Good evening everyone, and welcome once again to Barcelona, welcome to Catalonia. We have missed you! After an extremely difficult year, we are delighted to be able to meet again in person, even if it is not to the extent that we would like. However, the fact that we are here today is thanks to the efforts of all our citizens, the dedication of our healthcare professionals, and the tremendous work of the researchers who have managed to develop a series of vaccines in record time.

Thanks to all these factors, we are starting to gradually return to normality, although at the same time it is obvious that the pandemic has changed absolutely everything. We are experiencing a change of era, and this also means that our way of life and, ultimately, the values of our society have also changed.

The pandemic has given a new focus to the very idea of life, and this must undoubtedly have an impact on the economy, because it is just as important to generate wealth as it is to generate wellbeing and prosperity for everyone. This is the keystone of economic reconstruction after COVID-19. We need to realise that we will not be going back to 2020, and that if we are to build a new world we have an obligation to make it better than what the coronavirus crisis has left behind.

This is one of the great challenges of the digital economy, the economy of Information and Communication Technologies. You have the whole future ahead of you, and this is precisely why it is essential that you put all your capacity for transformation into making people’s lives easier, kinder and happier. You have all the potential to do this. And if you work with this mentality, it will be a great pleasure for public institutions to support you.

This is one of the great challenges of the digital economy, the economy of Information and Communication Technologies. You have the whole future ahead of you, and this is precisely why it is essential that you put all your capacity for transformation into making people’s lives easier, kinder and happier. You have all the potential to do this. And if you work with this mentality, it will be a great pleasure for public institutions to support you.

If we look at this year’s programme for the Mobile World Congress, we must celebrate the fact that it is definitely moving in that direction. We need to address unavoidable issues if we really want to identify ourselves as an advanced, modern and constantly evolving society. In this respect, above and beyond the importance of the technological developments that will be unveiled over the next week in such key areas as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, the universalization of 5G technology, and research into 6G, I would really like to see the Congress give some serious attention to how we reduce the impact of the digital industry on the environment. It is clear that the fight against climate change affects us all, and an area as important as the entire digital environment must not lag behind. Hence the importance of the Green Agenda: We Act for Impact.

Similarly, it is very important that the Mobile World Congress itself is committed to gender equality through initiatives such as Diversity4Tech. It is not acceptable for the world of new technologies to be seen as a male domain, primarily as a matter of justice for 50% of humanity, but also because I am convinced that with the incorporation of women on an equal footing in every economic area we will be able to offer much better products to our citizens and, most importantly, provide a better service to society.

This is why I welcome the fact that GSMA and the Mobile World Congress itself are moving in the direction of a profound environmental and feminist transformation. These are goals that we share in Catalonia, and our own government sees them as an absolute priority. The aim is to improve the lives of our citizens. And here it is very important to work as a team to ensure that the potential of digitisation reaches every corner and every sphere of society. We need to guarantee a smooth digital transition. We must ensure that digitisation helps to unite society, yet at the same time we need to devote all our efforts to preventing it from exacerbating pre-existing social inequalities that fundamentally weaken the potential of our economy and our society.

I believe it is very important that all of us, together, move in this direction, supporting the transformative potential of digitisation not only at the social level but in the spheres that the pandemic has shown to be so vitally important, such as health, education and care.

This transformative potential also applies to the cultural arena, where languages and cultures such as mine, languages and cultures such as Catalan, must be able to see the digital world as an opportunity and not as a threat of standardisation in the face of the power of global languages and cultures.

Here in Catalonia we are absolutely certain. This is why our commitment to the digital economy, to investigation, to research, to technological innovation, to talent, are all strategic commitments to spearhead the reconstruction of our economic system once the economic crisis caused by COVID-19 is over.

We want to embark on our economic reconstruction by promoting the new ecosystem of opportunities in the digital world and the knowledge society. We have all the potential to do that. We have leading research and innovation centres. We have world-class universities. We have the talent. We have the ability to facilitate the transfer of knowledge. And we have a wonderful city and country that welcome you with open arms.

As President of Catalonia, I would like to wish you all a very enjoyable stay in Barcelona and Catalonia. Consider it your home. Because Barcelona and Catalonia are the best allies of the Mobile World Congress, and the best allies to ensure the progress of the digital economy reaches everyone.