A few weeks ago, we received the good news that Catalonia has improved its position in the European Commission’s Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS) 2025, which, through a set of indicators, assesses the level of innovation in more than 240 European regions, classifying them into four categories and twelve subcategories. For the second consecutive year, Catalonia has been considered a “Strong Innovator”, the second of the four categories, and within this group it has moved up one subcategory.

Perhaps even more importantly, the RIS 2025 recognizes Catalonia as the most innovative region in Spain, surpassing the Basque Country and Madrid—the other two highly innovative Spanish regions—and improving by ten positions in the European ranking, from 82nd to 72nd place.

This is not the first time Catalonia has achieved the “Strong Innovator” classification. In the first editions of these indicators, at the beginning of the previous decade, we had already recorded results similar to the current ones. Unfortunately, for many years and due to various circumstances that would be too lengthy to analyse here, we lost this status, which we are now regaining.

On the other hand, there have always been critical voices regarding the methodology and indicators used by the Regional Innovation Scoreboard, since the data set focuses more on inputs (the factors needed to innovate) than on measuring the outcomes of innovation activity (greater productivity, competitiveness, wealth generation, etc.). In any case, and acknowledging the imperfections of the RIS, its depth and, above all, its temporal continuity allow us to state that it represents a good approximation of the level of innovation in the different European regional ecosystems and, especially, of their evolution over time in relation to other regions.

Thus, the question is what has changed or is changing in our territory that is enabling this improvement in such a key strategy. Most likely, the answer lies in a combination of factors, but I would like to highlight one that represents a paradigm shift: the launch and maintenance of a policy to support technology transfer and innovation by the Government of Catalonia, modest but far more intense and sustained over time than previous policies. Inspired by those in more advanced and innovative regions, this policy enabled the creation of Eurecat in 2015, as the country’s reference technology centre, to recover a leadership position in industrial innovation dynamics. Eurecat’s growth and activity records over this decade have undoubtedly had a significant impact on the RIS indicators in which Catalonia had shown greater relative weakness.

Eurecat, whose ultimate purpose is to improve the competitiveness of companies—especially SMEs—by accelerating and intensifying their innovation activity, has almost tripled its revenue and workforce, expanded its activity across 11 sites in Catalonia, and increased by more than fourfold the number of companies it provides innovation services to. More than 70% of its revenue (€69 million in 2024) comes from projects with SMEs. An analysis of the more than 15,000 projects and services carried out shows that a high percentage focus on product and process innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises, through collaboration between the technology centre and companies. The induced effect of this activity is that private R&D investment in Catalonia has undoubtedly grown, improving many of the indicators in which our country had previously shown less strength.

Eurecat has also made a significant contribution to the generation, protection and exploitation of own technology, another of the less favourable areas for Catalonia in the RIS, having built a patent portfolio of more than 280 patents. A substantial part of these patents is exploited through licensing agreements with spinoffs from the centre itself or with local companies.

The technology centre has also promoted ecosystem-based collaboration, working with other territorial stakeholders in fields as important and critical as climate resilience, industrial decarbonization and the electrification of sectors such as automotive, contributing to the intensification and territorial reach of collaborative innovation.

In any region, innovation generates new added value, new jobs, new GDP and new business profits, which in turn drive further investment and more innovation. The most competitive countries are those that innovate the most, and those that innovate the most are the most competitive—this is a direct correlation in the medium and long term. Moreover, innovation has a multiplier effect on the economy, as it is when returns are generated on all investments: public and private investments, investments in infrastructure, framework conditions and talent. In Spain, technology centres—agents especially oriented towards technological development and business innovation—have an economic impact multiplier of €8.5 for every euro of public investment. In Catalonia, in the case of Eurecat, the multiplier is 9.37 in direct, indirect and induced economic impact.

For all these reasons, the commitment made ten years ago to strengthen a major technology centre such as Eurecat appears to be a key factor driving innovation in Catalonia—one that must be preserved and further reinforced.

Xavier López
Eurecat’s Chief Officer