The President of the Government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, accompanied by the Minister for Business and Labour, Roger Torrent, presided over the official opening of the Catalan stand at MWC 2024 this morning. During the event, the President emphasised that “the Mobile World Congress has played a decisive role in making Catalonia today’s leading technological hub in Europe”.

In the same vein, Pere Aragonès stated that Catalonia has “enormous potential in the technological field and an ideal ecosystem for technological development at the service of citizens”. And he gave as an example the figures for the digital sector, which account for 12.9% of Catalan GDP. “We are talking about 23,500 companies, with a turnover of 34.7 billion euros, which is 15.3% more than last year”, he stressed, and noted that technology companies employ 185,000 workers.

These figures, said the President, “mean we can look forward with optimism”. However, he stressed that “we have not met our full potential yet”, emphasising that “we have a great future ahead of us”, because this is a sector “that is young and growing”, with over half of the 23,500 companies in Catalonia established less than 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, the Minister for Business and Labour, Roger Torrent i Ramió, explained that “the Catalan Government is working to consolidate Catalonia as a benchmark in the technology sector in southern Europe” and stressed that “the MWC helps us to position ourselves internationally and to contribute to enabling our technological system to play a key role”.

Torrent remarked that “Catalonia is high up in the European rankings in terms of attracting technological investment projects and is the leading region in Spain. Technological investments account for 43% of the foreign investment projects carried out in Catalonia in the last 5 years”. In this regard, Torrent said that “Catalonia is the second European region with the highest number of projects attracted, 6.2% of the total, behind only Ireland”.