Mònica Bernabé

BARCELONA

A man dressed in a black blazer, white shirt and tie opens the door for clients and welcomes them to the store. There are two floors. On the first one, an Asian shop assistant serves two young clients who appear to be from South Korea and who are interested in purchasing some scarves. On the second floor, there are a few more clients, also from Asia, who are looking at some lipsticks that are on display while they wait to be served. There are also three women in headscarves waiting, seemingly from the Middle East, as well as  another girl, who despite the heat, is wearing some kind of pink slippers – for sure designer ones, otherwise it would not make sense for anyone to be wearing them outside the house. There are also two women taking a rest on the armchairs and who look as though they’ve stepped off a film set: wearing wide-brimmed sunhats and sunglasses, despite there not being much light inside the shop. One of them carries a small, white poodle in her arms. Just like the rest of the clients, they are also waiting.
Although unbelievable, there is a queue for Hermès, one of the most exclusive luxury stores on Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona. The reason being is that there are people for whom things, quite frankly, are going well, despite the fact that for most people the only remedy is to tighten their belts due to the uncontrollable inflation. These people are the rich and the super rich.

“We have an account in the Las Vegas store”, says one couple who speak Spanish with a Latin American accent, and who want to buy a pair of shoes in Hermès after spending a while trying on a few different pairs. Then there are two girls, with sculpted and tanned bodies who have fallen in love with a tiny white bag that is on display on one of the shelves. The shop assistant puts on a pair of gloves before showing it to them to avoid touching the bag with her bare hands.

A few pairs of shoes, some items of clothing, various accessories and not a whole lot more is what you will find in Hermès. Of course, everything is extremely expensive. For example, a simple beach towel costs 350 euros, a woman’s top costs 850 and a woollen sweater, which is surprising given the time of year, costs 1,300 euros. 

Concierge services

“Barcelona is a very attractive city, there really are many business opportunities”, says Lourdes Carbó, who is the founder and director of Alberta La Grup, a Catalan company that is dedicated specifically to helping make the lives of the very wealthy easier. The company offers what is known as Concierge Sevices, and this year it has become one of the most outstanding agencies in the sector, according to a ranking in Spear’s magazine – a publication aimed at assisting the wealthy with the best services in the market: for example, the best whisky suppliers, the best equestrian suppliers, the best financial advisors when buying a yacht or a private plane, the best babysitters to take care of their children…
“If a family wants their child to study in a private university, we take care of the administrative tasks. Or with they want to take their care from one country to another, we take care of that too. Or if they want us to get their smoking jacket ready for the opera, or for us to fill their fridge” are the examples that Carbó gives to explain what exactly it is that she does. The requests they receive could literally be anything, sometimes involving things that are very extravagant. However, they never get involved with anything related to business, finance or legal topics.

The superrich like Barcelona because they can park up their yacht and be in the centre in 15 minutes. They also like the discretion, the gastronomy, the great private health services and the leisure options. 

As Carbó says, the superrich really like Barcelona for different reasons: “They can park up their yacht and be in the centre in 15 minutes. They also like the discretion, the gastronomy, the great private health services, the good infrastructure, the leisure, the entertainment and the culture”, she specifies. The problem, as she mentions, is that sometimes the city does not meet the high expectations.

“In Barcelona, it is impossible to rent three Aston Martins in the same week. You can find one, but not three. Or you can go to a luxury store on Passeig de Gràcia and they might not have the whole collection. And that means we lose clients, because if they don’t find what they want, they will get on a plane and go to Milan to buy it”, she gives as an example.
“In Barcelona, we also don’t have good agencies to find babysitters, or the babysitters you find don’t speak English. Or there are services that literally do not exist here: for example, we often get requests for a home for the elderly that is like a five star hotel”. Carbó reminds us that Barcelona is in competition with other top cities such as London, New York and Dubai, where you can find all kinds of services.

 “ In Dubai they would even close a shop so that someone can go shopping there”, she says.

In Barcelona, at least at the moment, they don’t tend to close shops for exclusive clients. In fact, in some luxury stores on Passeig de Gràcia, there are even queues in the street to get in. In Gucci, there are so many people just before closing time that one of the shop’s employees to warn the clients that the shop will close in the next half hour and they cannot guarantee that all the clients will have chance to go in. They speak in English, assuming that all of them are from abroad. And they are right – that is the reality.

“Do you already know what you want?” one man asks his wife. “I’m having a look”, she replies whilst taking a look at the Gucci website on her phone. Both of them speak Spanish with a Latin American accent. Once they enter the store, the lady knows what she wants to buy: a small pink bag that costs 2, 650 euros.
Carbó explains that many of her clients are from Venezuela, but she also has clients from Mexico, Colombia, the USA, Germany, Italy… Of course, around 90% of them are from abroad. “These are people that have more than one residency in the world, they usually travel in private jets and they have more than thirty employees working in their homes: butlers, maids, nannies, chauffeurs, personal assistants, security…” Carbó declines to specify what their fortunes are. “Having a yacht is clearly a status symbol as a boat involves constantly spending on maintenance” is the only information she is willing to give.

A port for luxury yachts

In fact, Barcelona has a port destined toward yachts and super yachts: Port Vell Marina, located in the Barceloneta. It has 151 moorings and one of the longest docks in the world, which could attract super yachts of up to 190 metres in length. It is an exclusive area, with private security and to which ARA has not been able to access, despite having requested to do so. The boats moored there belong to members of royal families, directors and CEOs of the most important companies in the world, sources at the Port Vell Marina have told us, without sharing how many of the moorings are currently occupied. “Throughout the year, the Marina hosts around 300 boats”, the same sources tell us, as well as clarifying that the months with the highest occupation are those in “spring and autumn”. Despite there not being so many yachts at the moment, the ones that are there still catch your attention. In fact, it is quite normal to see tourists – the ones that don’t have so much money, of course – taking selfies in front of the port with the yachts in the background.

“If we offered more special services, more wealthy families would come. I’m not suggesting we create a Port Aventura for the rich, but rather that if we want aim for that market, we need to be very well prepared”, says Carbó, who insists that Barcelona has a long way to go in that sense.
One of the new services that is offered in the city is the possibility to buy a luxury apartment that comes with the same services that you would expect at a five star hotel. The Antares tower, located in front of Parc del Fòrum, is one example. It belongs to the Shaftesbury investment fund, but 25% of the apartments have already been sold – all of them to superrich foreigners. The first resident moved in last February. Alberta La Grub is the company that takes care of the services and the director of operations, Thaïs Guerrero, gave ARA a tour of the building.

The tower has 27 floors and 88 luxury apartments. The cheapest one costs 850,000 euros and has a surface area of 115 square metres. The largest one has 795 square metres and the price has not been made public. In any case, the apartments are spectacular, with large windows, views over the sea and huge amounts of space. In some of them, you can even see the Sagrada Familia and Tibidabo from the bathtub, as though it were a viewpoint. They also have a security and cleaning service available, as well as common areas with pools, a gym, a spa… “This kind of residency already existed in Madrid. In that sense, they are more advanced”, says Guerrero.
Barcelona still needs to take a giant leap regarding having staff available that are trained to work for this kind of profile. With this objective in mind, Alberta La Grup also runs courses to train what they call personal angels – also known as personal assistants that help to make the daily lives of the superrich easier. The course, given in English and French, lasts for three and a half months and includes subjects such as household management, managing a macro yacht and organizing family travel. According to Carbó, all the students so far have found a job and are earning generous salaries of between 50,000 and 70,000 euros per year. Perhaps this is the alternative in Barcelona to low cost tourism.