Starting this Wednesday CONPYMES faces a new stage after the departure of PIMEC and 18 other business organizations. The break ends months of confrontation over leadership and the internal functioning of the confederation, but it also opens a strategic question: whether the organization chaired by José María Torres will take advantage of the departure of one of its main drivers to reinforce its autonomy and advance in its aspiration to gain space in the state representation of small and medium-sized enterprises.
The underlying objective is ambitious. CONPYMES was born in 2021 to demand greater presence of SMEs in social dialogue and to question the distribution of business representation, in which CEPYME occupies a consolidated and unequivocal position, to date.
Now - so our sources comment to DEMÓCRATA about this movement - the departure of PIMEC could facilitate the confederation defining its own national project, without the discrepancies that have pitted both organizations against each other over the control of institutional representation positions.
This margin of maneuver, however, does not guarantee progress. The 19 organizations leaving CONPYMES claim to concentrate 80% of its representativeness, while Torres questions that figure and asserts that they represent less than 30% of the confederation's members.
An opportunity to define a own project
The departure of PIMEC poses a dilemma for CONPYMES. The Catalan employers' association was one of the organizations that contributed to boosting the confederation and provided a structure and a network of relevant relationships for its development. Its departure may reduce that base, but it also eliminates a source of conflict over who should represent the organization in state spaces.
The disagreement was reflected in the opposing versions regarding a protocol for the eventual entry of CONPYMES into new social dialogue bodies. According to Torres, PIMEC intended for its representatives to occupy the positions corresponding to the confederation if it managed to access those spaces.
The president of CONPYMES rejected that possibility on the grounds that he could not allow the organization to become a "branch of PIMEC." The Catalan employers' association, for its part, has defended its decision to leave an entity whose functioning it considers distant from the collective project with which it joined.
The dispute is not minor: it affects the identity of a confederation that aspires to represent SMEs at the national level. If CONPYMES wants to gain institutional weight, it needs to demonstrate that it can act autonomously, articulate a sufficient associative base, and become a recognized interlocutor by the administrations and social agents.
In this sense, the break can open an opportunity to redefine its strategy. But the national leap will not occur solely due to the exit of PIMEC: it will depend on the confederation's ability to add organizations, validate its representativeness, and obtain effective presence in the business interlocution bodies.
The space occupied by CEPYME
CONPYMES' aspiration to strengthen its state presence is situated in a terrain where CEPYME has a consolidated position as a reference organization for small and medium-sized enterprises within the business representation system. The confederation aims for SMEs to have their own voice in economic and labor decisions and in dialogue spaces with the Government and unions.
The exit of PIMEC does not automatically make CONPYMES an equivalent alternative to CEPYME. It does open a new phase for an organization that will have to decide how to sustain its project, what alliances it seeks, and with what structure it intends to defend its aspiration to gain national weight.
The evolution of its institutional presence will be one of the relevant indicators. PIMEC and PIMEB have been admitted to the Economic and Social Council (CES), an advisory body in which CONPYMES has also aspired to obtain representation.
This difference shows that the dispute is not limited to the internal organization of the confederation, but affects who manages to carve out a space in the state areas where business interlocution is channeled.
For CONPYMES, the challenge is to turn the autonomy it can gain from the break into a real capacity for representation. The exit of the critical organizations may also force it to rebuild part of its network and clear doubts about its implantation. The outcome will depend on the evolution of its associative base and the institutional recognitions it achieves, not only on the resolution of the conflict with PIMEC.
A confederation that was born with the support of PIMEC and the presence of Begoña Gómez
The crisis acquires greater relevance due to the origins of CONPYMES. The confederation was publicly presented in May 2021 at an event in Madrid attended by Begoña Gómez, wife of the President of the Government, and Yolanda Díaz, then second vice president and Minister of Labor.
Gómez was introduced as the godmother of the organization's launch, which was born with the support of various entities in the field of SMEs and self-employed individuals, including PIMEC.
José María Torres assumed the presidency of CONPYMES in November 2021. Previously, his company, Numintec, had contributed 6,000 euros to the sponsorship of the Chair of Competitive Social Transformation at the Complutense University of Madrid, co-directed by Gómez.
In May 2026, Torres acknowledged before Judge Juan Carlos Peinado that contribution and meetings with Gómez and her advisor, Cristina Álvarez, within the framework of the activities linked to the chair.
Torres also participated alongside Gómez in a report published in 2022 on the contribution of medium-sized companies to sustainable development, with the collaboration of the Chamber of Commerce of Spain and KPMG. These precedents document a professional and institutional relationship, but do not prove that these links explain the current rupture.
A crisis that drags months of confrontation
The conflict had intensified over the past year. One of the episodes that fueled the discrepancies was the business trip to Israel led by Torres in November 2025, at a time of diplomatic tension. Some organizations considered that an initiative of that scope should have been debated beforehand in the governing bodies.
The differences continued in the following months and reached the renewal of the leadership. In March 2026, Torres announced his reelection at an assembly whose validity was questioned by the dissenting entities. PIMEC and other organizations turned to the courts and requested precautionary measures to suspend the president and the board of directors.
In September, the court rejected those precautionary measures. The decision allowed the governing bodies to continue in their functions, although this does not equate to a definitive resolution on all the controversies raised by the parties.
The management of CONPYMES and the outgoing organizations maintain opposing versions about the origin of the crisis. The departing entities denounce a management that they qualify as unilateral and contrary to the statutes; Torres rejects those accusations and attributes the rupture to the demands of PIMEC and to discrepancies over the obligations of the partners. The conflict, therefore, is not reduced to personal rivalry: it also affects governance and the representation model of the confederation.
The precedent of aid to self-employed workers
In the history of disputes over representativeness, there is also a judicial procedure related to PIMEC and UATAE. In February 2024, a court in Madrid admitted a complaint from the Prosecutor's Office for alleged irregularities in a public subsidy intended for associations of self-employed workers, after the objections raised by ATA regarding the calculation of the representativeness used to access the aid.
Among the questioned aspects was the possible aggregation of data from PIMEC and UATAE to obtain a larger subsidy, exceeding 130,000 euros. UATAE maintained that it had returned the questioned amount along with 25% interest, while PIMEC defended that it had neither requested nor received the aid directly and supported the legality of the documentation submitted.
The admission of a complaint does not equate to a conviction nor does it allow for the attribution of criminal responsibilities without a judicial resolution that establishes them. This precedent is part of the context of the controversies over business representativeness, but it does not prove irregularities in the current crisis of CONPYMES.
The departure of PIMEC opens a new stage for CONPYMES in which it will try to strengthen its implantation and its presence in the state sphere. Its evolution will depend on the ability to maintain its associative base, incorporate new organizations, and obtain greater institutional recognition.
The possibility of gaining space alongside CEPYME, an entity with a long history and a consolidated role as a social agent, is yet to be determined. The scenario does not necessarily involve a replacement or direct competition: both organizations -our sources point out- could aspire to share spaces for dialogue, as happens in the union sphere with UGT and CCOO.
In any case, the scope of that objective will be defined as CONPYMES finalizes its strategy and the institutions determine the weight that corresponds to each organization.
*José María Torres García presides over CONPYMES, a position for which he was re-elected on March 26, 2026, for a second four-year term. The board of directors includes vice presidents Pompili Roiger Juny, from ANCOPORC; Pedro Mulero Escobar, from FOESC; María Francisca Serón González, from PYMES Melilla; and Juan Ignacio Guerrero Ramírez, from UNIPROMEL. In July, Fernando Santiago joined as vice president of Institutional Relations.