Eloi Planes, the poet of the Ibex

Barcelona“I like to daydream on the nights of wishes, sitting on the bench of the impossible, and watching the day awaken accompanied by old friends. I like to daydream on the nights of wishes and dream that everything is possible and, serenely, devour life”. Eloi Planes, executive chairman of Fluidra, one of the four Ibex companies based in Catalonia, along with Banc Sabadell, Grifols, and Puig, read this poem of his own before those attending the family business congress held in Madrid. He made his debut as president of the Family Business Institute (IEF) in the villa and court before a large audience of heads of the most influential family companies. It was the same day that Pedro Sánchez, who was to attend for the first time after eight years of a cold relationship with this lobby, called the elections for November 29th.

Because Planes, in addition to managing a group dominated by four families (the Planes, the Serra Duffo, the Corbera Serra, and the Garrigós) that swallowed the American company Zodiac and that records annual sales exceeding 2 billion euros with everything related to pools and wellness, takes advantage of some of his air travels, as he has a presence all over the world, to write poetry. This is how he confessed to the attending entrepreneurs who defines himself as an “engineer by profession and poet by vocation”.

A few months ago he published the book La mitologia del ser (Salòria, 2026), where he collects his poems. It is a 99-page poetry collection that delves “into the search for meaning, identity, and the human condition”. And it is not his only work, because in 2015 he self-published another entitled El viatge més pur. The content of this first book was “highly linked to introspection and a vital moment of returning to the essence”. As a passionate lover of lyric poetry, he gifted one of his poetry collections to the members of the IEF board of directors.

Planes replaced his father, Joan, who died in January of last year, and was a founder of what is today Fluidra together with three other partners. He takes every opportunity to remember his origins. And also, as president of the Catalunya Cultura Foundation, to let any audience know, such as the one at the family business congress at the Príncipe Pío theatre in Madrid, details about his origin and roots and his Catalan identity. Furthermore, he usually blends a business vision with a touch of sensitivity, humanism and lyricism in a world dominated by Excel spreadsheets and income statements.