Barcelona, best place to live in Europe

On four consecutive years European senior executives have pointed at Barcelona as top European city for quality of life. At the same time, the Catalan capital rises up in the ranking to break into the top five and is now on the 4th place to locate a business.

The report European Cities 2006, by Cushman & Wakefield is based on interviews with senior managers and board directors of 507 main of Europe’s top companies. It looks at issues regarded as important by compnies when deciding to located in order to point at the best cities in business locations.

But, as it is usual, there are objections: the interviewees for this report indicate a lack in terms of quality of telecommunications, making Barcelona drop a few positions and will have to improve its services supply in this manner.

Madrid, the seventh

Catalan capital has overtaken Brussels to place itself into the fourth position, in the list of the European cities in which the companies prefer to locate their businesses, behind London, Paris and Frankfurt, whereas Madrid stays in the seventh position.

One of the aspects in which Barcelona has come out worse than could be expected is on quality of telecommunications, being on 19th place when last year’s report placed Barcelona onto 13th position.

Source: BCN Press, Nº16.