From Akademia to the European Space Race: Mariano García’s Career

At the Bankinter Innovation Foundation we like to closely follow the trajectory of those who have gone through the Akademia Future Builders program and are today building the future from key positions in the entrepreneurial, technological and business ecosystem. Alumni who have not only accumulated experience, but have also known how to move with criteria in contexts of high uncertainty, create teams and learn from each stage of the journey.

Our protagonist on this occasion is Mariano García, a profile with a marked vocation for the creation of projects with a real impact on the market. An engineer by training, Mariano has developed a career deeply linked to technological entrepreneurship, always at the intersection between creativity, business and technology.

From his first steps in industrial design and digital product, to the creation and scaling of startups in different countries, his career is characterized by a very practical vision of innovation: build, test, make mistakes fast and learn. This mentality has led him to undertake in the Valencian ecosystem in the early years of the startup boom, to experience first-hand processes of growth, investment and closure, and then to make the international leap to continue developing technological projects in markets as demanding as China.

Today, Mariano is part of the European space sector, where he works in the area of investor relations at PLD Space, a company that represents a new generation of technology-based industrial companies. A non-linear journey, but coherent, which reflects one of the great lessons of the Akademia programme: innovation is not a destination, but a continuous process of exploration, learning and decision-making.

Below, we summarize the conversation we have had with Mariano, in which he reviews his career, his time at Akademia and the keys that have marked his way of understanding entrepreneurship and the creation of technological projects.

From industrial designer to technology entrepreneur: a career built by making

Beginnings: design, product and first startups

Mariano García was trained as an industrial engineer with a strong orientation to design. Born in Elche, he grew up in an environment marked by the footwear industry, an experience that helped him to understand from a very young age what it means to produce, compete and survive in demanding markets. However, it soon became clear to him that his path was not to reproduce well-known models, but to explore new ways of creating value.

After studying industrial design in Alicante and pursuing a master’s degree in design engineering in Valencia, he began to take an interest in the digital product, at a time when concepts such as UX and UI were just beginning to consolidate. Faced with the complexity of the physical product, the digital environment offered him something key: speed, impact and direct contact with the user.

That interest in “making things that are used” was what led him to entrepreneurship in the midst of the startup boom, around 2013 and 2014. It was also then that he came into contact with the Akademia program, an experience that would mark a turning point in his way of understanding innovation. Not only because of the contact with the business world, but also because of the importance of multidisciplinary teams and the need to understand areas such as business development, legal or human resources, beyond the product.

In Valencia he co-founded a technology startup linked to the world of specialty coffee, which went on to build a network of almost a hundred coffee shops and go through key accelerators in the local ecosystem. Among them, BBooster, the first major startup accelerator in the city, promoted by Enrique Penichet, at a foundational moment for Valencian technological entrepreneurship. Subsequently, the project continued its journey in Lanzadera, where the team consolidated product, market and growth. The project grew, aroused investor interest and also experienced one of the toughest – and most formative – experiences of entrepreneurship: the closure of the company after a failed due diligence process. A learning that, far from closing doors, would end up opening unexpected ones.

Looking at the world: China, Korea and Latin America

After the closure of his startup in Spain, one of the potential business angels of the project – a Chinese entrepreneur – proposed that he join a new technology startup in Shanghai as a co-founder. Just a month later, Mariano was developing a new project in China.

For two years he worked in a startup in the travel tech sector, connecting the Chinese ecosystem – especially through WeChat – with tourism experiences in Europe and Latin America. It was a period of strong personal and professional growth, marked by cultural learning, the complexity of the Asian market and intense international activity.

The arrival of COVID was a breaking point. Mariano experienced first-hand the beginning of the pandemic in Shanghai and, faced with the impossibility of continuing normally, he returned to Spain. Even so, his bond with Asia was not broken. In those years he collaborated with the University of Mondragon in international entrepreneurship programs, helping to open new destinations such as South Korea and Costa Rica when China ceased to be a viable option.

Between 2020 and 2022, he divided his time between Seoul, Costa Rica and Berlin, working on training, agreements with universities and connection with local innovation ecosystems. A transition stage that allowed him to consolidate a global vision of entrepreneurship and the role played by cultural contexts in the creation of projects.

Homecoming with impact: the jump to PLD Space

The definitive return to Spain coincided with his incorporation into the Digital District project in the Valencian Community, where he assumed the role of director of operations and participated in the revitalization of strategic spaces such as the City of Light and the promotion of new technological and creative industries in the region.

But the next big leap would come shortly after, hand in hand with a connection from the past. Ezequiel Sánchez, one of the first business angels to show interest in his startup years ago, proposed that he get to know a project that was about to change scale. That project was PLD Space.

What started as a visit ended up being a key addition. Mariano joined to create the Investor Relations area from scratch, just at the time when the company was making the leap from an R+D project to a strategic industrial company. In just two years, it has witnessed – and is an active part of – accelerated growth: from just over 100 employees to more than 450, and the successful launch of Miura 1, the first private rocket developed in Europe to reach space.

Today, Mariano participates in one of the most ambitious capitalization processes on the Spanish technology scene, working hand in hand with the management team to attract investors and strategic partners to a long-term project, highly capital-intensive and with a clear industrial and global ambition. A story of returning home, yes, but also of building something with an international impact from here.

Making the improbable possible: experiencing the PLD Space milestone from the inside

For Mariano, the memory is clear: arriving in 2023 at the INTA facilities in El Arenosillo (Huelva) and seeing Miura 1 placed on a real launch ramp. Not as a prototype or a promise, but as a rocket ready to take off. “From an entrepreneurial mindset, starting from scratch and building something to make it really happen, the first thing you think is that this shouldn’t be happening.”

And yet, it happened.

Spain does not have an aerospace tradition comparable to that of other leading countries. There is no deep industrial legacy, nor a consolidated ecosystem that makes the success of a private space launch company “expected”. For this reason, Mariano does not hesitate to describe PLD Space as a positive anomaly: a project that, on paper, did not have to exist.

But this “miracle”, as he himself defines it, is not accidental. It’s the result of a rare combination: exceptional technical talent, an extreme motivation to make a real impact, and a long-term vision sustained over time. An ambition that Mariano puts into perspective after having experienced innovation ecosystems up close in cities such as Los Angeles, Shanghai, Seoul or Berlin. “What is happening here has nothing to envy to what is happening in those places.”

To this global dimension is added another key: the local and country component. The fact that Elche is leading the private space race in Europe is not only a technological achievement, but also a strategic one. PLD Space has become a country programme, a critical industrial capacity that places Spain in an unprecedented position within the new European space map.

Mariano sums it up with a phrase that condenses the spirit of the project well: it doesn’t make sense, but it is possible. And it is precisely there, in that space between the improbable and the possible, that the innovations that make history are built.

From institutional hegemony to private leadership: the new European space map

For decades, the space industry has been a field dominated almost exclusively by institutions. Agencies such as NASA, the European Space Agency, ISRO or JAXA have led multimillion-dollar programs whose main objective was not profitability, but technological advancement and strategic sovereignty. In this context, concepts such as cost efficiency, market or business model were secondary.

That balance began to break down about twenty years ago with the emergence of a private player that changed the rules of the game: SpaceX. Their proposal is radically different: cheaper launches, rocket reuse and a clear market orientation. A business logic applied to a historically institutional industry. What many initially considered a fantasy – including senior officials of European space agencies – is now an incontestable reality.

The data speak for themselves. SpaceX has become the world’s most valuable private company and de facto controls much of the access to space. In 2023, of the approximately 200 orbital launches carried out globally, more than 150 were by SpaceX. A domain that is not explained only by technology, but by understanding space as a logistics industry: the rocket is the truck, but what is relevant is the cargo and the service it enables on Earth, from telecommunications to observation or geopositioning. In the case of SpaceX, that service is Starlink.

Europe, meanwhile, has maintained its institutional status quo for years. The result: a progressive loss of competitiveness against the United States. However, that diagnosis has already been assumed. In recent years, Europe has decided to bet on a new model and has selected five private companies to lead its autonomy in access to space. Among them, two German, one French, one British and PLD Space as the Spanish representative.

The difference, according to Mariano, is clear: PLD Space is today the most advanced company in that group in terms of technological development and real validation. While the rest are preparing for their first milestones, PLD has already demonstrated its capacity with the successful launch of Miura 1 and is positioning itself as a credible European alternative in an increasingly complex geopolitical context.

For Spain, the impact is profound. From having no tradition or relevant weight in the space sector, it is now playing a strategic role in an industry critical to European technological sovereignty. And this role is even more important in a global scenario where dependence on external actors is increasingly perceived as a risk.

Europe needs its own capabilities. And today, a key part of that response is being built from Spain.

Innovation ecosystems in Spain: there is talent, there is a lack of long-term vision

After years of moving through international innovation ecosystems, Mariano had the opportunity to experience the challenge of building a technological ecosystem in Spain from the inside during his time at Distrito Digital. And his diagnosis is clear: the main obstacle is not talent, nor ambition, nor even the ability to attract companies. It is the lack of a shared and sustained vision over time.

“The first step is to believe it,” he says. To be aware that the talent that exists in Spain is comparable to – or even superior – to that of other international poles. Something that is clearly perceived when one goes abroad or when foreign companies decide to settle here attracted by a combination that is difficult to replicate: quality of life, technical capacity and an extraordinarily powerful country brand.

The problem arises when that energy depends excessively on the political cycle. Innovation ecosystems are not built in four years. They require continuity, stability and broad consensus that survive changes of government. When each mandate tries to redefine priorities, undo the previous or impose its own agenda, the real impact is diluted and the projects lose the ability to take root.

Mariano has seen it up close: there are capacities, infrastructures and teams with real potential, but it is difficult to scale them up if there is no clear and shared plan on what is structural – what is not touched – and what is circumstantial. Other countries and regions that today lead global innovation have understood this difference well and have protected certain strategic pillars outside the political noise.

Spain, he insists, has all the ingredients to compete globally. But for this potential to materialize, perseverance is needed, a certain “tunnel vision” that allows progress to be carried forward without being dragged down by external inertia, and above all a fundamental agreement: to define what model of innovation and industry we want to build and sustain it over time.

Because without that consensus, even the best ecosystems risk being left halfway.

Akademia: learning to work with others… and with reality

When Mariano remembers his time at the Akademia Future Builders Program, there is an idea that recurs: it was one of the first times he left his own mental framework. Of their discipline, of their way of seeing the world, of the decisions always made from the same angle.

During the university stage, he explains, the context acts as an invisible limit. Although today there is more access to information than ever, the real difference arises when one shares space and makes decisions with people who come from other backgrounds: engineering, business, law, statistics. Different perspectives on the same problem completely change the way we understand impact.

This is where one of the great learnings of the program appears: the importance of the team. Not as a theoretical concept, but as a practical reality. To generate impact, the first – and most difficult – thing is to build a multidisciplinary team capable of integrating different perspectives. Something that Mariano has seen time and time again throughout his career and that he considers one of the most valuable assets in any professional project.

The second great learning comes in the form of a “reality check”. Akademia confronts students with an uncomfortable but fundamental truth: what one likes or thinks is a good idea does not always coincide with what the market wants. Understanding that difference soon saves a lot of mistakes later. It is a necessary, almost obligatory, shock for anyone who wants to start a business… or simply working in real environments.

Because, as Mariano emphasizes, beyond whether one has an entrepreneurial spirit or prefers to develop within an organization, there is something inescapable: today you work in a team or you don’t work. There is no alternative. And the sooner you internalize that dynamic, the better prepared you go out into the professional world.

That’s why he recommends Akademia to any university student. Not as a program to “set up startups”, but as a space to learn to collaborate, contrast ideas with reality and begin to build a way of thinking that is more open, more critical and much more connected to the future of work.

Entrepreneurship from home: when the professional challenge and the personal challenge align

When Mariano thinks about the future, he avoids grandiloquent answers. After having lived through the real estate crisis, COVID and several professional restarts, projecting herself five years ahead seems almost like an exercise in fiction. And yet, there is one thing that is clear to him: the challenge he has at hand today is big enough that he does not need anything else.

“Launching a rocket is already quite motivating,” he says matter-of-factly. And not only because of the technological challenge, but also because of what it means to do it from here. Building something great at home, with a global impact, capable of generating qualified employment and preventing others from having to go abroad in search of opportunities, is a source of motivation that is difficult to match.

From his position at PLD Space, Mariano experiences entrepreneurship from within an organization that, although today it is a strategic industrial company, still needs the same drive as a startup: raising resources, generating trust, attracting talent and sustaining a long-term vision. Coordinating and supporting hundreds of engineers working on one of the most ambitious technology projects in the country requires a deeply entrepreneurial mindset.

That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on that urge to create from scratch. Mariano is clear: he will probably start a business again. He does not know when, or how, or in what sector. But he is not worried about not having it defined. For the moment, the challenge of making possible something that seemed impossible – and doing it from their land – is more than enough.

Perhaps that is where the real squaring of the circle lies: uniting global ambition, real impact and local roots. A coherent closure to a trajectory that shows that innovation does not always consist of going far, but of knowing when and how to return.

Thank you very much, Mariano! And many more successes!

If you want to know the testimonies of other Akademia alumni, you can see them here.

And if you want to know more about the Akademia program, we invite you to visit the Foundation’s website.