Surely Madrid is already unattainable for Barcelona, ??as Miquel Puig maintains in his latest and highly recommended book The Dissatisfied City, but the Catalan capital has great potential if it knows how to manage it. It is not a question of wanting to compete with Madrid, which knows how to make the most of its status as the capital of the State, but of knowing how to play the cards it has at its disposal well. And where Barcelona has been moving with agility and skill for years is taking advantage of its great trade fair power.
Today the Integrated System Europe (ISE) audiovisual room is inaugurated, which can already reach a number of attendees in this year’s edition that exceeds the 52,000 that registered in Amsterdam in February 2020, before the pandemic. And at the end of the month the Mobile World Congress (MWC) will open its doors, which expects to gather more than 80,000 attendees, far from the 30,000 that Cannes gathered in 2005. Mike Blackman, executive director of the ISE, is convinced that his fair will one day be as big or bigger than Mobile. And John Hoffman, the CEO of the GSMA, has filled all the pavilions of the fair on Gran Via for this edition, which occupy 240,000 square meters, and is waiting for the construction of the new pavilion of another 60,000, whose works will begin this year, to occupy it as well.
What is clear is that the voices that predicted that the experience of the pandemic would mean the end of this type of face-to-face event can already begin to recognize that they have been wrong. In the end, direct and personal contact can never replace the cold telematic relationship. And the trade fair events not only do not lose attendees, but they are gaining more public and interest each year. And precisely two clearly technological fairs, such as the ISE and the Mobile, are two obvious examples of fairs that could renounce face-to-face exchange. Now that Barcelona is launching a long electoral race until May with up to four candidates vying for mayor, it would be great if the future municipal government pampered this fair activity, which helps to consolidate Barcelona’s brand in the world. It is a success story that does not end.
