Barcelona celebrated this Thursday night the fifth anniversary of its scientific diplomacy strategy. It was in 2018 when the main research centers, universities, startups, reference researchers, and public corporations conspired to create the SciTech DiploHub, a non-profit organization whose objective is to make known to the world the scientific and technological assets of the Catalan capital and position it as a benchmark in this field, key for wealth creation and talent attraction.
The balance of this first five-year period is highly positive, as explained in an event held at the Casa Llotja de Mar, with the attendance of more than 300 people from the scientific and university fields and the presence of about 50 ambassadors and consuls from more than 30 different countries. "Barcelona has always been a very attractive city, but in today's world, being attractive is not enough; it is also necessary to be influential," highlighted the executive director of SciTech DiploHub, Alexis Roig, to justify the need to promote this initiative, which has allowed the voice of the Catalan scientific world to be brought to the main global scientific organizations.
According to SciTech DiploHub, the economic impact of Barcelona's scientific diplomacy in the last five years is estimated at more than forty million euros, considering the international scientific collaborations initiated, the new research and training grants for local researchers, and the acceleration, mentoring, and business landing programs launched in ecosystems such as London, Shanghai, Boston, or Mexico City, among other projects.
"In 2018, long before the start of a global pandemic or the explosion of the social impact of artificial intelligence, we already decided to bring together the main public and private actors of the ecosystem, to make Barcelona the capital of scientific and technological diplomacy, the epicenter of knowledge and training on the management of the great scientific and technical challenges of the new era," Roig recalled. The leader of SciTech DiploHub considers that this public-private collaboration alliance is comparable to "the joint city effort that there was to celebrate the '92 Olympic Games."
During the event, the entity announced that Barcelona will host the next World Science Diplomacy Forum in 2024, "becoming the epicenter of knowledge and training in this discipline, key to achieving global challenges such as climate action, energy transition, the fight against antibiotic resistance, or the rise of artificial intelligence."
In his speech, Roig recalled the genesis of this strategy for mobilizing scientific capital, born just after the Council of Europe's refusal to establish the European Medicines Agency in Barcelona in 2017. "The city could not miss the boat, it had to take action and gain that capacity for influence," he emphasized, also announcing the upcoming opening of a new SciTech DiploHub office in Brussels, which will join those it already has in Geneva, Mexico City, and Washington.
Roig thanked the support received during these five years from the Administrations and from all the people, companies, and entities that signed the founding manifesto, but he demanded greater involvement from the Generalitat and the Barcelona City Council for the future, represented at this celebration by Minister Tània Verge and Commissioner Pau Solanilla, respectively. The executive director considers the contributions they make to finance the scientific diplomacy strategy insufficient, since these public funds only cover 7% of the budget.
"We greatly appreciate the support of the Government and the Barcelona City Council, but it is necessary for this involvement to be more tangible; this initiative cannot depend solely on individual philanthropy. The country's institutions must take responsibility; we are a non-profit entity and cannot be subject to electoral cycles. We need this city's success not to be a flash in the pan and for us to be able to consolidate it over time," Roig reflected.
"We greatly appreciate the support of the Government and the Barcelona City Council, but it is necessary for this involvement to be more tangible; this initiative cannot depend solely on individual philanthropy"The entity is now focusing all its efforts on tackling a plan for the next five years that will allow it to intensify its internationalization and "move to the next level." To define what this new joint strategy of scientific diplomacy should be like, it has launched a participatory process with universities, research centers, and the technology sector.
The actions carried out by SciTech DiploHub are multiple, from making known internationally the fruits and advances of the research work carried out in the R&D laboratories of Barcelona, to participation in reference institutions such as the International Science Council. One of the entity's programs consists of promoting scientific tourism, taking advantage of the thousands of visitors who come to Barcelona every year to participate in fairs and professional congresses. SciTech's idea is that, during their free time, they not only visit the Sagrada Família, but also get to know cutting-edge infrastructures such as the Marenostrum supercomputer or the Alba synchrotron and return to their countries knowing that quality science and research can also be done here.
Another initiative consists of bringing renowned science journalists from all over the world to the Catalan capital. For three days, they are immersed in the city's main scientific assets, with the aim that Barcelona's scientific-technological reality is also present in the international press. Along these lines, SciTech DiploHub also invites ambassadors and consuls who represent the interests of countries from all over the world to get to know Barcelona's scientific infrastructure.
This diplomatic work is complemented by the vocation to become a think tank that elevates the role of science, technology, and cities in local and foreign policy. Also noteworthy is the Barcelona Alumni initiative, a network of more than 2,000 people from 70 countries who came to Barcelona to study at one of its universities or to work in one of its research centers and who today "are the best ambassadors of the city in the world," according to Roig.
SciTech DiploHub also organizes the Barcelona Innovation Days, a series of events to showcase Barcelona's knowledge ecosystem in major international capitals such as Boston, London, Mexico City, Shanghai, and soon Paris. Lastly, the entity carries out the so-called Capacity Building, a training program in scientific diplomacy aimed at people who work for administrations and governments around the world. It is a summer school through which 4,000 people from 60 countries have already passed and which, according to Roig, "has become a great asset for Barcelona," which is already an international benchmark in training in scientific diplomacy.
The SciTech DiploHub strategy has the institutional support of universities such as the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and La Salle-Universitat Ramon Llull (URL); research centers such as the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Vall d'HebronInstitut de Recerca (VHIR), the Instituto de Investigación contra la Leucemia Josep Carreras (IJC) and the Instituto de Salud Global de Barcelona (ISGlobal); organizations responsible for economic, business, and innovation promotion such as Biocat, ACCIÓ-Agència per la Competitivitat de l'Empresa and the Fundació Catalana per la Recerca i la Innovació; private foundations such as Barcelona Tech City, the Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera, the Fundación Banco Sabadell, the Fundación La Caixa and Itnig; and public institutions such as the Barcelona City Council, the Advisory Council for Sustainable Development of the Generalitat and the Autoritat Catalana de la Competència (ACCO).