Raúl González (Barceló): “I have a reputation for sleeping easily, even standing up”

Raúl González was born in Guardo (Palencia) in 1961, a rather strange place, he says. His father was stationed there for work. It was September 27, International Tourism Day; “It seems that he was predestined to work in the sector,” says the CEO for Europe, Africa and the Middle East of Barceló Hotel Group, the second Spanish chain by number of rooms, who grew up, studied and lived in Bilbao until he 23 years ago the hotel company led him to take up residence in Palma de Mallorca. González assures that he likes to take risks, that you have to be fearless and have a certain touch of madness, because those who do not make decisions are never wrong but will end up relegated in the market.

Ask. Do you like to travel or do you have no choice?

Answer. I love traveling and meeting people. But, when you do it too much, you end up exhausted saying: I liked traveling, but not that much. When I have the typical long 12-hour trip, I get very lazy, although I think about the amount of new things I am going to learn and that is what encourages me.

P. How many trips do you make a year?

R. I make approximately 200 flights per year. One is supposed to work about 240 days a year, which means that almost every day of the work day I am traveling. We must set an example: we live off tourism.

P. Of that amount, how many would you remove?

R. The problem is that I impose most of them on myself because I have a very bad time operating a hotel and not knowing it. In fact, the only one I have left pending is in Slovenia, in Ljubljana; I’m waiting to put it on the agenda because we recently opened it. As long as we have an acceptable number, I will want to continue going to see the hotels every X amount of time to say hello, thank you, and see how things are. Because you can manage businesses from a distance, for me it would be easier, or in person, which changes the panorama a lot.

P. He assures that he is less and less an economist and more and more sensible and more and more a psychologist, why?

R. Yes. When responsibilities increase, you are less and less technical, you know less about the subject, you have people who help you give you knowledge, and you have more and more to do with personal relationships, both with the team and with the board, with the hotel owners, the potential partners… it is increasingly a matter of people and being able to understand you. I, who taught at the university in my free time, would now have a hard time doing some calculations. I would give the guidelines to someone on my team. And that’s very nice, when you see that the team surpasses you in things… When someone is afraid of having their space taken away, they don’t like to see very powerful people by their side, but when you don’t have that fear in your body, it’s very nice Seeing people grow and do things in ways I wouldn’t have thought of.

P. I understand that you are not afraid of being replaced…

R. No. The truth is that it has always seemed to me that it was very healthy to have a certain touch of naivety in order to survive in this complicated world. If you are too thoughtful, you end up too worried. I love balances. You have to be fearless and have a certain touch of madness, but without going overboard because otherwise you will go wrong.

P. What is your latest touch of madness?

R. I try to make them sensible crazy things. The commitment to the Middle Eastern countries had a certain touch, I don’t know if it was madness, passion, vision or a mix of everything. It is not something that comes naturally in the group.

P. What are your main hobbies?

R. Play sports, now I basically do paddle tennis and tennis two or three times a week; walk, talk and read.

P. What are you reading?

R. Damn Romeby Santiago Posteguillo, and I just read a book that I really enjoyed: The Scarlet Pimpernel.

P. How many hours do you work and how much time do you leave for yourself?

R. I have a habit that is probably not good, the truth is that it is criticized a lot: I answer emails and calls any day of the year and I have the habit of answering them because if not I will be worried. I suppose this is punishable, although I usually do it. I work quite a few hours, an average working day is usually 12 hours. I read a lot more before; I’m sorry, but I have so much reading material on the sector that it’s hard for me to find time. But I enjoy it and I don’t complain. I like to stay up to date and make judicious decisions. And having our own opinion, which I think we lack, we let ourselves go a lot with the flow.

P. Twelve hours of work, what do you think of conciliation? What do your wife and children say?

R. Well, I try to make sure that the times we have to be together are not where we are mulling over things in our heads, thinking about problems. And I think I do that quite well. The 12 hour thing is when I travel, the same when I’m at home I work 10 hours. I go to the office at 8 in the morning and I leave at 8 in the afternoon and at midday I escape to do some sports when I can.

P. How are you sleeping?

R. Normally good. The quality of my sleep has worsened. But I have a reputation for sleeping very easily. They say I fall asleep standing up. I have biorhythms that usually run out at midnight, so I’m not a very night owl; I even take a five or ten minute nap when I go out and return to the social gathering if that’s what it takes. I have fame. Friends say ‘I’m going to become a Raúl’. Everyone is jealous, they want that little nap at night.

P. How are you dealing with stress?

R. I think good. Like a good family business, it is demanding and non-conformist. I carry it with enough temperance and try not to transmit the tensions downwards because it does not contribute anything and I try to manage them. Because the easy thing is for them to squeeze you and you squeeze.

P. Can you always be friendly, as is always the case in the hotel industry?

R. Not always. Almost always, yes. It’s like the phrase: ‘the customer is always right’. One thing is that you don’t have to insult or mistreat him, but he is not always right. Forms must be preserved, especially the harder the background is. I have jumped a few times in my life, the only times in which I have lost my temper is when something is unfair.

P. He says one of the hardest parts of his job is the constant doubt about whether what he has done is good enough.

R. You have to doubt not to doubt. You have to have enough self-esteem and decision-making capacity to be daring in things and, at the same time, have enough humility and listen. That is hard. When you get very high and your ego feeds it, because everyone praises you, there comes a time when you tend to believe that you are infallible and that what you do is the best. Because everyone comes to tell you the good things. You know that the bad comes behind. So, from time to time, it is positive to reflect on whether it could have been done differently. I think about whether things can be done better. You have to think that what you do does not always have to be right, deep down you have to look for counterweights.