Surrounded by the paintings of Antoni Tàpies, whose centenary of his birth was celebrated in December, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) kicked off this Sunday with the traditional meal prior to the start of the congress, which will begin this Monday and It hopes to bring together more than 95,000 visitors until Thursday at the Fira de Barcelona facilities in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat.
Representatives from politics, the business and technological world and entrepreneurs gathered at the Antoni Tàpies Foundation to warm up for a congress that landed in Barcelona 18 years ago, when the most innovative devices were devices like Nokia mobile phones, and It has been held annually - with the exception of 2020 due to the pandemic - until it has become a meeting in which mobile phones have given way to robotics, artificial intelligence or the 5G network.
The trajectory of the MWC is also explained by the attempts to bring the congress closer to citizens and position Barcelona as a hub of innovation.
“We believe in technology as an engine of progress,” Francesc Fajula, director of the Mobile World Capital Foundation, said at the lunch.
The minister for Digital Transformation and Public Service, José Luis Escrivà, the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and at the last moment also the organizer of the MWC, John Hoffman, visible face of the mobile industry association GSMA.
They have all highlighted the leap forward that the Catalan capital has taken in terms of innovation in these 18 years, and the role that the mobile congress has had in this.
“When we came to Barcelona this ecosystem did not exist,” said Hoffman.
Fajula has highlighted “the undeniable future potential that the city has” and has opted for a “humanistic use of technology” that helps face the ethical, social, economic and sustainability challenges that progress is associated with.
The Gran Vía venue of the Fira de Barcelona the day before the Mobile World Congress (MWC) opens its doors. Albert Garcia (Albert Garcia)
Collboni, who will attend this edition of the congress for the first time as mayor, wanted to mark a point already left and a new beginning with respect to previous years —despite the fact that he was on the government team in previous legislatures—: “Barcelona he's back.
“He has returned to share and to compete.”
Collboni has expressed that the Catalan capital "is the place to be if you have a technological project, if you want to train or if you want to invest", and has highlighted the role that the Mobile World Capital has had - which has organized this previous meeting to the congress—to “make Barcelona an authentic hub of innovation.”
“The objective is to create wealth and generate jobs with added value, and we have achieved it,” said the mayor.
In their interventions, both Escrivà and Aragonès have made reference to the career of Antoni Tàpies.
“He was a universal Barcelonan, and that is the spirit that the MWC also has,” said the minister, who has also made a call to address from a regulatory point of view all the technological advances that impact society: “ We have to achieve a great consensus, decide together where we put the limits on this transformative technology.”
Aragonès has cited a phrase by the artist, “the world only advances if we push it”, to highlight the transformative role of technology and congress: “The promotion of the technology sector is a strategic commitment of the country, just as it is the reindustrialization of Catalonia, which has to be digital.
Today I can announce that the budget of the Generalitat will for the first time have more than 1,000 million euros dedicated to innovation, research and development,” said the president, despite the fact that he has not yet secured political support to carry out the 2024 accounts. .
You can follow EL PAÍS Catalunya on
and
X
, or sign up here to receive
our weekly newsletter