facebook

Bringing hundreds of new jobs and confirming Barcelona as a thriving tech hub, Facebook is to open a major centre in the Spanish city to combat the emerging threat of ‘fake news’.

More than 500 people will be employed at the Torre Glòries site, as part of an international drive to regain trust in Facebook’s social media platform following revelations of illegal use of users’ data. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently appeared in front of the US Congress to explain how he would prevent misuse of data in future.

The centre will complement an existing office in Essen, Germany, and will filter false messages, spam, and those which incite hatred or promote terrorism. It will be managed by Competence Call Center (CCC) which is headquartered in Vienna and operates in nine European countries.

New European rules on data privacy come into force on 25 May, which will require companies like Facebook to provide more transparency on its privacy settings and allow users to delete the contents of their biographies.

Barcelona’s overall economy is in good health, with its GDP rising by 3.3 per cent annually, thanks to a strong construction sector, growing at twice the rate of the national Spanish construction industry. Public sector construction is particularly strong.

The Catalan Institute of Finance announced that it had financed almost 1,200 businesses in 2017, providing 13 per cent more capital than the previous year. “There is an increase in the supply of credit,” said Josep-Ramon Sanromà, bank CEO. “There is a lot of competition between businesses and favourable conditions to finance SMEs.”

Torre Glòries, the 38-storey Barcelona office building completed in 2005, sits just a few minutes away from GRE Assets’ Bac de Roda residential project, which is making good progress. Its masonry work is nearing completion and the internal walls are now under construction.