The second edition of Barcelona New Economy Week (BNEW) closed its doors ---both in-person and virtual--- this Friday with a very favorable outcome: a record number of attendees and participants. During the four days of the event, which generated 240 hours of content, 12,137 people followed the online debates ---reaching a total of 33,828 views--- and 3,000 more did so physically in the seven emblematic venues spread across the city and chosen as television sets to carry out all the sessions.
The Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, was in charge of closing the event and valued the role of Barcelona New Economy Week not only for these figures but also for the content that was debated and analyzed. BNEW is "a viewpoint on the technological revolution to come", acknowledged the minister, who stated that this transition process must be "just and leave no one behind", a task that corresponds ---she said--- to public administrations.
Sánchez highlighted that the topics addressed during the last four days directly concern her ministry. She cited logistics, sustainability, the transformation of cities, and the environment, among others. Thus, the former mayor of Gavà spoke of new mobility, understood as a right that must respond to the needs of citizens and facilitate the fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She also stressed that elements such as electrification, connectivity, and electric cars will contribute 15% to Spain's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030.
At this point, Sánchez mentioned the role of Catalonia and Barcelona as engines of economic transformation for Spain as a whole, based on "their business strength and social wealth". A role that, she highlighted, BNEW has played in making Barcelona the capital of the new economy and showing the world all its potential in a diversity of fields.
The head of Transport also had words to refer to the Barcelona Airport expansion project, which has not prospered due to lack of institutional consensus. "The project to convert El Prat into an international hub, subject to the most demanding environmental requirements, was and is a great opportunity for Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain, and it is not ruled out," she explained, while insisting that the obstacles to this plan do not "modify the Government's commitment to Catalonia".
In this regard, Sánchez announced that, within the framework of the 2022 General State Budgets, "Catalonia will be the autonomous community that will receive the most funding from the Ministry of Transport, with 3,000 million euros." "Budgets that ---she defended--- will generate opportunities." "We want Catalonia to once again be the engine of the transformation that this country needs and to recover, as it is doing, all its industrial muscle, its export capacity, its business strength and its social wealth," she added.
At the closing ceremony of BNEW, the minister was accompanied by the first deputy mayor of the Barcelona City Council, Jaume Collboni; the secretary of the Department of Business and Competitiveness of the Generalitat, Albert Castellanos; the special delegate of the State in the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona, Pere Navarro, and the general director of the Consorci itself, Blanca Sorigué.
The State budgets for 2022 include an allocation of 3,000 million investments in transport, mobility and sustainability for CataloniaThe Barcelona New Economy Week "demonstrates that companies and professionals need more than ever a shared space to move towards the new economy, with actors from all over the world and with an eye on reactivation," said Sorigué, before giving way to the special delegate of the State in this entity. In his turn, Navarro recalled that "for four days,Barcelona has once again been the headquarters of the new economy and has shown a strong, consolidated, and diverse business fabric, as well as great potential in terms of digitalization, innovation, and progress."The new date: from October 3 to 6, 2022.
In this second edition of the event, there has also been space for startups. Some of them received recognition from the organization with the Best Innovation BNEW 2021 awards. At the awards ceremony, Nadia Calviño, First Vice-President and Minister for Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, highlighted that "Barcelona is an emblematic city for attracting talent and innovation" and emphasized the economic recovery process that has begun in Spain and Catalonia and called for the effort of companies and institutions so that "it is not a simple rebound, but a strong, sustained, sustainable and fair recovery. In this sense, we want startups to be one of the main levers of recovery."
The best startups
This year, the selected companies have been Utvyakta, a company that uses the Internet of Things (IoT), specialized in air compressors to reduce carbon emissions; Decoditive, dedicated to neuromarketing and analysis of the behavior of customers of retail brands; Alén space, a Spanish company in the newspace sector that develops all stages, software and hardware, design and construction of artificial satellites; Newe, the technological and operational solution that makes it possible for retailers to be closer to the circular economy; and Advanced air mobility (AAM), to develop private air transport means.
There was also recognition for The predictive company, a SaaS solution for energy efficiency based on artificial intelligence; The blue box biomedical solutions, a new solution powered by artificial intelligence to detect breast cancer non-invasively and non-radiatingly; ECOncrete, to develop a material that is good for the structure and the environment in the marine environment and allows replacing concrete structures, and Opground, which connects companies and entrepreneurs with the most suitable IT professionals open to new challenges.
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