Catalonia will gain two giant studios in Terrassa

BarcelonaThe Catalunya Media City project pivots largely on the transformation of the Tres Xemeneies del Besòs, but also includes Terrassa. The existing Audiovisual Park of Catalonia (PAC) in the co-capital of Vallès will double its filming area, with an expansion that will allow it to have two new large studios: one measuring 2,200 square meters—the largest in the country—and another measuring 1,000 square meters. The studio census at the end of 2023 indicated that, of the 68 available studios in Catalonia, only three exceeded 1,000 square meters.

The expansion project has a total investment of €13 million, of which €10 million will come from the Generalitat (Catalan Government) and the rest from the City Council. Construction is expected to begin in November 2026 and be completed in the summer of 2028. The resulting project will offer a Terrassa Audiovisual Park offering approximately 6,500 square meters of filming space, allowing the park to double the number of productions it handles annually. The Minister of the Presidency of the Generalitat (Catalan Government), Albert Dalmau, and the Mayor of Terrassa, Jordi Ballart, led the delegation that visited the space where these two new facilities will be located.

Last year, the PAC hosted 55 audiovisual projects, including fiction, commercials, and television programs, on top of an average that usually ranges between 35 and 60 productions, depending on whether the projects are long-running series or advertising projects. The planned large-scale studios will be multipurpose, so they can be used both for television programs that require a sizable audience and for large-format fiction that need a base camp in Terrassa for weeks or even months. One of the stated objectives is to entice streaming platforms to bring their filming to Catalonia.

"Terrassa already had the largest studio infrastructure in the country, but it was time to take a leap forward to support the success of the Catalan audiovisual sector," said Dalmau during the event, which also served to announce the tender for the works. The Minister of the Presidency also wanted to emphasize that, beyond industrial importance, having audiovisual muscle can play a significant role in promoting Catalan and asserted that "if we want a strong language," we must make it possible to facilitate local productions.

The planned sets, with a height of 15 and 12 meters, will have soundproofing, air conditioning, technical walkways to access the structures that illuminate and move the sets, and spaces equipped to host productions that use virtual filming technologies. Meanwhile, the future Parque Litoral is also beginning to define its role within this attempt to build a hub audiovisual, with an area of 89,052 square meters, dedicated primarily to innovation, training and technical specializations.