2026 begins with new appointments at Catalan companies, including two familiar faces from Spanish politics. Former minister and former Speaker of the Congress Meritxell Batet joins the board of Sateliot, and former regional minister Àngels Chacón will head LLYC's Barcelona office. AstraZeneca's subsidiary in Spain and Iberia also starts the year with the appointment of female executives.

AstraZeneca, Hipra, and Sanofi are some of the names of the laboratories that the citizens of Catalonia began to learn about as a result of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Since then, in just four years (between 2020 and 2024), up to 23 hubs Digital and healthcare excellence companies have established themselves in Barcelona and its metropolitan area, solidifying the Catalan capital's position as a leading hub for healthcare investment. The arrival of these companies has generated up to 5,000 new jobs and positioned Barcelona as the only Spanish city to appear in the EMEA ranking—which encompasses Europe, the Middle East, and Africa—for attracting global healthcare investment. This is one of the main conclusions drawn from the report. The Barcelona metropolis. Investing, working and living in 2025The study, presented this Tuesday by the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, compiles data from over 80 different indicators. According to the study, which shows that the greater Barcelona area has climbed to 12th position among the capital cities attracting the most investment in healthcare, at a level very similar to Zurich, Munich, and Dublin, but still far behind London, Paris, and Cambridge, which lead the rankings. Barcelona's position improves even further, to 9th, when we look at the health technology companies subsector. More companies and a stronger position also translate into greater talent attraction, more research, and more publications. The Barcelona metropolis has established itself as the ninth European region in scientific output and the 50th in the world. In 2023 alone, more than 1,500 articles were registered, representing 25% of the total published throughout Spain. The life sciences and health sector also attracted more than 25,500 graduates (with bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees) in scientific fields that year. And overall, Catalonia maintains its 3rd position in Europe in the number of "highly cited" publications per million inhabitants regarding advanced therapies, only behind Switzerland and the Netherlands. During the presentation, the president of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Josep Santacreu, argued that to maintain this level, Barcelona must further strengthen its overall vision. "Our future involves presenting ourselves to the world as a metropolis that is larger than just the city of Barcelona," he said. From the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), the vice president for social and economic development, Jordi Valls, emphasized the importance of public-private collaboration and asserted that the success of the health sector also brings "direct benefits" to citizens: strengthening the public health system and improving the salary structure.

AstraZeneca has launched its own hub global in Barcelona, ​​in the Estel building, formerly occupied by Telefónica. The company's president in Spain, Rick R. Suárez, took advantage of the inauguration ceremony to ask the Spanish government for "agility, stability, and a long-term vision" to guarantee the competitiveness of the pharmaceutical and scientific sectors. He made these remarks during the opening of this headquarters at an event also attended by President Salvador Illa; the Minister of Health, Mónica García; and the Mayor of Barcelona, ​​Jaume Collboni, among other high-ranking officials.

There's no trace left of the Telefónica antennas that once occupied its entire terrace. Nor of the telephone exchanges that connected home landlines to the network, located at the rear of the first floors, without windows "so that a bit of dust wouldn't get in," as former company employees recall.

It's been a little less than three months since a pioneering ruling issued in Barcelona recognized the blood clots suffered by a teacher after being vaccinated against COVID with AstraZeneca doses as an occupational accident. Now, the Social Court No. 3 of Burgos has issued a very similar ruling, but with one relevant difference: in this case, the affected woman had received a first dose of AstraZeneca and two of Pfizer.

Among the various complaints from those affected by the after-effects of the COVID vaccination, one has resulted in a groundbreaking ruling made public this Friday. A Barcelona court was the first to recognize the blood clots suffered by a high school teacher after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine as an occupational accident. Side effects that, just a year ago, the same pharmaceutical company admitted within the framework of a judicial process before the English Supreme Court.

Barcelona has become a magnet for international companies' hubs. The latest to announce that it will establish its new development centre in the Catalan capital is pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. The hub will focus on accelerating the development of next-generation drugs in the field of rare diseases. The project will create up to 100 specialised R&D jobs over the next two years and has the support of ACCIÓ, the Catalan government's agency for business competitiveness.

People under the age of 60 vaccinated with a first dose from AstraZeneca will receive a second dose from Pfizer if the Ministry of Health's proposal goes ahead. The public health commission continues to debate this possibility and it will have to be ratified on Wednesday by the Interterritorial Health Council, which is made up of the Ministry of Health and the health ministers of the autonomous communities. The decision, however, will not be unanimous because governments such as those of Madrid and Andalusia are in favour of completing the guideline with AstraZeneca.

The Spanish Ministry of Health has decided to further delay the decision on what to do with people under the age of 60 who have been vaccinated with AstraZeneca. The decision is taking so long that some of those immunised will have exceeded the 12-week limit between the first and second dose set by the manufacturer. The reason is that the ministry wants to wait for the results of a clinical trial with 600 people that is being carried out by the Carlos III Health Institute to check that a first dose of AstraZeneca can be combined with a second dose of Pfizer. The problem is that if the 12-week period established by AstraZeneca is exceeded, there is a risk that the immunising effect of the first dose will be lost.

Spain continues to force the calendars to decide what to do with the second doses of AstraZeneca after limiting its supply to those under 60. There are a total of two million people affected in Spain as a whole, 200,000 of them in Catalonia. They are members of groups considered as essential -educational staff, police, firefighters, prison officers, and so on- who began to receive the first dose in early February but the thrombosis cases' alert paralysed the second dose.

"Every dose counts. Every dose saves lives." With this message, Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides announced on Monday that the European Union has definitively started legal proceedings against Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Last week the European Commission sounded out European governments to take the initiative, and after obtaining their support the EU executive has decided to file the complaint.

The pace of vaccination continues to accelerate in the State after the problems with AstraZeneca and Janssen, which led the European Union to entrust Pfizer with the purchase of 50 million additional doses this quarter. Thus, the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, announced on Monday from La Rioja that today Spain will beat the record of arrival and distribution of vaccines among regions, with the arrival of more than 2 million doses in a single day. Specifically, it is 1,763,190 from Pfizer, 103,200 from AstraZeneca and 188,400 from Moderna, while waiting for Janssen to send the second shipment promised for April. As for Catalonia, it will receive 280,000 doses from Pfizer, 30,200 from Moderna and 16,900 from AstraZeneca.

New escalation of the open conflict between the European Union and AstraZeneca. The European Commission is finalising preparations for a lawsuit against the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company for failure to deliver millions of doses of its vaccine. The president of the EU executive already threatened the company a few weeks ago with all options after the company communicated that in the second quarter of the year it would not deliver even half of the agreed doses, and since alternatives have had to be sought, the EU has decided to start legal proceedings.

After the request of the Generalitat de Catalunya and some other autonomous communities such as Andalusia, the Ministry of Health is now willing to delay the second dose of Pfizer eight weeks for the under-80s. Administering the doses further apart will allow more be people to receive the first dose, which already offers protection against coronavirus of 52%. Catalan Government sources have confirmed on Monday that this is included in the draft proposals by the Spanish Ministry of Health to be discussed on Tuesday by the public health commission. Until now, the Spanish government had been reluctant to take this approach.

Marred by constant distribution breaches, changes in age criteria and now also dogged by its link to rare cases of thrombosis, the Oxford/AstraZeneca (UK) vaccine was approved for use on 29 January 2021 and the UK had already licensed it in December. The technology it uses - genetically modified attenuated virus, in this case chimpanzee adenovirus - has previously been used to produce vaccines against Ebola and Zika. It is the same mechanism of action as the Janssen and Russian Sputnik V vaccines. It is licensed in a dozen countries, although some have stopped vaccination after the cases of thrombosis.

In the midst of the controversy over the cases of thrombi associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made a gesture of confidence in the British company and has received a dose herself. Through a tweet on the chancellery's official account, Merkel said she was "delighted" to have received the injection. "I thank everyone who is involved in the vaccination campaign and everyone who gets vaccinated. Vaccination is the key to overcoming the pandemic"

The European Commission is throwing itself into Pfizer/BioNTech's hands. After problems with AstraZeneca and new complications with the Janssen vaccine, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has announced that these delays are expected be compensated for with Pfizer vaccines, which will advance to this April the delivery of 50 million doses initially planned for the fourth quarter. Of these 50 million, five million are for Spain. It has also confirmed negotiations for a third contract with Pfizer/BioNTech Pharmaceuticals to secure up to 1.8 billion additional doses between 2022 and 2023.

After the stop of vaccination with AstraZeneca for those under 60 years of age, the big unresolved question is what happens to the younger people who have already received one dose and were expecting the second dose from May 3. The head of the vaccination plan in Catalonia, Dr. Carmen Cabezas, today wanted to send a message of "tranquility" to these people and insisted that with a single dose of the vaccine they "already have a very important protection" and that, from the experience of what has happened in the UK, they know that the serious adverse effects that can occur "always" take place with the first injection. In an interview with Catalunya Ràdio, the doctor is confident that a decision on the issue will be taken next week by the health ministry's vaccines committee.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has concluded that thrombi may be a side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine in very rare cases and recommends continuing with the vaccination, as it argues that the benefits outweigh the risks. However, some countries have changed their vaccination schedule, including Spain, which will now vaccinate only the over-60s with AstraZeneca. This rare clotting disorder occurs in one case per 300,000 inhabitants "and in Europe there are 25 million people who have received the vaccine," says Carlos Molina, head of the stroke unit of the Hospital de la Vall d'Hebron, who believes that this does not justify stopping the vaccination campaign. "I think it is a decision that does not conform to scientific arguments that support the non-vaccination of a certain population group. A few weeks ago it was not possible to vaccinate those over 55 years and now only those over 60 years, there is no robust scientific justification. The benefit of the vaccine is far above the potential risk," says this doctor. We have spoken with him to clarify the doubts and fears that the AstraZeneca vaccine has generated.

New change in the vaccination protocols with AstraZeneca in Spain after the latest decision by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The Ministry of Health and most of the communities have decided to vaccinate only people over 60 with the doses developed by the Oxford laboratory after the cases linked to thrombi in younger people, as ARA has learned. This is the same decision taken by Germany at the end of March, and represents a reversal of the initial criterion. France and Belgium also only administer the Anglo-Swedish preparation to people over the age of 55.