On the morning of July 26th, Vice Mayor of the City of Barcelona, Mr. Jordi Portabella visited China Europe International Business School and attended the seminar of "Shanghai-Barcelona Tourism & Logistics". During the seminar, Mr. Portabella presented in details the advanced development of the City of Barcelona in logistics and tourism and the great opportunity of cooperation between Shanghai and Barcelona. More than 80 guests and friends participated in this event.
Mr. Portabella stated that Shanghai and Barcelona share many characteristics as twin-cities: Both of them are essential economic hubs in their countries, nurtured by historical business dynamics as port cities; and both have grown into cosmopolitan cities with distinctive local cultures. As one of the most important ports in Europe, Barcelona is gradually becoming the logistics center in South Europe, and attracting increasing freight traffic from China, mostly from Shanghai. As the most attractive city in Spain, Barcelona is welcoming the tourists from China.
The main purpose for Mr. Portabella's visit is to promote the relationship between the governments and business communities of both cities. In recent years, Shanghai and Barcelona have extensive cooperation in terms of economy, commerce, culture, tourism and environmental protection. As a matter of fact, the twin cities have developed better and closer partnership through the cooperation.
Mr. Huang Chenggang, Secretary General of Shanghai Municipal Administrative Commission said during the seminar that a total of nearly 50,000 tourists from Spain visited Shanghai in 2005 and the ratio has been increased by 45% from January to June this year. At the same time, there are more and more Shanghai visitors who went to Spain as tourists. The uptrend of cooperation between Shanghai and Spain is obvious in terms of tourism.
Barcelona enjoys its strategic geographical advantages as a port of the Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. It is the first port in the Mediterranean which achieved a throughput of 44 million tons per year, including 2 million standard containers, 800 thousand cars and 450 marine service lines. Barcelona port opens 113 container lines to 423 ports around the world, with a throughput growing by 10% per year. Given these statistics, Mr. Clemence Cheng, Director of European Office, Hutchison Port Holdings, stated in the seminar that, since Barcelona is the center of western Mediterranean, via which containers can be transported to other parts of Europe, it will help save a lot of time to transport goods from Asian countries and regions to European countries. He expressed the hope that Barcelona can be developed into a main gate to the western Mediterranean.
Professor Jaume Ribera, Port of Barcelona Chair Professor in Logistics, welcomed Mr. Portabella's visit. And he was looking forward to the strengthened relationship between Shanghai and Barcelona, which would bring about more fruitful cooperation in the near future.
