A total of 110,214 companies, which are 45.2% of the business fabric of all of Catalonia, are concentrated in the 636 square kilometers that make up the 36 municipalities that make up the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), according to a report prepared by the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona and the AMB presented this Thursday. But within this territory, which is confirmed as attractive for foreign investment, inequality persists, both socially and in the distribution of companies. This is one of your pending subjects. The x-ray is paradoxical.
From the outside, 82.7% of the total foreign subsidiaries in Catalonia are located in this territory, which occupies the 11th position in Europe in attracting technological investment, with 1,326 million euros invested in 2022. The figure The number of emerging companies is growing every year in Catalonia, going from 1,086 in 2016 to 2,022 in 2022. 87% of them are located in the metropolitan area of ??the Catalan capital. El Prat airport is the seventh in Europe in terms of passengers. It has been one of the European centers of international meetings for many years, with Fira de Barcelona organizing large global events.
The metropolitan area, the report says, also achieves good sustainability indicators. For example, 96% of its population lives within 500 meters of a public transport stop and 75% within half a kilometer of a bike-sharing service.
“We are the innovation capital of Spain and southern Europe. European reindustrialization gives us opportunities and responsibilities,” said the vice president of the AMB’s Social and Economic Development area, Jordi Valls. “The development of this territory has a multiplying effect on the rest of the Catalan territory,” added the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, ??Josep Santacreu. “The gap between men and women exists, but it is reducing,” said the director of Economic Analysis of the Chamber, Carme Poveda.
But behind closed doors the x-ray is very different, according to the data collected by the same study. At 21.2%, in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area the risk of poverty rate is higher than that of Spain and the European average. It is one tenth more than in 2016, while in both Europe and Spain it has decreased slightly from 2016 to 2021. And even though the GDP per capita of the AMB is higher than that of Spain, Catalonia and the European average. Thus, the wealth generated by all the indicators mentioned above is not distributed, generating inequalities.
“Mitigating inequality is one of the main challenges,” Valls acknowledged. “Public administrations bring poverty down to 21%,” he remarked. “The reality is very different depending on where you live,” assumed Poveda. Santacreu prescribed the creation of companies and jobs as an antidote to the problem.
And the distribution of those 110,214 companies, almost half of Catalonia, is concentrated in the metropolitan area, but in some places much more than others. Barcelona takes 63.6% of them. And if we add l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Badalona, ??Sant Cugat del Vallès and Cornellà to the capital, cities close to Barcelona, ??the percentage rises to 78%. How to take economic activity beyond this circle? “Each of the cities must seek its role, they all have opportunities. And the AMB must coordinate. We have to ensure that the value chain is distributed throughout the territory,” responded Valls, who is also deputy mayor of the economic area of ??Barcelona City Council.
