It is probable that relations between Barcelona and Madrid are today more battered than ever in recent history. The ideological gap between the parties that govern in one city/community, the media stridency and the hangover from the political conflict have exacerbated the differences and multiplied the manifestations of contempt.
In institutional terms, a rapprochement between the two cities is as unlikely as the provocative kiss between Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Ada Colau that those responsible for the Primavera Sound festival staged a few weeks ago.
The theoretical exercise proposed by the two professors who sign the latest Esade MBA City Monitor by suggesting what would happen if Barcelona and Madrid went hand in hand can also have a certain provocative reading. But there is no doubt that its statement is in tune with new approaches and unifying trends that are developed in the economic, urban or cultural spheres in the midst of globalization.
The authors of the report, Ivan Bofarull and Natalia Olson, have decided to connect the potential of Barcelona and Madrid in this year's ranking and the result suggests that, if both cities added their strengths, they would become the fourth innovation hub in the world, ahead of that Silicon Valley that has been the reference of the technological revolution for years.
Bofarull, head of innovation at Esade, and Olson, director of the Plug
The frequency of train and plane connections makes Barcelona and Madrid probably the two best-connected big cities in the world. In practice, this hypercommunication reduces the geographical distance to levels that in other global cities would be considered typical of a mere metropolitan displacement.
The study primarily takes into account the ability of cities to attract international MBA students. This indicator is the one that receives the most weight in the ranking, but the authors wanted to combine it with two other variables: the venture capital financing received in the area studied and the number of high-level universities that offer computer science or technology studies. in the same metropolitan region.
If the scores obtained by Madrid in these three rankings were added, Barcelona (ranked sixth) would jump two places overall, ahead of Paris and San Francisco-Silicon Valley. Or, seen from the other side, Madrid, hand in hand with the Catalan capital, would go from thirteenth to fourth place on the list.
Specifically, the Barcelona-Madrid union would be in third place in attracting MBAs; in the 22 in the attraction of risk capital and in the 27 in technological universities. Both professors admit that the result would be even more evident if more subjective factors were also assessed, such as quality of life, a competitive advantage in which both cities usually score very high in the rankings.
It is, obviously, a theoretical approach, but it would be wrong to consider it as a mere academic entertainment. Because the de facto emergence of a joint Barcelona-Madrid pole of attraction (an idea that can generate rejection in large sectors of the two cities) does not go unnoticed by companies and professionals with a more open mentality or by foreign investors, who consider that By settling in one city, they actually have one foot in the other and can thus add up all the complementary advantages that both offer.
Political and sporting hostility often overshadows the collaboration that develops in other areas. For example, in culture, with cases such as synergies in a highly connected publishing sector; the fluid collaboration between similar institutions such as the Liceu and the Teatro Real; the business schools, such as Esade itself, which carry out their activity simultaneously in the two squares or the abundance of artists and professionals who have decided to make the leap from Barcelona to Madrid and vice versa.
This same week, the Foment and CEIM employer associations met to talk about tourist, cultural and gastronomic cooperation between Barcelona and Madrid. The need to establish more fluid relations between the two cities had also been raised days before during the meeting of the Harvard Group promoted by IESE professor Pedro Nueno.
In addition, the Barcelona-Madrid concept is in tune with the projections of interconnected megalopolises made by geographers and urban planners. The same reasoning that allows one to speak of BosWash or the Northeast Corridor (the sum of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington) or SanSan (the cities between San Francisco and San Diego-Tijuana) could be used to propose an axis of innovation in southern Europe that is structured around Madrid and Barcelona: Madbarna or Barnamad.
In this context, Bofarull and Olson admit that this global pole of attraction and innovation that Barcelona and Madrid would form if their mental borders were more porous should seek the fit of the cities that surround them to gain specific weight, such as the poles of Valencia and Malaga. . With Lisbon included.
In any case, the positioning of Barcelona in this latest MBA City Monitor confirms that the Catalan capital retains, despite everything, its status as an attractive city. In the last ranking, from 2018, Barcelona was also the sixth city in attracting talent. Ivan Bofarull highlights the importance of this indicator to assess the health of a city in terms of its attractiveness, since the person who enrolls in an MBA must make a large financial and time investment and thinks about it a lot before taking a decision.
