The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya has issued a statement critical of the decision of the government of Badalona (Barcelonès Nord) to abandon the project to locate an innovation center managed by the CIM Foundation of the UPC in the CACI factory. They remember that it was the city council itself that contacted them to define a project for the factory site that "would contribute to the transfer of technology to the productive sector of Badalona."
From January 2022 to last June 2023, the statement continues, the UPC was working intensely to make “an innovative project, shared governance and alliance generator that involved placing Badalona on the map of local innovation ecosystems” a reality. Two years later, and with three million euros committed by the Ministry of Science and Universities "we found out through the media that the City Council is renouncing the project and the financing."
The university center details that the decision was made two months before the deadline set in the meeting held with the City Council, where the City Council made them aware of the decision to substantially reduce their participation in the financing. They also deplore that the Garcia Albiol government “undervalues the contacts that the UPC had made with supra-municipal institutions” which, according to them, would have helped give the final push that the project needed.
The UPC appreciates the alliances, willingness and complicity they have maintained with relevant entities, such as the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute, the Guttmann Institute, the Construction Labor Foundation and the Badalona Fablab, among others. They also thank the municipal technical staff and the linked economic entities, but they assure that "the CIM-UPC project is still going strong".
They consider that the innovation and research carried out by the UPC, through the CIM foundation, in the field of industry 4.0 is a sector that is fully empowered for the reindustrialization of the country. The UPC, they assure, will continue to be present in Barcelonès Nord, expanding its activity on the Diagonal-Besòs Campus and collaborating in the Tres Xemeneies audiovisual hub project and maintaining the maximum willingness to start new projects in the territory.
