The rebirth of Malaga

08 Sep The rebirth of Malaga

Francisco de la Torre, Mayor, Malaga, explains why Malaga is going after the big prizes as it works to transform its economy in the post-Covid era into an innovative center that attracts tourists from all over the world.

In 2019, the city of Malaga broke records in tourist figures since historical records existed, thus consolidating itself as a great European destination and held the title of European Capital of Smart Tourism in 2020. The mayor traveled to Paris in October 2019 to communicate to the BIE his intention of putting Malaga forward as host of an International Exhibition in 2027. To what extent has the COVID 19 pandemic hindered these plans? How do you see the recovery of Malaga in the post-COVID 19 scenario?

With the dynamism and growth in city tourism, Malaga, which was the Spanish city that had grown the most in the past 15 or 20 years, suffered a very sharp drop in 2020 in all the statistics that have to do with tourism, hotel occupancy, visitors. It is reflected in the life of the city. This will be recovered as the health issue is settled, as vaccine distribution spreads and with measures such as the one we have taken concerning antigen tests for restaurant and hotel staff, which helps create safe spaces.

In the existing reactivation plans, which are currently being proposed within the European framework known as Next Generation EU, we have presented many projects that follow that path, from digital Malaga, from the Malaga committed to the environment. And there we have more than hope. I would say that we will take very strong, solid and important steps in this matter, hand in hand with what we could call public-private collaboration that will be very present and that is the way of providing considerable credibility to this content: projects that have the solid backing of many interested and committed companies in Malaga. Today there is news that Google wants to create its cybersecurity center in Malaga within the framework of investments in Spain, to mention one example. But there are many.

The Expo project does not depend solely on us; it depends on the Spanish government seeing it as something important and interesting. I think there are reasons for them to see it. It is a project proposed as an International Exhibition, which is much more economical than the so-called Universal Exhibition; and very useful because it emphasizes the sustainability of cities, the era of cities. The 21st century is a century in which we will witness how the urban population continues to grow percentage wise, especially in emerging countries; this has already happened in the more developed countries. The percentage of the urban population will reach 80 percent in a few years and therefore it is very interesting to respond to the challenges that cities have today at the environmental, social, and economic levels, so that they can be extrapolated and made applicable to the cities that are now growing in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, regions where population growth in general is high and where, above all, there is the transfer from rural areas to urban ones.

These technological challenges, and how to solve them, is what the Expo tries to bring to our countries, cities, companies, research centers, universities. It is very suggestive and the opportunity to do it in Spain is good for the image of Malaga, for the image of Andalusia, but especially for Spain, Spanish companies and research centers.

In the context of tourism, I wanted to complete the reply to your question with the vision of a city that has been working on innovation issues. Felipe Romera will have given you the data for Malaga Tech Park where there are 20,000 workers, practically half from the very powerful ICT sector. And there is an innovation ecosystem, not only at the technology park, Malaga Tech Park, but also the “Polo Nacional de Contenidos Digitales” (National Pole for Digital Content) which is in the city, and the Cultural and Technological Complex of Tabacalera, both quite important. It will have about 12,000 square meters. It already has an open part that is working very well. We have created more than 200 start-ups through incubation and acceleration. The video game line of the “Polo” makes Malaga one of the most important video game production and reality centers in Spain. And this is due to the Polo, which is still relatively new, has barely been open for 4 years and we have the great satisfaction of working on it.

Malaga has agreements with many companies and it is a city quite open to experimenting with Smart City improvements. We are an urban laboratory and we are proud of it. Apart from the joint Spanish and Japanese government electric car project, the Zero Emissions Mobility for All, we have the Malaga Smart City of Endesa, smart networks and meters, several electric buses. We have a bus that is testing the technology with a ground-based recharging system, allowing it to recharge at the necessary stops. It is experimental but working on the university line. I include it as an example of how we are a city which is wide open to innovation. Companies value that very much when it comes to investing in Malaga.

You have been receiving the overwhelming support of the citizens of Malaga since 2000 and you continue to enjoy their support five elections later. There is no doubt that you have connected with the people of Malaga. What do you think this connection is based on?

If I may make this reflection basing my answer on the way of working and promoting the work of the teams I was in charge of, which have been and are magnificent. Always counting with good teams, with area managers, with councilors and good management teams is very important. In politics, work should always be considered a service to the common good, a service to the general interest. If you work in that direction, if people see that there is no strategy of personal promotion but of city promotion, that is the essential thing: defending the interests of the city apart from any other approach that may exist from other administrations.

The Andalusian territory in general, and Malaga in particular, has potential, due to its climate, its landscape, and its quality of life. These years we have tried to add to those very good natural conditions that the city has as reasons to make an attractive city for the people of Malaga andfor those who come from abroad. We want to make it as clean as possible, as quiet as possible (always a complicated subject) and and also offer great culture.

Under your mandate, the city of Malaga has become a national and European cultural center. Already in 2016 the New York Times positioned Malaga as a cultural center in process, making reference to the museums installed in the city and the future prospects in other domains such as theater, cinema and architecture. How has the city evolved since then in this regard, and what are you most proud of?

It is difficult to point out which aspects of the city, in fact, motivate greater pride. I believe it is the way things are set. Since 2016 we have continued along that path, with increasing force, with more quality and ambition in the temporary exhibitions themselves.

In the last 4 years, the Spanish Film Festival has seen improvements, making it also for all Spanish-speaking movies, opening it up to Latin America. A link has also been made to the the production and the commercialization of audiovisual products in general. I would say that those aspects are the most significant ones in cultural matters. But there are also the museums, and I mentioned a few before in the ranking. There has always been a healthy competition among them to see who does it best.

In technological matters, in these years, the “Polo Nacional de Contenidos Digitales,” the National Digital Content Pole, has been added. Momentum is very important. And right now we are living very special moments, relying on the New Generation funds, to be able to take a step forward in the technological Malaga.Referring to the effect of 2020 and the fall of GDP in the peninsula, the press published that the most affected province has been Malaga. Taking all of Spain into account, the Balearic and Canary Islands are obviously ahead due to the fact that they rely heavily on tourism, but on mainland Spain, Malaga relying on tourism translates as a significant drop. And therefore, we have to work to recover that normality in the tourism sector and reinforce very strongly what are the important areas of the sector in the 21st century. Regarding services, it is the industry linked to the digital world, to the world of microelectronics. There are many aspects where industry and services overlap, but all arelinked to the world of the internet, the digital world, the world of technological advancement.

Perhaps a lesser known aspect is the development of Malaga as a center for industrial and business innovation. We already had the opportunity to speak with the head of Malaga Tech Park in this regard. How does the City Council collaborate to promote this aspect of business innovation?

In many ways. We deeply believe in it as a city strategy, and it dates back to the mid-1990s, when the first strategic plan was passed in 1996. Personally, I believe in Malaga’s potential in a very clear way.

First of all, we believe a lot in the capacity of a modern university in this regard, and we have helped the university thoroughly: of its 2 million square meters of university campus, the second half of the square meters is assigned by the city council, the first part being jointly assigned with the provincial council.

At Malaga Tech Park we are partners. The city council and the regional government are founders, and we have permanently maintained the effort and momentum. The National Digital Content Pole, Polo Nacional de Contenidos Digitales, is a 100 perent municipal operation with support from Red.ES, with European funds, from the Ministry of Industry, but where we have been and always are very present.

I would also like to mention a Malaga initiative company, from the city council, which has a network of incubators and accelerators. We have made an accelerator with Telefónica, called La Farola, in the cultural and technological complex of the old Tabacalera, which works very well. There are many milestones of that collaboration.

I insist above all on a city that is open to the tests and innovation of all those who want to put innovative projects in any aspect that means greater quality of life thanks to technology. We are creating a very interesting ecosystem, one of the most powerful technological innovation ecosystems in Europe and the world. That is our ambition.

We are open to the arrival of private universities. The specifications for the tender of two differentiated plots for at least two private universities projects have been announced. That will surely result in a more powerful contribution to education by allowing a sound competition with public universities. This issue is key to advancing cutting-edge technologies.

We also want our vocational training to be in contact with the business world and we have facilitated these contacts to adapt it, in agreement with the regional government, to this increasingly clear demand. There are experts who say that we don’t even know the professions, both at the university level and at the vocational training level, that are going to be necessary in Europe in 10, 15 or 20 years. Therefore, it is necessary to have a very versatile, capable, high-quality training with a lot of flexibility to be up to the challenges that will be demanded from our universities and vocational training centers.

At the level of economic and tourist development, during your term in office you have influenced the development of luxury hotels, for both leisure and business travelers, with high purchasing capacity. Do you consider the current offer sufficient?

The offer we have is good but we need more 4 and 5-star hotels. I insist on this because congresses, for example, miss the fact that Malaga—and Malaga is a very beautiful and attractive city for congresses—could be able to negotiate packages of 200 or 300 congressmen in a single hotel, not divided and distributed among several hotels. This happens for two reasons: because we have not had enough offers as we have grown practically from scratch tourism at the beginning of this 21st century to now where we are already a city that is noticed and appreciated in that matter, and then because the hotels are very busy. In percentage of occupancy it is one of the highest in Spain, with a good profit margin in this sense. We need more 5-star hotels because it is a complement in congress tourism and because it is also the tourism of high purchasing power and spending that we seek and that matters a great deal to us.

Tourism must grow not so much in quantity but in quality. We do not want to be a city with mass tourism, but rather have a sufficient number of tourists who, with their high purchasing power, generate the wealth and employment that our tourism sector obviously needs. Therefore, we should concentrate on that tourism of the highest possible quality.