Ask Eduardo Giménez why there are so many successful privately owned companies in the Basque region of Spain and he embarks on a history lesson. “We started in the late 18th century with the British extracting iron ore and that created the first development. People thought: why don’t we make the machines here ourselves instead of in Manchester? That in turn created a huge network of companies, which created a network of universities and highly skilled ­people,” says the managing director of Ingeteam, an electrical components company that competes with the likes of Siemens and ABB.