Barcelona is consolidating itself as a reference city in Europe, so that both multinationals and startups can set up centers of innovation and excellence in areas of technology.
The German multinational Lidl announced a few days ago its intention to set up a center of excellence in Barcelona. This center will be responsible for co-directing, together with the Stuttgart headquarters, all online distribution strategy for all of Europe.Facebook is also joining this trend, being installed through the Austrian Competence Call Center (CCC) in the Glòries Tower, known as Torre Agbar, a intelligence center to identify and eliminate fake news. This center plans to employ at least 500 people. At the beginning of the year Amazon decided on Barcelona and created a machine learning center where 100 software scientists and engineers will be hired. In the same building, which is located at 22@, the American multinational is locating the support center for SMEs in southern Europe that sell on the Amazon Marketplace. In addition to the fact that the food industry, Nestlé has a Global Digital Hub in Esplugues where 70 professionals serve the whole world. And because King, the startup that created the famous game Candy Crush, will have its headquarters where more than 600 developers will work in the 22@ neighborhood. Over the past few years, there has been a clear trend of attracting technology companies to Barcelona. 60% of companies located in Barcelona are national while the remaining 40% are international. Barcelona is the third favorite city for European entrepreneurs to settle in, according to a report from the Atomic Fund.
Why do companies and startups settle in Barcelona?
The pleasant climate that the city enjoys, the strategic location in southern Europe, the Mediterranean lifestyle and culture, make for a very high quality of life. In addition to that, if we add local talent, it makes Barcelona position itself as one of the most interesting cities for companies. The city is in fashion, and this allows companies that are located in Barcelona to attract both local and foreign talent. International talent knows that they can develop their careers here. Added to all this is the dynamism offered by the entrepreneurial ecosystem that has been created in the city, achieving greater labor mobility between new startups, those already created and large corporations. Large technology corporations are looking for talented entrepreneurs to improve their businesses.
