"Va va, now it's time for the i." The phrase sounds like Pasapalabra, but it is not heard on a television set, but rather more than 200 meters above the ground, at the top of the capital's financial district. On the roof of the Emperador tower, one of the four great icons of business Madrid, 10 workers work looking at the weather forecast and the calendar with the aim of arriving on time at the scheduled date. Its mission, to install on top of the building the logo of one of the companies that has moved there in recent months and that has invested heavily in its new headquarters. So much so that he has decided that his name presides over the tower, replacing the previous one, that of OHL.
In addition to taking over five floors and signing another, Afianza will appear on the north and south faces of one of the most imposing skyscrapers in Europe, giving visibility in the form of a Madrid symbol to its extraordinary growth. This advisory and consulting firm, born in a humble location in Legazpi 25 years ago, is among the elite of its sector, crowning one of the peaks of the capital where it was born and from where it has launched a business that now extends throughout Spain, with 80 companies acquired in recent times and a business volume that will place it, at the end of this year, in the next step below the so-called Big Four (Deloitte, PwC, Ernst&Young and KPMG).
With GRAN MADRID as a witness, embedded in the process, in the last two weeks, Roura (from the ACS group), one of the Spanish engineering companies specialized in the creation and installation of large-scale signage, has worked against the clock so that the Afianza letters appear on the terrace of the Emperador tower, to the curiosity of the thousands of Madrid residents who have been able to see this slow and dizzying placement of letters. A goldsmith's sudoku adjusted to the millimeter so that the seven characters that make up Afianza were properly aligned. And everything, in suspension, from the gondolas that float along the wall of the building, whether for cleaning, repair or this recently completed installation.
The process ended this past Saturday to the relief of those responsible for Afianza, who hope to celebrate, with an inauguration ceremony, on November 16, the lighting of their emblem in the new headquarters, where they arrived almost a year ago from Antonio Maura, in Retiro, looking for more space for their employees, in a growing number.
Until the last Afianza project was adjusted to the piles this Saturday, the process has been a fine assembly of bobbins under extreme conditions, forced by the special location of the works. Because fishing at 220 meters above Castellana, with the mountains dropping degrees in autumn every day, is not doing it on dry land. Up here, time changes at the speed that the elevator devours floors, where you enter in your shirt and leave with your coat buttoned.
Wind gusts
At this point the temperature drops, the pressure rises and the breeze suddenly becomes a blizzard. "And today it is nothing," says Juanjo Pérez, head of the project at Roura, the engineering company in charge of first manufacturing the composition, in its workshops in Ciudad Real, after its transportation and, finally, the installation, after a delicate work of design and reinforcement with an internal structure that allows the attachment of the enormous letters that give name to each of the four towers in the north of the capital. They are also behind the change in Cepsa, now Moeve.
The Afianza ones have been designed with a special translucent PVC canvas, ultra-resistant to the weather, weighing the first vowel, the capital letter A, more than 400 kilos. Some powerful racks, weighing 200 kilos, also made to measure, were the first to be placed next to the tower's air conditioning machines, on its top floor, awaiting the enormous sign that will be displayed for the next 10 years at the top of the Emperador, according to the contract signed with the ownership of the building, in the hands of Andrew Lim Tan, a Filipino billionaire who also owns the Caleido area and the Diagonal One tower in Barcelona. He bought it from Villar Mir for 558 million in 2015.
The deceased businessman had a chapel built in the building and also a paddle court on its roof, next to the area where the workers have been working these days installing the new Afianza sign. Due to confidentiality, the fee that a company pays to name these emblematic office blocks is secret... although sources from the world of advertising estimate that it can far exceed 600,000 euros per year.
Complex process
Economic and administrative cost, because obtaining the corresponding municipal licenses is also arduous, with these technicians (within the Culture area) having a reputation for being relentless when it comes to sealing the permits, in their role as theoretical watchdogs of the city's aesthetics. It is whispered in Cibeles that few departments give so many headaches to the current mayor, with Ibex companies burning the City Hall phones impatient for that final ok that does not arrive to finish off the facades or decorations of their buildings.
"We were clear about it, it was exciting for us to put our name on the tower, it is a milestone for the company and an impetus to continue moving forward," explains José Luis Cogolludo, the CEO and founder of Afianza. From the small premises in Santa María de la Cabeza where it started to the spectacular offices in the Emperador, there is an astonishing leap that has revolutionized a historically conservative sector, with difficult growth, since clients, especially small companies, tend to embrace the same manager throughout their lives.
However, this Madrid firm has changed the pace of business with a formula for success that is already being studied in the competition, the Afianza Method, in reference to its strong commercial expansion thanks to the purchase of dozens of consultancies - and their corresponding client portfolios - throughout Spain. A firm that now already competes in other scenarios, such as legal services, with offices in the category of Garrigues or Cuatrecasas, with the difference that in them there are hundreds of partners and in the case of Afianza, only one, a Madrid native from Carabanchel who in 2020 had a staff of 80 people and today exceeds 2,000.
looking at the sky
"We have the gondola ready, let's go for the lowercase a." The dozen workers wait on the roof for the slow rise of the elevator that will carry a new piece of the sign to the heights. It takes an hour to go down and another to go up, with two workers holding the immense lettering by hand (five meters for the capital letter A) to prevent damage during the ascent. It or the windows of one of the 57 office floors that must be overcome until reaching the destination. "And now, let's embroider it," is heard before beginning the precision work of fitting the letter to the anchors. "If it is difficult to place a painting properly with two hooks, imagine this..." jokes Juanjo, the person in charge of the operation, already under the urgency of the meteosat, which warns of a change in weather for the weekend. You have to speed up, because with a storm everything gets complicated. Once the sign is installed, nothing should move it. «It is an extremely resistant material and, like the building, is alive. That is, it is not rigid, but rather it adapts to the wind," explains Díaz, who with his team will be in charge of the subsequent maintenance of this gigantic sign, the largest in the capital at the moment.
Last Saturday, at 12:15 p.m., the last letter, the lowercase a that closes the composition, was completely straightened, squaring the new name of the tower and renewing the skyline of the capital. "Turn, move... that's it... Good!" was heard on the deck, as the team watched the completion of the operation from behind. "Thank goodness, because this weekend the weather changes...", sighed a company official. Afianza already crowns the Emperor, waiting for the hundreds of LED points that make up the sign to light up next November 16.
