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ynn Wong and Aleksandar Ivancic's stories could be those of many other expatriates living in Barcelona. Their experience in the city has served as a guide this year for those who have just arrived and don't even know where to start. Wong and Ivancic have been chosen by the Barcelona City Council as hosts for the Barcelona Expat Week, a virtual event held from Monday to Friday to foster connections among expatriates and build networks between them.
The Barcelona Expat Week has this time replaced the Barcelona International Community Day, which for seven years brought together thousands of expatriates in a single day to provide them with information on procedures they had to carry out and resolve possible doubts. The Barcelona City Council has thus adapted, as it has already done in other events, to the new reality marked by the coronavirus crisis. In that sense, the first deputy mayor, Jaume Collboni, applauds having been able to celebrate it, despite everything. "It is a milestone that shows that as a city and as a City Council we are committed to international talent, even in times of economic crisis," he remarks.
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In its new format, the Barcelona Expat Week has managed to attract 2,600 participants from 130 countries, more than half of those who participated a year ago. The director of City Promotion of the City Council, Mario Rubert, points out that the results obtained show "the opportunity that this initiative represents" for expatriates settled in Barcelona. In addition, he values that the thirty talks and workshops they have organized have had an attendance of between 100 and 300 people, "a very good ratio for the time of saturation of virtual meetings" that we are now experiencing.
The expat fair is part of the "360-degree strategy" of the council to approach this group and attract talent, according to Rubert. First, it is necessary to get them to come to Barcelona, with the aim of covering those profiles that companies cannot find. Then, it is necessary to help them in their landing in the capital, providing them with all the information they need to carry out procedures and informing them of the tools they have at their disposal. All this to "retain them to the city" finally, creating community and connecting them with each other.
Language, the main barrier
Lynn Wong, from Singapore, arrived in Barcelona 21 years ago, highlighting that it has "a good image, talent, creativity and innovation." "It's a small city, so everyone knows someone," she explains, which is why she encourages all newcomers not to sit around and go out and meet people. Co-founder of Grupo Eventoplus, dedicated to organizing mass events, Wong acknowledges that her biggest barrier when she settled in the capital was languages, so she quickly started studying.
The same says Aleksandar Ivancic, engineer and researcher in renewable energies at Aiguasol, who recalls how a colleague helped him with Spanish in his first months in Barcelona. And, for Catalan, he signed up for a course to learn it. "After 30 years you learn," he jokes. For Ivancic, from Serbia, Barcelona is "relatively small but very intense," where you always have something to discover when you wander through its neighborhoods.