Ligia López, a Sevillian in depopulated Aragon: “Companies in rural areas also deserve to have quality and local marketing services”

With an Andalusian accent and blue and black hair, Ligia López Ballester attends to elDiario.es from her studio, a room on an old and renovated third floor located on the central street of Ayerbe, next to the Tourist Office. Between designs, Ligia tells the story of her entrepreneurship, a path that begins in 2019, the year the world was plunged into an unprecedented pandemic. She started Eda Project, a design and marketing company to cover the lack of professional services for companies and entrepreneurs in her area. Born in Seville and raised between the city of La Giralda and Venezuela – “my mother is of Venezuelan origin,” explains the designer -, as an adult she decided to settle near her hometown, where she worked at Localia, a television channel. , and later, eleven years in the marketing department of a laboratory of products for the livestock sector. “I studied Audiovisual and Entertainment Production, a five-year degree. Some time later I started Advertising and Public Relations, but after the third year, making my degree compatible with working on television was impossible for me,” confesses the entrepreneur, who has not stopped training to this day with courses in graphic design, design in 3D and recently branding at a renowned school in Barcelona.

In 2019 Ligia and her partner Marcos, a versatile and restless man like her, decided to exchange the heat of the south for the cooler temperatures of the north and the proximity to the beach for the proximity to the mountains and snow, one of their hobbies. “We have some friends who lived in this area, they encouraged us to come because it was a good life and there was work,” explains the Sevillian. Access to housing in Ayerbe, as in the rest of the towns in Aragón, was the first problem that the couple was forced to face. The proximity of this town to Murillo de Gállego and Mallos de Riglos, two of the most touristic spots in the province of Huesca, means that many of the homes are used for seasonal rental.

Thus, for the first three months of their stay in Ayerbe Ligia and Marcos lived at their friends’ house. When the summer season ended the supply of available homes increased, but this couple ended up living in another of the most common types of houses in the towns; those that have been closed for years: “The owner had renovated it and had it closed for a long time, she was afraid to rent it to anyone but, in the end, and to avoid the deterioration of the property due to being uninhabited, she decided to rent it to us. That was five years ago and now she is the one asking us not to leave,” says Ligia, who adds that if one day she were to leave her current rental house it would be to buy a house with some land, “although that Now, it is very difficult to find,” he adds.

I like my job, I want to start my own company

Once established in Ayerbe, Ligia was faced with a dilemma: look for work as an employee, as she had always done, or start her own business. “I love my job, and I wanted to try starting a marketing and design company that would provide services to companies and institutions in the environment,” says this entrepreneur, who had already detected that in the rural area where she had decided live there was a lack of this type of professional services.

Before launching her current business idea, Ligia sought the training and support offered by Aragonese entities: “I needed to know what I was getting into before taking any step forward, it was the first time I had started a business on my own.” and alone,” he explains. One of the first entities she turned to was the Aragonese Development Institute, thanks to whose training workshops, especially those aimed at advising women with entrepreneurial initiatives in rural areas, Ligia obtained answers to some of her doubts and created a network of support made up of women with a reality and concerns very similar to hers: “I am still in contact with some of them,” she confesses.

All entrepreneurship stories with a woman’s name and in rural environments usually have added problems in common: social, bureaucratic, investment or lack of self-esteem. In this case, the designer is one of the lucky ones since she did not encounter major bureaucratic obstacles on her path to entrepreneurship. Just an administrative problem with Social Security: “I registered in the middle of the pandemic and had to do the procedures online. The problem came because they did not want to grant me the two years of subsidized quota for residing in rural areas – a population of less than 5,000 inhabitants – the officials said that in my case I did not generate roots and that I could not be a beneficiary of that aid entrepreneurship. In the end the problem was solved through a claim. The digital training of technicians is not balanced because if not, a case like mine is rare to happen,” explains Ligia, who also emphasizes that this type of confusion, especially if it occurs when you are starting, generates stress, distrust and They can even cause a woman to backtrack on her idea of ​​starting a business. “In the rural world, digital administration is less developed than in cities, and this is a burden for those of us who live in those areas,” she adds.

Once Ligia López started her company, she worked in the coworking space of the Ayerbe City Council. She now has her office installed in one of the rooms of her house, a work model that is increasingly common among people with liberal professions. To work and live in the same house it is important to organize schedules, “to be clear about what is work and what are activities at home and, although it is complicated, the truth is that working at home gives you a lot of freedom; Sometimes while cooking something has occurred to me and I have gone to the office to do it, or to take notes in my notebook of ideas,” says this entrepreneur with a smile who also confesses that she feels satisfied with the work she carries out and with the reception that their services are having in the area.

“I know that my added value is that I am very versatile, I can handle multiple tasks and in the graphic sector I know all the needs: formats, designs, qualities…”. In its venture, Eda Project carries out multiple orders, from designing and printing a canvas, to designing a logo, business cards, or helping a company or an entrepreneur to have their own professional brand. “I realized that rural companies also had to have the opportunity to project a professional and quality image through marketing that made their values ​​and true identity visible, and that is what I offer” concludes Ligia.

In the future, the owner of this studio, which is now a sole proprietorship of design and branding, would like to continue working in the same line, who knows whether to rent an office, and even expand part of the business to provide merchandising services for companies. “I see opportunities, although in the long-term future,” Ligia acknowledges.

So far, the most difficult job this entrepreneur has faced is branding her company. “It’s funny how you quickly see what customers need and, when it comes to your company, you have a thousand doubts,” Ligia confesses smiling. Four years after its launch, this business idea already has a name and a corporate image that fits with the values ​​and the idea of ​​design that defines Ligia López: Eda Project. Eda means creativea word in Yoruba, a West African language with which the professional feels a special connection.

Connection with the town

Ligia’s connection with the work she does goes beyond the strictly professional. “Taking a walk in the countryside, getting the sun, breathing fresh air or having a coffee next to the house are pleasures that I now enjoy, and all thanks to the lifestyle that I have found in Ayerbe,” explains Ligia. . Both she and her partner were clear that they needed a change in life and feel that living in a town has given them the closeness that they were missing in their previous life closer to the city. “I found it very welcoming that people offered me things from their gardens, that had never happened to me in Seville,” confesses Ligia, who recognizes that the relationship of coexistence and connection with the local residents fit perfectly with her curious and participatory: “I’m always involved in something: walks, workshops, festival commissions, wherever I can, I collaborate.”

Ayerbe is a town aware of the need for new people to come to the town to keep it alive. The municipal corporation has worked to open itself to the reception of new residents, as is the case of Ligia and Marcos; They have launched projects so that neighbors who have empty houses can either sell them or rent them, but as Ligia says, “it is still difficult for the owners to give in.”

Towns have numerous advantages, but they always miss something that those who come from a city have had in them. In the case of Ligia, a passionate film buff, she has tried to meet that need with other activities, and has discovered that now she is also an inveterate mushroom hunter: “My partner and I have bought some walkie talkies so we don’t get lost in the mountains,” she jokes. the entrepreneur.

Also having a few drinks on a weekend or a little more life in winter are other aspects of the city that Ligia misses, although she values ​​the short distances that separate Ayerbe from Huesca – 32 kilometers and half an hour by car – or Zaragoza. -approximately one hour-. Furthermore, “the traffic here is much less than in Seville, where traveling 30 kilometers away could mean having to travel for an hour with huge traffic jams, something that doesn’t happen here,” he points out.

Support: the most important thing when starting out

Ligia recognizes that she has had the constant support of her partner, who had already started on other occasions and whose experience has helped her to put some complicated moments into perspective throughout these four years as an entrepreneur. However, Ligia claims that, although there is space for women who decide to set up their business ideas in towns, and that it is becoming more common, the change in structures is still too slow. “The aid focused on supporting women who want to start a business in the rural world is almost exclusively focused on the primary sector, and in the town women are not only caregivers, hairdressers or waitresses,” she denounces.

The lack of visibility and references for rural women entrepreneurs who do not belong to the primary sector is a real problem that slows down the recruitment and retention of female talent in rural areas.