Barcelona is not a financial capital, but it wants to make up for this shortcoming by exploring new business avenues in the sector. Following in the wake of Tech Barcelona's Pier 01, one of the main drivers of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, new players are now joining this field to make innovation, a word as coveted as it is, their own. An example is Aticco Workspaces, a Barcelona-based coworking company that is setting up a financial hub in the Barcelona Stock Exchange building, at number 19 Paseo de Gràcia. The center will be located on the five upper floors of the property, owned by the Generalitat, which previously occupied them with the Department of Economy and Finance until its transfer to the Administrative District of the Zona Franca.
Aticco has disbursed more than 1.5 million euros to adapt the 2,500 square meters that the hub will have, with capacity for 300 workers from about 20 or 30 companies. After the keys were handed over at the beginning of 2024, the flexible workspace manager started the works. With a delay, two floors have been inaugurated this July: the fifth, where the reception is located, as well as meeting rooms and work desks; and the ninth, where the social activities of the center will be concentrated, with a terrace included. Within a month, work is expected to be completed on another floor ---the eighth--- and two more ---the sixth and seventh--- will remain, scheduled for October.
From September, it is expected to start welcoming tenants to the Barcelona Finance Hub. For now, there are about 5 or 6 companies interested in settling in the building, all of them SMEs, according to the center's director, Quino Fernández, who previously worked at the startup accelerator Conector, founded by investors such as Carlos Blanco. This same month, a call will be opened to select emerging companies for an acceleration program, who will be granted scholarships so that they can settle in the building. Under one roof, Aticco hopes to bring together startups, scaleups and SMEs, but also large companies, banks, investors and institutions, following the model proposed by Tech Barcelona almost ten years ago, when Pier 01 opened its doors in the Palau de Mar in 2016. "We want to turn Barcelona into a benchmark in financial innovation and attract the best talent," defends Fernández, who expects the center to be fully operational by the end of 2024.
With more than 600 companies in the financial sector in Catalonia, 140 of them in the fintech field, Aticco does not expect all of them to set up in the hub, but rather to participate in it through collaboration agreements. For now, they have allied with the EAE business school, the Barcelona Finance School, the Caixa d'Enginyers credit cooperative, and Barcelona Activa. They are also accompanied by associations such as Barcelona Bitcoin Only and BCN FinTech. "I don't care if a bank has its headquarters in Sant Cugat del Vallès, Valencia, or Madrid; the important thing is that it can come here. We want the four major Spanish banks to be here and to remain four," says Fernández.
A project that has gone through a couple of turns
The idea of turning the Barcelona Stock Exchange into a hub was conceived by Tech Barcelona together with Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME). The association wanted to expand its innovation model, promoted at Pier 01, focusing on specific sectors. In the financial sector, it ended up pulling out of the project, as also happened with the logistics and mobility project expected to occupy the Correos building, finally taken over by the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona (CZFB) and the Barcelona City Council. For now, the only sectoral hub it has promoted has been the health one, located on Via Laietana, in the former headquarters of the defunct Department of Digital Policies. It was launched in collaboration with the developer and constructor Nuñez i Navarro, owner of the building, who was responsible for the renovation and assumed the entire investment for the adaptation works, with a budget of 7 million euros.
The idea of turning the Barcelona Stock Exchange into a hub was conceived by Tech Barcelona together with Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME)With Tech Barcelona's departure from the project to revitalize the Barcelona Stock Exchange, the Generalitatconveneda public tender to find an operator in September last year. According to the bases, the Catalan administration cedes the use of this space in the form of a subsidy in kind for a period of six years, until 2029.In exchange, the operator has to pay an annual fee of more than 224,000 euros and carry out all the actions specified in the tender. The annual market value of this office space on Paseo de Gràcia is around 648,000 euros. Taking into account the location of thecoworking that it is now starting to manage, Aticco foresees that the rental price of the space will be between 10% and 20% higher than its other properties in the Catalan capital.
The Ministry of Economy chose the company Cospace, behind which are the entrepreneurs Gabriel Espín, Juan Carlos Morales and Franz Pallarès, founders of Aticco in 2016. The public tender received a second offer from the company Cloud Workspaces. "This is completely new for Aticco," remarks Fernández. His company has seven coworking spaces in its native Barcelona, where it expects to add two more by the end of the year, located near the Cathedral and La Monumental. For 2025, the focus is on growing in Madrid, where they only have one space. In Spain, they are about to open a space in Valencia and are preparing to arrive in Malaga next year. After closing a 10 million euro round this year, in which the Catalana Occidente group participated, the company expects to expand also in Portugal. It also promotes coliving spaces, as well as having a platform to boost entrepreneurship with acceleration programs, AticcoLab, and a private community of angel investors, Aticco Ventures.
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