Josep Maria Recasens arrived from Renault to lead Indra this summer. He took office on June 17 after several months of turmoil at the company’s top management and found a growing company, with record profits and project awards. The executive, with a long career in an industry accustomed to large-scale production, now faces the challenge of moving from large contracting to execution. Also, preparing the company for a possible sector consolidation. “You have to deliver well and fast,” he said this Thursday at the third edition of ‘Dialogues for Security’.
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“The challenge is colossal,” Recasens insisted at the event, organized by EL PAÍS, sponsored by Aicox, Amper, EM&E, GMV and Indra, Mapas de Comunicación as driving partner and with the institutional support of the Ministry of Defense. “We cannot miss this opportunity to be a benchmark not only in Spain but also in Europe.”
At the close of the first half of 2026, Indra reached 20,533 million euros in orders, 117% more than a year earlier. More than half — 11,746 million — correspond to the defense business. Its portfolio has more than doubled in just one year, driven by contracts from the Special Modernization Programs (PEM) awarded by the Government. Indra has been one of the main beneficiaries of the initiative: it has secured 13,800 million euros. “The sport we need today is radically different from last year’s. It’s about speed, about capability, about technology, about innovation,” he said in a conversation with Ricardo de Querol, deputy director of Economy at EL PAÍS and director of Cinco Días.
Indra is working on a new strategic plan, scheduled to be presented before the end of the year. Recasens already warned in July that Indra will have to multiply its delivery capacity between six and ten times, depending on the technological area, to meet the increased demand.
During the event, Recasens exemplified the commitment to deliveries of the 8×8 vehicles. “Last year we were able to deliver 40 units of the 8×8. In the first half of this year, we have delivered exactly 40. We have doubled the capacity, but we still have half the year left.” The company’s goal is to deliver 100 of these vehicles before the end of the fiscal year, although the figure falls short of the 138 that Tess Defence, the consortium led by Indra, had committed to provide to the Ministry of Defense in 2026.
The leap will also involve new factories, more industrial space, and hiring, as well as strengthening the company’s technological development capacity. Recasens has stated that Indra plans to “triple” its industrial footprint to exceed 140,000 square meters and is building new industrial “corridors” in the north, center, and south of Spain.
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The company’s new CEO, who has been in office for five weeks, has also argued that Indra must help structure the Spanish defense industry. “Europe is tremendously fragmented, which weakens us against Asian or American hegemonies,” he explained, in line with what executives of the main Spanish defense companies also think. But Recasens is convinced that what Indra needs is to run so that, whenever the moment of consolidation comes, if it does, it can lead it: “We have to have the capacity to scale, to run, to grow so that, at the moment that consolidation might arrive, we are relevant enough to look eye to eye.”
The executive warned that the weight of each company in a future integration will determine issues such as where jobs are maintained, where decisions are made, and who controls the technology. And that, he assured, is impossible to do alone.
“There is no one who can face this challenge individually. Building alliances is non-negotiable,” he defended. Indra is already exploring this path. The company is negotiating with General Dynamics, owner of Santa Bárbara Sistemas, the creation of a joint venture to combine their capabilities and compete for major land military contracts on the continent.
Collaboration, he insisted, is “the only possible formula”: “When there is a national champion, it means there are many national losers, and I do not agree with that,” he said. “We need leaders, we need facilitators, we need tractors that take on that challenge, that pull and with that greatness can make the rest of the ecosystem great.”
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