The president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, is committed to Catalunya freeing itself from complexes to become a hub for attracting talent in innovation and new technologies. From Palo Alto, a city integrated into the Californian Silicon Valley region, where Illa has met with leaders of local startups, the head of the Government has expressed the hope that Catalunya can “lead the next 10 years without asking anyone for permission.”
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During his first stage in San Francisco, Illa held a series of meetings with leaders, some Catalan, of technology companies such as Google, Apple, Expedia, HP, or NVIDIA, and accompanied by the president of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Josep Santacreu, and members of the Acció delegation in California, he held other business meetings aimed at “strengthening the alliance between Catalunya and California” in various fields, including health and research.
The president met with students from Stanford University, one of the five most prestigious in the world, where he spoke to assess the ambition Catalunya must have in assuming that leadership in the economic and technological field. In addition to presenting the Government’s roadmap in the current geopolitical environment and the importance of democratic and humanist values, Illa mentioned the political differences with the current U.S. Government.
As part of this visit to Stanford, he also visited the Stanford Mussallem Center for Biodesign, which is the world’s leading center for innovation in pediatrics, to learn firsthand about the collaboration this center maintains with the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital.
Both entities collaborate with the Impact4kids program, funded by the Generalitat, which is the first transatlantic cooperation program aimed at promoting projects focused on pediatric and maternal health and developing technological solutions such as medical devices, biotechnological, digital health, and healthcare services.
Illa concluded this day in San José and Santa Clara. In the former, the president attended the signing of two collaboration agreements of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), led by Mateo Valero, with two leading Silicon Valley technology companies: with Supermicro, specialized in comprehensive high-performance computing solutions, to boost European leadership in artificial intelligence; and with NVIDIA, a leader in the development of graphics processing units and artificial intelligence technologies.
In the latter case, the collaboration with the BSC will be extended and will focus on a key area, the development of sovereign European technological solutions.
Illa gave a positive assessment of this first day of work in California, “with very interesting discussions,” about the “need to put AI at the service of the common good, with regulatory mechanisms that, without hindering or obstructing innovation, guarantee the objective of putting it at the service of better healthcare or education…”
This Thursday, the president will begin his most political day, with meetings with the Lieutenant Governor of California, Eleni Kounalakis, and with the President of the California Senate, Monique Limón, both from the Democratic Party.
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