Located on the western shore of the Mediterranean Sea, Barcelona is bordered by the Collserola mountain range to the north, the river Besòs to the east and the river Llobregat to the west, and is only 160 km from the Pyrenean border with France. The city enjoys a privileged geographic location with a warm climate and pleasant temperatures year round.
Barcelona, also known as “the City of the Counts”, is the capital of Catalonia, a region with a long tradition of industry and innovation, situated in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, and of international renown for its artists, Pau Casals, Antoni Gaudí, Joan Miró, and Salvador Dalí, among others.
Barcelona was settled before Roman times and has since been continuously populated. This is clearly appreciable from its architecture and monuments, which reflect the distinct artistic movements, such as romanic, gothic, renaissance or contemporary, experienced by the city.
Although facilities related to research and innovation are distributed throughout Catalonia, most are located in belts in a radius of between 10 and 30 km around Barcelona. Geographically speaking, there is a belt that connects new technologies, associated with the B-30 road and that extends from the Vallès region to Maresme, and an inner belt, which hosts two large biomedical and biotechnology poles: Bellvitge in the Baix Llobregat region and the area named Barcelonès.
The Barcelona of the 21st century is a city shaped by the '92 Olympics, a city transformed for and by the need to do justice to that great international event, with the effort involved in carrying through this transformation allowing the city to overcome a series of historic disadvantages and make major quantitative and qualitative advances in its services and its physical fabric.
The Barcelona we see around us now, the Barcelona we enjoy today, is a new Barcelona, Mediterranean in keeping with its traditions, with its face to the sea and its arms open to other cultures and peoples, giving and receiving, happy to make and to share its riches.
At the same time the Barcelona of the 21st century, for all its transformations, has not severed its ties with a proud history in which so many generations of cultural diversities have built the firm foundations on which the innovations of modern times have constructed an utterly unique city with a personality that is all its own.
The Barcelona of the 21st century is a European capital of astonishing cultural energy and a passion for progress, a city whose day-to-day life brings together every imaginable facet of the most diverse activities: these are the potential that has fashioned the city's present and give it the impetus to move forward into the future.
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