Forged in Crisis: Six Years of the BCI Spain Chapter
The BCI Spain Chapter was officially launched in August 2020, building on the strong engagement and dedication of Spanish BCI members and volunteers. The BCI had long fostered connections and professional development within Spain, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the value of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and a unified professional community. This momentum led to the establishment of the Spain Chapter, creating a structured platform to support resilience professionals, strengthen networks, and advance the BCI's mission across the country. Through prior networking events and webinars, Spanish professionals demonstrated strong engagement, leading to formal recognition of the Chapter as a platform to promote business continuity, resilience, and knowledge‑sharing across sectors in Spain.
Since 2020, the world—and Spain in particular—has moved into a period of permanent stress testing for resilience, shaped by overlapping and reinforcing crises: the COVID‑19 pandemic exposed weaknesses in health systems, crisis management and global supply chains; subsequent disruptions were intensified by geopolitical shocks such as the war in Ukraine, energy insecurity, inflation, growing cyber threats and increasingly frequent climate‑driven extreme events.
In Spain, these global pressures were compounded by a severe economic and social impact from the pandemic, prolonged droughts and wildfires, deadly floods in 2024, rising pressure on public services, and—crucially—the nationwide Iberian power blackout of April 28, 2025, which left most of Spain and Portugal without electricity for hours and disrupted transport, communications and essential services, becoming the most serious European blackout in over two decades and a landmark event for energy and infrastructure resilience.
Together, these events have marked a clear shift from managing isolated incidents to confronting a continuous, systemic “polycrisis,” making organisational, technological, societal and infrastructural resilience a strategic priority rather than an operational afterthought.
Since the creation of the Chapter, we have organised a wide range of events—both in‑person and online—each building on the success of the previous one and offering increasingly engaging and relevant content for resilience and business continuity professionals. These sessions have fostered knowledge sharing, community building, and practical discussions across sectors and geographies. More recently, we have expanded our reach and inclusivity by incorporating live captioning into our webinars, a feature implemented with the support of the BCI, enabling us to engage a broader and more diverse audience and enhancing accessibility for all participants.
Working with academia and sponsors
In today’s global and geopolitical context, where resilience is more critical than ever, we strongly believe in the importance of a community of resilience experts working together in Spain. We are delighted with the new members who have recently joined the Chapter and are very much looking forward to achieving great things together. In the long term, the mission of this Chapter is to raise awareness of the resilience and business continuity profession in Spain and to contribute to the creation of formal academic pathways, such as university degrees or official training programmes in business continuity. To make this vision a reality, we will rely on the support of sponsors for our events and on organisations willing to provide venues for in‑person meetings. Companies interested in supporting the Chapter or collaborating with us are warmly encouraged to contact us via the link provided.
Watch this space for further news and events attendance!
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