The Barcelona Chamber of Commerce hopes to move its headquarters to 22@ in 2026 with an agreement with the Barcelona City Council that would occupy 13 of the 20 floors of the building, as explained yesterday by the president, Mònica Roca, and the managing director, Eva Borràs. An investment of 50 million euros is expected, which would be carried out by the concessionaire company for the management of the property, according to those responsible for the Chamber.
The current Diagonal headquarters is under construction in order to adapt it to accommodate companies, especially start-ups. Roca calculates that there will be about 200. The building has seven floors and with the reform the Chamber will only occupy three.
Work on the Diagonal building is expected to end in April 2023. Among other projects, a digital hub and coworking spaces are expected to be located there.
With the 22@ project, the Chamber recovers a project promoted by former president Miquel Valls, who years ago already reached an agreement with the City Council. Now, the agreement has not yet been definitively closed, according to Borràs. The building will be located at the intersection of Diagonal and Selva de Mar.
Mònica Roca presented the new logo of the institution and took stock of the management in these three years of mandate of the Eines de País team, which won the elections in 2019. The Chamber faces its next elections in May and at the moment only Eines de País has expressed his willingness to appear.
According to Roca, the institution has ceased to be a corporation focused on processing and managing training courses to become a business support entity focused on the new economy, innovation and internationalization. Through different programs, support has been given to boost the competitiveness of more than 35,000 companies during these almost three and a half years.
The effort, Roca continued, was particularly notable during the pandemic with the program aimed at supporting the survival of businesses. He attended to 11,000 companies, which were helped above all in digitization and in the search for sources of financing.
“It is not only important to grow but how to grow”, underlined Roca, who highlighted the sustainable mobility hub, the blockchain center of Catalonia and the commitment to the space economy among the initiatives of the Chamber.
