From a thermal power station to a global leader in the audiovisual, digital and video game sectors. The emblematic industrial heritage of the Tres Xemeneies, located in Sant Adrià del Besòs and operational between 1973 and 2011, became this morning the meeting point of what will be the future audiovisual and video game center Catalunya Media City.
During his visit to the facilities, still covered in mud, the president of the Generalitat Pere Aragonès emphasized the transformative potential for the Besòs area and for Catalonia that this ambitious project will entail, which is expected to be completed before 2030 and that It has an investment of 450 million euros. “Catalunya Media City is one of the great strategic commitments of the country that will allow foreign investment to be attracted to the area, with large international productions, and that the extraordinary talent we have in Catalonia emerge,” said Aragonès accompanied by the Minister of Culture, Natà lia Garriga, and the mayors of Sant Adrià de Besòs and Badalona, ​​Filo Cañete and Rubén Guijarro, respectively.
“It will be a transformation that will positively affect Catalonia and will allow the country’s audiovisual and digital industry to be a driving force at a European level. And that it does so hand in hand with the promotion of the Catalan language with the creation of audiovisual content in Catalanâ€. For the president, one of the major objectives of the project also has to do with contributing to the progress and transformation of the entire Besòs area: “We will turn the iconic image of a thermal power plant into an iconic image of the Catalan audiovisual industry” .
And he announced that the main lines of what will be the Catalunya Media City have already been designed. “Strategic spaces to be a global benchmark in research, training, professional specialization and services for the audiovisual and digital content sectors. On the one hand, a creative ‘hub’, with coworking spaces, laboratories and incubators for video game programming and, on the other hand, a set for the whole of the European audiovisual industry with infrastructures for filming at a national and international level, cutting-edge in the sector with a space that also contributes to growing these business projects and the competitiveness of our audiovisual industry at a global levelâ€.
Despite the fact that there is still a long way to go before the plan sees the light of day, some protagonists of the film industry have wanted to give their vision on the matter to La Vanguardia. “Everything that is done to increase audiovisual production in Catalonia seems fantastic to me. Although I don’t know much about the project, I think it will be interesting when it comes to attracting more filming. Betting on the audiovisual at a time when it is so important and doing it here is a good initiative. Catalan cinema is at a peak moment, they are beginning to produce films in Catalan with very competitive budgets at a European level and it is good news that we have this space to work. We will all go there to generate new synergiesâ€, points out the president of the Catalan Film Academy, Judith Colell.
The downside is the seven years that still remain: “We’ll see where we all are then, but I understand that something worth so much money needs time. And it’s a good time to take advantage of all the new funds that there are from the European Union and the possibilities that we have been given.” Asked about the Tres Cantos complex in Madrid, the second largest audiovisual center in Europe, Colell maintains that “Madrid will do what it wants but it doesn’t have the sea. We can offer other things such as proximity to France. Barcelona is a city that always it has attracted filming. Obviously, Madrid has gone ahead and the platforms have been installed there, but we cannot sit idly by or resign ourselves. We have to fight to recover our percentage of audiovisuals”.
For Jordi Oliva, president of the Federation of Audiovisual Producers (PROA), “that new opportunities are generated for filming in Catalonia seems fantastic to us because we had found ourselves in a situation where, due to a lack of spaces, many of the productions that were made in our house because of our partners they had to go abroad”. “However -he continues-, what independent producers have always defended is that the administrations bet both on the sets and on the retention of talent and the potential of the work made in Catalonia. We need to ensure that the commitment to the creation of the audiovisual works made here by our producers. It’s great that there are more sets, but we run the risk that we will only become a country of services”.
He argues that what has happened in Madrid “is directly unfair competition towards Catalonia because the Government of Pedro Sánchez has made a very radical commitment to attract foreign investment from the platforms with very favorable conditions and, instead of distributing these conditions to other places on the Peninsula, has concentrated everything in Madrid and has left the periphery at a disadvantage”. For this reason, Oliva does not believe that, to this day, any other project can overshadow that of Tres Cantos.
“Catalunya Media City has a lot of potential in many aspects, and when it is up and running it can be a very powerful pole of attraction, but it arrives with a late schedule. And when a foreign company wants to settle here, like Netflix, they talk to the government of Sánchez. So it is much easier for another platform to come to Madrid because Netflix is ​​already there. It has been a move by the State centralized in the capital of Spain.” Once Catalunya Media City is set up, who will convince them to come here? the producer questions. “At an international level, we will always follow what Spain has done institutionally in Madrid,” he concludes.
