The Generalitat activates the creation of a "sovereign public cloud" in Catalonia to strengthen Catalan digital autonomy. The executive of Salvador Illa has opened the tender for the contract this Tuesday, with an estimated total value of up to 481 million euros during the first eight years, although the objective is to "maintain it once this period has passed". The new infrastructure will allow hosting 40% of the Catalan administration's digital services and data to "comply with the highest level of European sovereignty achievable today". According to the Government's forecasts, the service will come into operation during the second half of 2027 and will be fully operational during the third quarter of next year. The Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, has highlighted the capacity of the new Catalan cloud to "protect and store" citizens' data and public services.

The Barcelona City Council, with the Barcelona Knowledge Hub of the European Academy (managed by the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation), annually awards the Barcelona Hypatia European Science Prize to a researcher based in Europe (not necessarily in the EU-27). The existence of the prize responds to a strategic choice by a city council interested in highlighting its city's scientific capital. Prizes give recognition and credit to those who receive them, but also to those who give them. There are many scientific prizes in the world, but they are typically international, national, or sub-national in scope. There are very few European ones. It is a surprising lack (the EU had them but, I don't know why, abolished them) and an opportunity for the Hypatia prize, which has already covered six editions, to establish itself as a European benchmark. The reputation of a prize is given by the list of its recipients. And here the prize's trajectory has been very good. In all six cases, the jury has chosen well. Among the awardees, László Lovász later received the Abel Prize (the Nobel Prize in Mathematics), Nancy Cartwright the BBVA Prize, and in September 2025 the jury conferred it to Philippe Aghion, a French economist, who a month later received the Nobel Prize. A positive side effect of the prize is that the awardees strengthen their ties with Catalonia. Thus, Aghion received the prize on June 15 in a solemn ceremony at the Saló de Cent, and on the 16th he gave a presentation at the Cercle d’Economia and on the 17th another, more academic, at the Summer Forum of the Barcelona School of Economics.

The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will attend the annual meeting of the Cercle d'Economia to be held from June 1 to 3 in Barcelona, the first meeting with Teresa Garcia-Milà as president of the institution. This year the central theme will be Europe's strategic autonomy in the context of the war in the Middle East, which adds to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the difficult relations of the Old Continent with the administration of Donald Trump in the United States.