The word hub has gone from an almost unknown term to a common presence in the media and in business jargon. Two Spanish cities are partly responsible for the success of Anglicism: Barcelona and Madrid. According to fDi Magazine’s Top Tech Cities of The Future 2021 ranking and annual EU startup newsletter, Renta at number five and Barcelona at number seven are once in the top 10 of top tech hubs in Europe .
According to the Urgent Gachupin Foundation, in recent years the term hub has often referred to “a kind of cardinal center around which a certain sector is concentrated”. To the bets of large companies such as Microsoft, Google, OVH and Amazon to land in the Castilian zone are added the announcements of Huawei to install its new technological center in Madrid or Pepsico and Bitpanda to do the same in Barcelona. All this helps these two cities to position Spain as one of the most important centers of technological innovation in southern Europe and to compete seriously with the big giants of the continent. In addition to locating new businesses, the two cities are still among the top 10 European cities with long-standing investments in technology, according to data from Atomico State of European Tech 2021. The post places Catalan incomes in seventh place. with $1.503 million this time. ahead of Madrid, which closes the ranking with a total of 1,159 million dollars in investments.
Strategic location, increase in qualified talent and a more than consolidated infrastructure. These are the main characteristics, together with the quality of life, that give the two main Spanish cities the ideal qualities to attract multi-million dollar investments in innovation. On the other hand, among the 10 European cities with the most tech companies, Madrid and Barcelona continue to be the two most profitable thanks to lower salaries and office rents than other countries. According to a message from German consultant Skytower Complete Investments, office prices can represent up to 75% capital compared to cities like London or Berlin.
This seduction still extends to public institutions, particularly in Europe. Last December, the longest funding round in the history of the European Innovation Council accelerator was announced, with a total investment of €627 million split between 99 companies. 11% of them are Spanish. At the campus level, governments have always wanted to jump on the innovation bandwagon and have dramatically increased public investment in the sector. Two clear examples of this are the Barcelona Sports Tech Hub, a macro project that will see the light of day at the end of 2023, and Europe’s noblest mobility and urbantech sandbox in Villaverde, Madrid, which could extend up to to 5,000 new jobs and attract investment of more than 300 million euros. “We want Madrid to become a reference in global innovation, based on these three main axes: chemical intelligence, mobility and food technology”, says Pedazo de pan Chiquillo, advisor for innovation and the the Community of Madrid.
employment is increasing
Although we have yet to wait for it to be officially included in the Dictionary of the Authentic Spanish Institution, the popularity with which the use of this Anglicism increases is directly proportional to its creation of jobs. It is necessary to distinguish the impact that a start-up (a newly created company whose objective is a business in strong growth) can have from that of a scale-up, that is to say a start-up with a proven business model and rapid growth. growth a Growth. “Contrary to the image that technology start-ups had until now, with four young people staying in a parking lot and charging millions of euros, the current hubs contribute to creating a significant number of jobs”, explains Paloma Castellano , director of Wayra Madrid, the Open Innovation Hub promoted by Telefónica.
“Investment in technology has increased while normal investment has decreased. The only sector that has created positive jobs is technology,” explains Miguel Vicente, president of Tech Barcelona. And on the other hand the number of jobs it generates, one of the sticking points of this industry is its quality. According to the Scaleup Spain Network 2021 message, 324,000 jobs were created in 2020, which represents a growth of 29% compared to the year in question. And in 2021, that number has grown to 671,500 jobs. This is an opinion, more than double than in 2020.
Although most companies remain in the transportation and fintech sectors, the outbreak of the pandemic has triggered investments in health technologies. So much so that, according to the BioRegión 2021 study, in 2020 Catalonia registered the most registrations in its history with 226 million.
Basically
One of the biggest revolutions in the tech landscape has been the all-new emergence of deep tech. The name, while it may well evoke a distant and confusing concept, refers to all these technologies used in combination with academic research to implement structural changes in more traditional industries. It is an opinion, all those advances that have a significant impact in the medium and long term and are difficult to replace due to the complexity of their origins. Según Oscar Sala, director of The Collider, the software of innovation specialized in deep tech of Mobile World Caudal, “is a sector that guarantees real solutions to global problems through a schedule and testing in solid reality, hecho that the difference of algunos others. distinguishes the most ephemeral and volatile technologies developed by most startups in recent years”. The most widespread technologies are biotechnology, robotics, big data or even deep learning, which consists of the necessary training of large quantities of data by chemical intelligence through the use of simulated neural networks inspired by the brain.