Concepción Rivero, Island Council of Tenerife: “We need to spread the private investment mentality in start-ups”

Concepción Rivero is an island councillor in the Department of Education, Youth, Museums and Sports of the Council of Tenerife, as well as a judge and university professor, a background that is reflected in different passages of the interview, which begins with a reflection on the pandemic and digital transformation in the public sector. “With the pandemic it became clear that we were not in the administrations, including those on the island, prepared to face this obligation and this challenge. The pandemic forced us to speed up digital processes in a vertiginous way.”

The councillor of the island institution recalls that “when the new government team arrived at the Council in 2019, the processing of scholarships - a very common procedure in the field of education, youth, in the field of sports, for assessment…- an Excel sheet was used. Imagine the delay involved in working this way. The electronic file was not implemented and is still in process today and on the way to implementation in stages. Because it is true that all administrative processes cannot be changed overnight”.

“A very important effort has been made from the area of ​​the Presidency to precisely promote this global digitization of the Island Council of Tenerife. With an added difficulty. In the first place, that with the confinement, all the public officials of the Council had to change the way they work overnight, but also the citizen, when interacting with the administrations, has had to change the system of relationship. A generalized system of appointments is being implemented, of meetings by videoconference that have never taken place until now in the field of administrations, of digital management that, of course, has generated a fairly vertiginous tsunami for both the citizen and the public worker”, Concepcion Rivero points out.

“It has been very complicated, and it is being today. We from Education and Youth immediately implemented a program to reduce the digital divide. We have Tenerife Joven y Educa, a program financed by the Council of Tenerife, which aims to provide a channel for all kinds of groups, open to all kinds of people and groups. From parent associations to clubs and federations, multiple associations and groups that have registered. The objective is to reach all kinds of ages and types of needs through this platform”, highlights the Minister of Education and Youth of the Tenerife Council.  

Digital nomads and telecommunications network

Regarding the phenomenon of digital nomads, Concepción Rivero says that “I know many people, particularly from the British community, who have moved to Tenerife -despite the fact that they are now outside of Europe-, they have settled and are working here. Many companies from other countries give their worker that facility so that he can carry out professional activities in a relocated manner, come here to Tenerife or the Canary Islands to carry out his activity”

“Not all the populations of Tenerife -she adds- are prepared to have a fast or reliable Internet that allows the guarantee of labour provision in this context. Tenerife is establishing a telecommunications service, which will link all the municipalities of the island. The Innovation area of ​​the Island Council of Tenerife is working on this, and we hope that this will allow us to have that option, that of working remotely from anywhere on the island. With the implementation of 5G, a world of possibilities opens. People are looking for a place where peace and tranquillity can be breathed. Empty Spain has that possibility: they are friendly, beautiful environments, accompanied by stupendous landscapes and cheaper rents. We need that, one more point in the digital implantation so that this is possible”, affirms Rivero.

“Today if you request fibre from a telecommunications provider, the first thing they are going to do is check your fibre quality. In other words, it does not only depend on the submarine cable that links the different Canary Islands, but also depends on whether you have fibre installed on your street. That is why I said that perhaps the hope is 5G for these populations. Now, of course, the whole of Tenerife is ready to help the implementation of new start-ups”, asserts the Councillor for Education and Youth of the Tenerife Council.

Entrepreneurship initiatives and start-ups

According to Concepción Rivero “we have many initiatives in the field of Education and Youth. The program that she was commenting on that we have called Ponos, which is the Greek god of work and effort and that was born with the perspective of trying to guide young people to connect them in the world of work. And an accompaniment is carried out from the beginning, that is, from helping the young person to have clear ideas: what do you want to do? Do you want to look for a job as an employee or do you want to start a business? And if you want to undertake, we will have to start moving”.

“Hence the link with the Association of Young Entrepreneurs, because we have also published within this program a series of exams and workshops to help these young people who sign up from the island of Tenerife to guide the undertaking they want to carry out. There is also guidance for training, guidance for employment. Then there are the non-employment paid internships that are through a scholarship. They are going to be hired through the General Foundation of the University of La Laguna, the selected people who have gone through a filter, who have things clear and who actually see that they have the possibility of starting this training in non-labour practices within a company”, refers the Minister of Education and Youth of the Tenerife Council.

“Within the web page obtaincurroconponos.com, young people have the possibility of registering, companies can also join the program to ensure that these young people from Tenerife have the best chance of succeeding, both in guiding their training, because sometimes there are people think that they want to do one thing and then when a labour expert and a councillor start working with them, they realize that this is not the path and this is not the approach that they should pursue to finally reach their vital goals and abilities that each one has. Even the fact of relocating: are you willing to move, to work on another island or in another environment, somewhere else in Spain or the world?”, says Rivero.

“Putting the heads of young people in order a little so that they have the greatest possible success is what is intended with the Ponos program. There is a highly trained team, I can assure you that it began as an idea of ​​the Education and Youth service technicians, who are highly trained technicians, who then in turn, along with professionals from the Fundación Empresa Universidad de La Laguna (FEULL) trained a group of technicians who are doing a very professional job”, highlights the councillor of the Council of Tenerife with satisfaction.

Start-up promotion initiatives

When asked if she considers the start-up approach to entrepreneurship sufficiently well-known or the existence of a vision of the country that is promoting a start-up culture more than an entrepreneurial one, Concepción Rivera indicates that “it is true that from here I detected the lack of unification of the work that everyone is doing. What I detect is that the Spanish Government is going, on the one hand, but has not coordinated sufficiently with the Autonomous Community. The Autonomous Communities have their specific initiatives. We from the Council also have our initiatives. In fact, with the University of La Laguna there is a program that I suppose is known to be Ingenia, which also finances the Education and Culture service that I lead, and which also aims to promote entrepreneurship linked to research”.

“There have been very interesting initiatives. It is essential, you have already seen, that the University of La Laguna has its specific facets in ​​entrepreneurship and Start-ups in particular. That is what is missing, to amalgamate and put all these initiatives in coordination and order, which each of the administrations is promoting”, concludes Concepción Rivero.

Private investment, start-ups, and financing with cryptocurrencies

The councillor no doubt that “in Spain we lack a little culture of investment in private companies. In Spain, investors are not motivated to invest in small private companies. We need to spread the private investment mindset in start-ups. It remains to create that link between capital and ideas. In the United States there is a lot of interest from large investors in penetrating start-ups and investing in some way to promote the growth and survival of these great ideas that are born. But here in Spain, support is lacking. It is good that Juan Roig has realized and is a leader and a pioneer with his start-up incubator. Let's see if there are many more people who think about it.”

“Cryptocurrencies are being a way of financing interesting small business initiatives, but perhaps it would not be in the most guaranteed, safest system, both for the one who receives the investment and for the investor who contributes his money in cryptocurrencies. It is a market that still has a lot to regulate, it is beginning to be regulated now and we will see how far it goes in the field of regulation,” Concepción Rivero concludes, showing that orientation towards legal aspects that she also knows as a judge.