From 26 to 29 May, Barcelona City Council took part in the institutional and business mission in Japan, together with ACCIÓ – Generalitat de Catalunya, to continue capturing high added value Japanese investment and consolidate Barcelona and Catalonia’s position as the main gateways for Japanese business in southern Europe.

The institutional agenda included meetings with representatives of the metropolitan government of Tokyo and those of Osaka, Yokohama and Kobe, a city that has been twinned with Barcelona for more than 30 years. These are priority cities in Barcelona City Council’s Asia Strategy (the first city strategy addressing Barcelona’s relations with the region) and also cities with significant involvement in the Expo World Congress in Barcelona.

Direct flights between Japan and Barcelona

Meetings have also been held with the country’s main airlines, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways, to try to establish direct flights between Barcelona and Japan. The launch of a direct flight between Tokyo and Barcelona would help to meet the currently unmet demand for a route with a high volume of traffic and would boost personal, academic and cultural exchange between the two countries, as well as strengthening economic ties, and at the same time would support the growing Japanese community and tourism in Catalonia.

A series of business meetings were held to further strengthen what are already very close economic relations between the two countries. Catalonia now accounts for some 40% of all trade between Spain and Japan, making our region the main gateway for Japanese business in southern Europe. For a number of decades now, Japanese businesses such as Sony, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Yamaha, have chosen Barcelona and Catalonia as a production or marketing base for the European market.

A joint event was also held in collaboration with ACCIÓ – Generalitat de Catalunya, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and the RIKEN Center for Computational Science, which manages the Fugaku supercomputer located in Kobe, one of the most powerful in the world, to share experiences with leading figures from industry and academia with regard to advances and solutions offered by supercomputing, quantum computing and chips to model and promote real solutions to urban problems, and to position Barcelona as a world-leading technological ecosystem, thanks to advanced research infrastructures such as the BSC.

Catalan Week at the Osaka World Expo

In the Spanish Pavilion, and during Catalan Week, which went under the slogan “Catalonia, land of innovation and avant-garde”, around 120 events, actions, exhibitions and tasting sessions were held to showcase Catalan culture.