The fourth edition of the congress organized by Eurecat, held this Monday at CaixaForum in Barcelona, has put industrial sovereignty in Catalonia and the need to transform research into applied technology at the center of the debate, in a scenario marked by rising fuel costs and the rise of protectionism.
Eurecat president Daniel Altimiras has emphasized that this sovereignty "is not built in isolation," but rather from the sum of capabilities and the creation of favorable conditions. The event also included Barcelona City Council deputy mayor Jordi Valls and CriteriaCaixa’s Investments Director Felipe Matías, along with various specialists from the industrial and technological fields.
Altimiras has stressed that "we need competitive companies, but also organizations, knowledge and infrastructures capable of validating, demonstrating and scaling new solutions, in direct connection with the needs of industry and society." Along these lines, he has claimed Eurecat’s role in articulating innovation ecosystems aimed at achieving efficiency and generating value, also from a decentralized perspective.
The president has also highlighted the technology center’s "broad territorial coverage" in Catalonia, which has 11 branches spread across cities such as Manresa (Barcelona), Girona, Lleida, or Reus (Tarragona), configuring a network that, as he pointed out, facilitates the transfer of knowledge to the productive fabric.
"Stop" of globalization and challenge of applied knowledge
For his part, Jordi Valls has warned of a "certain slowdown" in the globalization process derived from protectionism, which, in his view, has been driven forward by the policies of leaders such as the President of the United States, Donald Trump. Against this backdrop, he argued that it is essential to strengthen the capacity to "turn 'papers' into business" to ensure the economic return of research.
Along the same lines, Felipe Matías has said that industrial sovereignty goes beyond the technological dimension and has to do with a country’s ability to transform knowledge into productive systems and into sustainable value chains. He also recalled that "industry and technology need time" to consolidate and deliver results.
The day’s program has included a dialogue between the chief executive officer of the Generalitat’s Agency for the Competitiveness of Business (Acció), Joan Romero, and the Director of Corporate Affairs and R+I Policy at Eurecat, Joan Guasch, focused on the ways to develop proprietary, differentiated and scalable industrial capabilities based on technological progress.
Romero has highlighted that the Catalan economy is “global, a fairly resilient economy,” although he has acknowledged that factors such as the cost of energy, competitive pressure from countries such as China, and tariffs from the United States directly affect business competitiveness. He has also pointed out that the Catalan productive fabric has “exporting DNA,” but he has recalled that the average size of SMEs in Catalonia is smaller than in other European countries, which conditions their resources and the way they operate.
Round tables on smart industry and business scaling
Eurecat’s Director of Research and Technology, Myriam García-Berro, has led a dialogue on intelligent and autonomous industrial systems, with the participation of business leaders such as the chief executive officer of Ingroup, Joan Folguera, and the chief executive officer of Frit Ravich, Judith Viader, who have shared their experience in implementing these solutions in their companies.
Another of the round tables has focused on physical artificial intelligence and European sovereignty in its development and integration into production processes. Among others, it brought together the Head of Innovation at Multiverse Computing, Gorka Unamuno, and the chief executive officer of BitMetrics, Mar Masulli, who addressed the technological, regulatory, and competitiveness challenges associated with this technology.
In the final part of the congress, speakers such as the founder of Thinex, Joan Vidal, and the Director of Implementation and Technological Services at Factorial, Albert Domingo, have discussed the different growth stages of an industrial company, from the initial product validation to its entry and consolidation in the market.