congress

The 2015 Mobile World Congress (MWC) will have an economic impact in Greater Barcelona of some €436 million and create 12,627 jobs, figures that beat last year’s results, when the event generated €397 million and 7,220 jobs. The 2015 edition of the MWC, which is the world’s largest event in the mobile and cell phone-related industries, will take place in the Catalan capital from the 2^nd to the 5^th of March. It aims to attract 5,000 more visitors than last year and reach 90,000 attendees. For the second consecutive year, Facebook founder Marc Zuckerberg will participate in the event. Android creator, Sundar Pichai, and Wikipedia creator, Jimmy Wales, will also be some of the most outstanding speakers at this year’s edition.

Cookbooth and dondeEsta Family are two of the sixteen apps which are finalists at the Mobile Premier Awards, which will be awarded at Barcelona's Sala Apolo on the 2^nd of March, coinciding with the first day of the Mobile World Congress (MWC). The MWC is the world's largest event of the mobile and phone-related industry, which takes place each year in the Catalan capital at the end of February or in early March. The Best App Award, the Best Audience App and the Big Impact Award will be given. Cookboth is a recipe photo-sharing platform for chefs and food connoisseurs and dondeEsta Family helps families locate their members. Both are available for iOS and Android devices.

The 1st Digital Government Congress organised by the Catalan Government and the Open Administration of Catalonia consortium (AOC) will take place on Wednesday and Thursday at the Palau de Congressos de Fira de Barcelona. The main aim of this summit is to develop through the use of new technologies the public administration into an “open and innovative administration” that will be smarter, more efficient and effective in order to give “real answers to the demands and expectations of society”, according to Àlex Pèlach, the Managing Director of the AOC consortium.

Barcelona’s main airport should be finally connected by underground railway by February 2016, after years of accumulated delays due to the economic crisis. Works in the stretch of the Line 9 that will connect Barcelona El Prat Airport with the rest of the metro network were completed months ago and now trains have started to circulate to run functioning trials. According to the announced schedule, passengers should be able to use this service as of February 2016, in time for the Mobile World Congress, which is the main event of the mobile phone industry at world level, which takes place each year in Barcelona. The Catalan Minister for Territory and Sustainability, Santi Vila, also announced that passengers travelling to and from the airport by metro will have an additional fee on top of the regular underground tariff. However the fee’s amount has not been announced yet. 

Between the 18^th and the 20^th of November, Barcelona is hosting the 4^th edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress. This year it will be the most international edition so far, with 400 cities from 5 continents represented, a 33% increase. Participating cities include Berlin, Munich, Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco, who are present at the Fira de Barcelona exhibition centre. The goal of reaching 9,000 visitors may be achieved, as nearly 700 people attended the opening ceremony on Monday. Companies are presenting technological applications for improving the sustainability, mobility and quality of life of everyday citizens. Applications being presented this year include drones for cities, technology to monitor free parking for busy commuters, and applications to assess air quality for the physically active and for choosing the best place to open a business.

This week, the Port of Barcelona has become the world cruise capital, hosting the Seatrade Med 3000, an international conference bringing together 3,000 professionals from the all around the world. It is the leading conference in the field of Mediterranean cruise and is taking place between the 16^th and 18^th of September. This adds to Barcelona’s existing reputation as the European and Mediterranean cruise capital, confirmed with the arrival last Saturday of the world’s largest cruise liner, the Oasis of the Seas, whose first stop after leaving the Caribbean was the Catalan city. Home both to the Oasis of the Seas and the international Seatrade Med 3000 means Barcelona is making nautical headlines worldwide.  

The final declaration of the 2014 São Paulo Forum, which brings together around 100 left-wing parties from Central and South America each year, has demonstrated explicit support for Catalonia's self-determination vote, which is foreseen for the 9^th of November. The XX Encuentro del Foro de São Paulo, which took place in La Paz (Bolivia) between the 25^th and the 29^th of August, gathered together most of the parties that are now running the governments of Spain and Portugal's former colonies in Latin America. The support statement was proposed to be included by 3 Catalan parties: the left-wing independence party ERC, the Catalan green socialist party ICV and the radical left and independence party CUP.

This Saturday the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), the most world's most important heart specialist conference, will begin in Barcelona. Up until the 3^rd of September the Catalan capital will host 30,000 cardiology specialist participants in a summit where 4,500 new studies will be presented about the latest discoveries in vascular diseases, which cause 47% of deaths in Europe. The Catalan Minister for Health, Boi Ruiz, said that efforts should be concentrated on reducing the "inequality" between different areas of the world which register mortality rates that are "unreasonably different".

Barcelona will host one of the main and most innovative business accelerators in the world, Startupbootcamp, which is winner of Europe's 2014 Best Startup Accelerator and specialises in new technologies. The German company will select 10 start-ups from all around the world to help them develop their projects specifically related to the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), which is the technology connecting electronic devices to each other in order to improve quality of life. Startupbootcamp will set up its office in the 22@ technological and business district, which occupies the revamped Poblenou old industrial neighbourhood. During 3 months it will select the projects from the Media TIC building, where the Mobile World Capital has its main offices, which is the foundation that aims to transform Barcelona into the capital for the world's cell-phone and mobility industry, after organising the Mobile World Congress each year.

From the 20^th until the 25^th of July, more than 4,000 scientists, researchers, engineers and academics from 52 countries will meet in Barcelona's Palau de Congressos de Catalunya for the 11^th World Congress on Computational Mechanics (WCCM). Experts will be presenting 3,200 scientific papers and 220 mini-symposiums. They will also develop computer simulations that allow studying the operation of aircrafts, nuclear plants and the human body without the need of direct experiments on prototypes and people. More than 300 Catalan researchers will also participate in the summit which, for the first time, is jointly organised with the 5^th European Conference on Computational Mechanics (ECCM) and the 6^th European Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics (ECFD VI).

Barcelona has gone from 22^nd to 7^th place in the list of 468 European cities with the best economic prospects; it is ranked the 19^th most competitive city in the world and the 10^th in Europe; it stands at 10^th in the world in terms of receiving new business investments; and it became the 4^th city hosting the largest amount of congresses at world level. The report was produced by the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona in collaboration with the City Council. Furthermore, another study compiled by ESADE business school stressed that Barcelona is the 1^st European city in money spent per tourist in shopping, ahead of London and Paris. The Mayor of Barcelona, ??Xavier Trias, welcomed the news but also emphasised the ''shadow'' of having more than 100,000 unemployed in Barcelona, a number he finds “unbearable.”

Madrid-born Pedro Sánchez won the primaries of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) with 48% of the votes and will be elected the party's new Secretary General, replacing Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. Meanwhile, Miquel Iceta received 85% of the votes and will replace Pere Navarro as the new Secretary General of the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), being the only candidate in these primaries. Both of them share the previous leaderships' views on Catalonia's self-determination process: they oppose independence and November's consultation vote. Both the PSOE and the PSC held elections on Sunday but the primaries' winners will be officially elected by the emergency party congresses to be held over the next two weekends. Sánchez defeated Eduardo Madina (36%) and José Antonio Pérez Tápias (15%), who was the only candidate fully supporting Catalonia's self-determination vote and shaping Spain as a pluri-national state.

Eduardo Madina, who is probably the person best positioned to become the new Secretary General of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) in July, stated he "is not scared" of citizen participation if it is "legal", when asked about Catalonia's self-determination vote scheduled on 9 November.  In a radio interview on Monday, Madina emphasised that "if there are possibilities to reach an agreement within the legal framework, the citizen participation mechanisms through legal methods seem alright to me". He added, "If everything is done within the legal framework, I am not scared of citizen participation". He also insisted that the Spanish Constitution can be reformed and that it should be done in order to push for a federal system.

Sónar+D is an international conference for creativity and technological innovation which coincides with the Sónar by Day Festival. The conference will organize lectures, project exhibitions, stage activities and hold meetings with experts to enhance talent and further opportunities in the digital environment creating a strong parallel to the music festival. This year is the second edition of Sónar+D and the conference is growing now bringing together more than 100 companies, as well as artists, entrepreneurs and technicians from around the world to promote talent and business opportunities in the area of ??culture. The festival's co-director Enric Palau recently revealed details about this year’s program, which is a new initiative divided into four areas. An area dedicated to round table conferences, an exhibition area where more than 40 featured worldwide technology projects are to be on show, a space for art shows and an area where attendees can meet renowned professionals.

Pere Navarro, First Secretary of the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) – which is federated to the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), has finally decided to resign, after many people within the party had asked him for big changes since the last European elections. On the 25^th of May, the PSC passed from having 36% of Catalans' votes in the 2009 European elections to 14% of them, dropping  from first to third position as the most voted party. Back then, Navarro refused to resign, despite the Secretary General of the PSOE, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, announcing he was stepping down due to the Socialists' poor results throughout Spain. In parallel, the PSC members openly supporting self-determination – which is totally rejected by the PSOE – announced they were thinking of splitting and forming their own party, after being gradually side-lined by Navarro in the last 2 years. In the last few days, Navarro desperately tried to keep the party united but since he was not succeeding, he faced increasing pressure to step down.