Eduardo González
Yesterday, King Felipe VI inaugurated the GSMA Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2024, the most relevant event in the world in terms of connectivity, in which the president of Paraguay, Santiago Peña, participated as the main speaker.
MWC Barcelona 2024, which began yesterday and will conclude on February 29, has become the largest and most influential mobile and technology industry event for the connectivity ecosystem.
The King was received upon his arrival at the Fira de Barcelona by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, moments before Santiago Peña’s arrival at the venue. Next, Don Felipe and the president of Paraguay greeted the Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu; to the Minister for Digital Transformation and the Public Service, José Luis Escrivá, to several Paraguayan ministers (Foreign Relations, Rubén Ramírez; Minister of Industry and Commerce, Javier Jiménez; and Technology and Communications, Gustavo Illate) and to the ambassador of Spain in Asunción, Carmen Castiella, among other authorities.
After the greeting, the King and Peña entered the Mobile World Congress Main Stage, where they visited the stands of the MWCapital Barcelona Foundation, the Catalonia Pavilion, the Spanish Pavilion, GSMA (in which Pedro Duque, president of Hispasat, gave a presentation of a project of the European Space Agency), Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone. Subsequently, the Monarch held a meeting and lunch with the main officials of the Fair and the MWC, along with the highest representatives of prominent companies in the technology sector.
For his part, Pedro Sánchez held several meetings with representatives of leading companies in the telecommunications and information society sector, to whom he highlighted Spain’s leadership position in digital transformation, as well as the Government’s commitment to opportunities. offered by artificial intelligence.
The Paraguayan president, Santiago Peña, opened one of the panels, titled Steering the Digital Economy, in which he assured that Paraguay “is embarked on the idea of becoming a Green Technology Hub, with state-of-the-art research facilities and technology parks. full of innovation”, and stated that his country “is the natural center of connectivity in the region, the place where the Humboldt and Ella fiber links merge the Asia Pacific with Europe.”
Peña also took advantage of his intervention to highlight the strength of Paraguay, a country that, he assured, has left behind the mentality of isolation. “We now understand that our strategic geographic location in the heart of South America does not exclude us; On the contrary, it places us in the center,” he said, reported on the website of the Paraguayan Presidency.
The president also assured that Paraguay is becoming one of the economies with the highest growth rates in recent years in South America and is actively developing projects and investing in infrastructure to become a competitive regional hub, located in the center of a market of more than 300 million people and “with huge and busy neighbors like Brazil and Argentina.”
“I am convinced that Paraguay is destined to become the next great success story of the Western Hemisphere,” he continued. “My country is ready to launch into the digital age, fueled by clean energy and the unlimited potential of our people to foster a knowledge-based economy,” he concluded.
