Barcelona will invest €104M to build a new R&D and innovation complex

The city of Barcelona will have a new R&D and innovation center that will involve an investment of €104 million. The Mercat del Peix, or Fish Market, will have an area of 46,000 square meters and is set to become one of Europe's major centers of scientific knowledge, research and innovation, and higher education.

The new complex, located in the Ciutadella Campus, will start operating in 2026 with 1,200 researchers. This is an initiative from the Barcelona City Council, the Government of Catalonia, the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), the University of Barcelona (UB), and the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), among other institutions.

The new complex will house a total of three buildings. On the one hand, the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) building will have 24,700 square meters and will host around 800 researchers and 60 research groups.

The second building will have 7,300 square meters and will house the UPF's Research and Innovation Center for Planetary Welfare. It will be a meeting point for researchers, with backgrounds in the experimental sciences and the social sciences and humanities.

Finally, the third building will have 6,500 meters and will house the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, a joint research center created in 2008 by the UPF and the Superior Council of Scientific Research (CSIC). The IBE will gather all its research staff at the new Mercat del Peix headquarters, where it will consolidate and expand its research project on evolution and biodiversity.

Source: Barcelona City Council