The insurance group Catalana Occidente, one of the leaders in the sector in Spain and in credit insurance worldwide, with a presence in 50 countries where it serves more than 4.5 million customers, has decided to remove the word "Catalana" from its name and become simply "Occident". Thus, suddenly, more than 150 years of history of that first brand comes to end since the Societat Catalana d'Assegurances contra Incendis a Prima Fixa, established in 1864, which became known as La Catalana and was launched on the stockmarket in 1878. It wasn't until 1948 that Jesús Serra Santamans and a group of industrial entrepreneurs bought the Occidente company, which would then gain control of La Catalana and merge both names into Catalana Occidente until now, when it loses by the wayside the most valuable sign of its identity, the part that has given it enough muscle to now detach itself from the word "Catalana".
Raimon, the Nova Canço movement singer from Xàtiva, now 82 and absent from the stage since 2017 after a memorable series of concerts at the Palau de la Música, has among his best-known compositions one entitled Jo vinc d'un silenci. Written in 1977, in one of its verses, Raimon sings: "I come from a silence / that is not resigned / from where the garden begins / and from the end of the drought / of effort and blasphemy / because everything's going wrong: / those who lose their origins / lose their identity". It's that simple, you can give up everything except your identity. If you do so, the result is something else, no matter how much it is disguised amid strategic decisions. One's origins are always more a strength than a problem, even if sometimes you want to pretend otherwise.
The Banco Santander has made numerous acquisitions of financial institutions since the first, carried out in 1923, from Banco Mercantil, which then had the most branches in the region. Later, it would absorb Banca Jover, Banc Industrial de Catalunya, Banc Comercial de Catalunya, Banco Español de Crédito (Banesto) and Banco Central Hispano in addition to a number of other banks abroad. It has been gaining dimension, it has incorporated other names into the original one, but it has never completely lost its identity until Emilio Botín recovered, in 2007, the original Santander brand, with which it moves around the world, and without it mattering in the least. A similar situation, regarding its brand, has been experienced by Banc Sabadell, whose president, Josep Oliu, has, despite the absorptions carried out, maintained the name created in 1881, when a group of 127 businessmen and traders from Sabadell founded it. Nor has it been necessary to change the name of Vichy Catalán, the name of the renowned mineral water and the historic spa of Caldes de Malavella, to maintain the leadership of its sector in Spain. By the way, the brand, registered in 1890, added the surname "Català" to the "Vichy" in order to distinguish it from the famous French spa of the same name.
Instead, the Catalan insurance group has taken other paths and announced that it will unify the companies that make up the traditional business (Assegurances Catalana Occident, Plus Ultra Seguros, Seguros Bilbao and NorteHispana Seguros) into a single entity that will operate under the Occident brand. It says that the name is shorter, as it would also be shorter if it had opted for its first name: La Catalana. And if it not that, it could have left it as it was. It is news that does not help the country because of everything behind it and the image that ends up being transmitted. Sometimes singers don't need many words to be specific, poignant and precise.