The Ágora Alella-La Miralda project has kicked off with the signing of the protocol of intent and the public presentation of an initiative that will make Alella a benchmark in the field of community health. A confluence space for innovation, research, training and entrepreneurship promoted by the Alella City Council and four leading training and research institutions in the healthcare world: the Institut Català de la Salut, Campus Can Ruti, TecnoCampus and the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
The five institutions are committed to collaborating and joining efforts to carry out this initiative, taking advantage of the potential and the strategic situation of the future business park of La Miralda, a strategic sector of the municipality -located between the Torrent de Rials, the BP-5002 highway and the C-32 motorway – which has begun to process urban planning with the aim of becoming a hub of high-value economic activity in the Quaternary sector.
Àgora Alella-La Miralda falls under the umbrella of the Barcelona Litoral Nord project, an initiative that aims to establish a strategic node in the field of health in Barcelonès Nord, Maresme, Vallès Occidental and Vallès Oriental, which will contribute to structuring the territory in the field of community health, connecting all existing resources and generating new ones, as is the case of the project that will be developed in Alella. The will, as established in the protocol of intent, is that this broader project can become a reality in the next ten years.
As established in the protocol of intent, the Ágora Alella-La Miralda project will be developed within a period of five years, which is the time estimated to be necessary for the urban development of the sector, the transfer of the Miralda farmhouse to the municipality and the adaptation of the building. But the will of all the parties is that the project begins to take shape and work on the ground much earlier, throughout the year 2024, with the implementation of a first space for training, research and innovation in the municipality, which will be the embryo and the beginning of what will later house the sector of La Miralda, which is expected to culminate in 2027.
Ágora Alella-La Miralda projects itself as a space for innovation, research, training and entrepreneurship in the field of community health and well-being. A space that generates knowledge and creates synergies between science, the business fabric, public administration, academia and social action. A multidisciplinary project to transversally address the challenges in terms of health and well-being of the community, acting in prevention, health promotion, assistance, intervention and rehabilitation, to face aging and chronic, respiratory, cardiovascular, infectious, metabolic or those that affect mental health or environmental health.
The space will have a digital learning and simulation training center, a community health research center, epidemiology and a support platform, and an invocation lab together with a co-creation space. All this will be located in 2,000 m2 in which 150 workers will work.
The mayor, Marc Almendro, was in charge of revealing the main features of a project that work began years ago hand in hand with the TecnoCampus and that has been adding wills along this path. “The origin of the project arises from the sum of forces of five entities, the Alella City Council and four very important institutions of the country, and has the involvement of other important entities of the territory and the country, which in the coming weeks we will be revealing”, the mayor said during the presentation.
Also taking part in the presentation were those responsible for the four institutions involved, Jordi Ara, manager of ICS Metropolitana Nord, Josep Lluís Checa, general director of TecnoCampus; Javier Lafuente, Rector of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Jordi Barretina, Director of the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute. All of them praised the development of this project and the opportunities it represents for each of the institutions of opening up the territory, approaching the population and availability of new spaces to generate complicity and synergies with the different agents working in the field of health. community.
