All these designers helped to make Barcelona once again a place of reference

They did it through education. The result is that nowadays Barcelona has more schools of design than New York City. Students from all over the world come here to study.

Many of them establish themselves in the city or do internships in local offices. Low cost flights and the internet have made it possible for offices located outside our borders with equally foreign clients to establish themselves in Barcelona, attracted not only by the good quality of life and the nice climate, but by the certain aura of contemporariness and the sense of design that the city possesses.

This creative generation no longer feels the previous generational pressure; the boom of the eighties is not a roof that nobody dares approach anymore. In fact, they walk on this roof of glass without any fear, in spite of its fragility. They did not know the golden times but grew up in the crisis, from this they have gained their strength.

BARCELONA, an ideal place to CONSTRUCT A BRIDGE BETWEEN EUROPEAN AND LATIN AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

The presence in our city of a wide number of professionals coming from South and Central America places the city in a privileged watchtower and simultaneously diffuses what is produced in this part of the world. Furthemore, it is a breeding centre for new ideas, resting on a great critical mass of students and investigators, a live archive of design tradition, assisted by a good number of experts and historians and a cultural bridge between continents.

If we manage to conserve these three elements, Barcelona will have a future. On the contrary, if we allow ourselves to become engrossed in our golden past with its glass roof, we will be nothing but a pretty example in design history, with no current importance and no future.