain and Portugal are located today.
The Calabria factory was not Bayer's only factory in Barcelona; it also had other plants for its chemical division. One was in Sant Andreu, in the current Maquinista, heir to the company Fabricación Nacional de Colorantes y Explosivos, founded by different Catalan families dedicated to synthetic dyes that ended up integrating into the German multinational. It then had another in the Zona Franca, as well as in the Tarragona petrochemical plant, both now integrated into Covestro, a Bayer spin-off.
With the closure of the Calabria factory and the disengagement of the other Catalan production centers, Bayer's plants have remained in the rest of Spain, such as the La Felguera center, in Langreo (Asturias), a world reference that concentrates all of Bayer's acetylsalicylic acid production. Recently, an investment of almost four million euros has been announced to expand its surface by 25,000 square meters. It also has a factory in Alcalá de Henares.
From Barcelona to the whole world
Bayer has celebrated its more than 125 years in Spain with a new CEO, Jordi Sánchez, a Catalan executive with extensive experience in the pharmaceutical sector. He returns to Barcelona after having held different positions in Basel and Berlin with Bayer. A biologist from the University of Barcelona (UB), where he also completed a master's degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology which he complemented with a postgraduate degree in Pharmacology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Bayer Hispania's new CEO began working in the pharmaceutical industry in the research areas of companies such as Almirall, AstraZeneca, and Sanofi. When he joined the American biotechnology company Amgen, he wanted to try the business side of the sector. In 2013, he joined Bayer.
With a workforce of 1,500 employees in Sant Joan Despí, more than half are concentrated in the global excellence hub, which has been serving all divisions of the company for 25 years. At the end of 2024, the center has been reinforced with a new research and development (R&D) area in health and agriculture, focused on supporting clinical trials led by the company worldwide and on automating data to improve precision and decision-making in the field. "We work from Barcelona for the whole world," Sánchez emphasizes.
Bayer's center of excellence services was launched in 2001, with a focus on accounting and finance, helping to automate the most repetitive and least value-added tasks. Since then, it has incorporated new development areas, such as logistics and supply chain management for a dozen countries in Europe and the Middle East ---with nearly 90,000 suppliers---, promoting its review to make it less polluting, or the use of artificial intelligence to predict product demand. In the last five years, the hub has increased its workforce by 75%, reaching more than 820 employees of 50 nationalities, with a strong presence of scientific profiles. According to the latest available data, Bayer invested more than 130 million euros in Spain and Portugal in 2023. Globally, its turnover stands at 47.6 billion euros and it employs some 100,000 workers.
Bayer's headquarters is located in an area that is in full effervescence for the pharmaceutical and medical sector. Very close by, the future Hospital Clínic and the new Sant Joan de Déu rare diseases center are expected, and not so far away are the Barcelona Science Park (PCB), at full capacity for years and facing its expansion, and an expanding Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) .
In this context, Bayer sold its building in Sant Joan Despí last year to the investment group Stoneshield to create a scientific hub. More than 3,000 professionals have settled in the new center, with companies such as AGFA Healthcare, Ecolab, Stockmeier, Clariant, Giesecke + Devrient, Powernet or Axians, in addition to the German company, which occupies almost half of the surface. One of the actors that recently joined the area was Qiagen, a Dutch multinational that a few years ago bought Stat-Dx, a small startup born in the PCB, and which has now located a global center for infectious diseases in front of Bayer's headquarters, already in Esplugues de Llobregat.