world

Every party with representation in the 41-seat Barcelona City Council, except for one small party holding 3 seats, were present at the signing of the official proposal that will be sent to the Mobile World Congress' organisers in order to continue hosting the event until 2023. The MWC is the world's main event of the mobile phone-related industries and since 2006 has taken place each year in Barcelona. The current contract expires in 2018 and there are other cities that want to host the event besides the Catalan capital. The 2015 edition attracted 93,000 visitors in Barcelona, 9% more than in 2014. Most of those who attended were executives from international companies staying for 4 or 5 days in town. It was estimated that the 2015 edition had a €436 million impact on the local economy and generated more than 12,600 temporary jobs. Furthermore, Barcelona has been named the Mobile World Capital, a long-term project to make the Catalan city a hub for this industry, hosting standardisation organisations, multinationals and international research centres focused on related technologies.

Ada Colau, who leads the alternative left and green coalition Barcelona en Comú, is very likely to become the Catalan capital's next Mayor, with there not being enough ground on which to build an alternative majority. Colau won Sunday’s elections by obtaining 11 seats in the 41-seat City Council, just 1 seat more than the incumbent Mayor from the centre-right pro-Catalan State Coalition CiU, Xavier Trias. In the last days, the People's Party – which runs the Spanish Government – and some economic powers have been pressuring for the building of an alternative majority led by Trias. However, the essential parties involved do not support the idea. In order to facilitate her election, Colau has cleared up any doubt surrounding her fully supporting the continuing of the Mobile World Congress, the world's main event of the mobile phone-related industries, which will take place each year in Barcelona until 2018. Colau has validated the offer prepared by Trias' team to extend the organisation of the congress until at least 2023.

Veremonte has added additional uncertainty to the future of the BCN World project, the largest holiday resort in Europe based in the Costa Daurada, near Tarragona. After a $6 billion investment, it will include – among other facilities – 6 mega-casino hotels, amusement parks and shopping malls. Veremonte – which was initially leading the project – announced that it could leave, depending on how the Catalan Government will develop the final Urban Plan and how it will set the conditions for the second phase of the casino licences' tender. In 2012, Veremonte had already reached an agreement with La Caixa bank to buy 500 hectares of the land. However, the company missed the first deadline and did not meet the second one (last December) to do so, arguing that the final Urban Plan had not yet been approved. The Catalan Government then jumped in and reached an agreement with La Caixa for the rights to buy the land and guarantee the project's continuation. Veremonte still continues to be linked to the project through the casino licence tender, for which it is running with Hard Rock and Melco.

Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari Formula One Team Driver, together with the President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, have set on Thursday the symbolic first stone of the company’s first theme park in Europe, which will be an expansion of PortAventura, the main amusement resort in Catalonia, located on the Costa Daurada and near Tarragona. Ferrari Land is expected to be ready by the end of 2016, after an initial investment of €100 million. It is likely to become PortAventura’s main attraction and is expected to make the Catalan holiday and amusement resort reach 5 million visitors per year. Once Ferrari Land is operational, it will employ about 150 people, in addition to PortAventura’s staff. The project also includes a 5-star hotel themed around the Ferrari brand, but this will be built during a second stage.

The 38^th edition of the Barcelona International Motor Show (SIAB) will be held between 9 and 17 May at the Montjuïc venue of the Catalan capital's trade fair. This year, the event will host at least 38 brands and others could be added in the following weeks. This is the biggest number since the economic crisis started. According to Mario Armero, ANFAC Executive Vice President, "the show coincides with a clear recovery of the sector, where 2-digit growth rates have been registered in sales, production and exports volumes". Organised by Fira de Barcelona, SIAB is the only motor show in Spain recognised by the International Organisation of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. The coming edition will also coincide with the Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix, transforming the Catalan city into the world's motor capital for a few days.

PortAventura announced it will start the construction of the amusement area devoted to Ferrari in May, with the objective of finishing work around a year-and-half later. FerrariLand will be part of PortAventura and will also be the first theme park of the Italian car brand in Europe, adding to the park it has in Abu Dhabi. It will be built in Salou, located in Catalonia’s Costa Daurada, near Tarragona and Reus. The new area will come after a €100 million investment. In addition, in the coming  months it should be confirmed whether the $6 billion BCN World resort, with Las Vegas-style hotels and casinos, but also with theatres and conference centres, is to be developed in the area. PortAventura also announced it is about to unveil its first 5-star hotel, coinciding with the theme park’s 20^th anniversary.

Núria Picas was born in Manresa, in central Catalonia, 39 years ago. She considers herself a “daughter of the Montserrat mountain”, where her parents brought her climbing as a child. Since she was little she established a strong bond with nature and is now the ‘number 1’ woman in mountain trail running. Last year she won the Ultra Trail World Tour, a competition with ten races (twelve this year), of at least 100 kilometres each. Last season, Picas ran four of these races winning three times and coming runner-up in the fourth. In 2015, however, her “main goal” goes beyond the running world. She is on cloud nine with her new challenge and will soon be literally closer than ever to the clouds: in the spring she is going to attempt to climb an 8,000-metre peak in the Himalayas.

Being the European capital of Circus Arts 5 days a year seems not to be enough for the Catalan city of Figueres (near the Costa Brava and the French border). On Monday, in a press conference that took place a week after the 4th edition of the city's International Circus Festival, Mayor Marta Felip and Festival Director Genís Matabosch announced a plan to become the Word Circus Capital by 2018. Figueres is already working on the project, which will coincide with the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the circus in Spain. A City of Circus is to be created, a very ambitious project that will host - among others draws - a museum, a high-performance centre for international artists and a permanent big top with a resident show every half-year.

The "La Caixa" Foundation has opened Moche Art from Ancient Peru. Gold, Myths and Rituals, an exhibition to be hosted at CaixaForum in Barcelona until the 7th of June. The exhibition includes 200 pieces of pre-Incan Peruvian art from the collection of the Lima-based Larco Museum. According to its curator Ulla Holmquist, the exhibition is conceived "as a route to understanding the Andean worldview through art". The launch of the event coincides with the recent opening of Barcelona's Museum of World Cultures, which hosts a permanent exhibition of more than 500 pieces from the artistic heritage and traditions of Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. The Museum of World Cultures occupies two Gothic palaces located in the Born neighbourhood, just next to the Picasso Museum.

The 2015 Mobile World Congress, which takes place each year in Barcelona, has shattered the records by hosting more than 93,000 visitors from 200 different countries, as reported by event organiser GSMA on Thursday, the last day of the trade fair. Thisyear’s attendance exceeded by 9% the figures recorded in 2014 and by 45% the number of people who visited the event during its first edition in 2006. The 2015 Mobile World Congress confirmed itself as the global platform for the cell-phone-related industries, where a large number of news and products were unveiled for the first time by world-class companies such as Samsung, HTC, Sony, Microsoft and Google. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Sundar Pichai (Google) and Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) were among this edition's main speakers.

This year at the Mobile World Congress one of the most discussed trends is the Internet of Things (IoT): everyday objects that are connected to the internet and which are able to control other machines. Although some of these implements do not yet have a direct application on the consumer market, the automobile sector is already selling vehicles with these functionalities. Smart cars can be controlled with a smartphone, for example, by creating a temporary digital key to access the car, and can also enable other devices in the home.

Entrepreneurship in Catalan universities is not as common as in the United States, but that is starting to change. The Online University of Catalonia (UOC) along with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) have a stand at 4YFN, a parallel event to the Mobile World Congress, which is the main international event of the cell-phone-related industries, and which has taken place in Barcelona every year since 2006. 4YFN is focused on small companies that build internet services, the so-called ‘start-ups’. For years, universities have run offices dedicated to helping students and teachers to create a business, but the struggle to find investment and difficulties in setting up a business are still the major complaints of young entrepreneurs.

The Catalan companies on show at the Mobile World Congress this week not only include recently created start-ups. Some companies have been in the business for over 20 years with delegations in 19 countries, such as the registering operator Lleida.net. There are other projects on show which, although already active, have not been launched completely and are still in beta form, such as King of App, an open source app creator. Neither of them are based in Barcelona, but rather in Lleida in Western Catalonia. Most of the Catalan companies on show at the MWC are at one of the stands of the Catalan Government, which gives these companies space to promote their products either at the general exhibition or in the App Planet hall. But others such as Lleida.net set up their own stands.

On the second day of the Mobile World Congress, which is the largest event of the mobile industry and is currently being held in Barcelona, the GSMA announced the Global Mobile Award winners in more than 30 categories and Blackberry presented a new phone oriented towards the business sector. If Then This That won the Best Overall Prize in the app category and LG’s G3 and the iPhone 6 shared the Best Smartphone award. In the featured keynotes speech, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales remarked on the importance of minority languages on the internet. In addition, Wales presented his project to provide free access to Wikipedia in developing countries, following Monday's announcements by Google and Facebook to also provide internet access to the entire planet.

In a keynotes speech held at the 2015 Mobile World Congress, which is currently taking place in Barcelona, CEOs from network carriers such as Huawei, South Korea's KT and Orange have explained their vision for facilitating huge increases in speed and the number of connections supported by network carriers over the next five years. This new standard, which is being developed as a collaboration between the industry’s main actors, should be available for the upcoming 2018 and 2020 Winter and Summer Olympics and will substitute 4G. The Tokyo Olympics will be the first commercial test. The South Korean carrier KT will also undertake a test at the 2018 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Pyeongchang.