Terrassa

28 km away from Barcelona, you can find the industrial city of Terrassa, the first Catalan one to have aerospace engineering studies since 2004.

The city has around 250,000 inhabitants in 70.10 km² and can be reached easily by train or car.

It has a great cultural and artistic background and it is well-known for its old textile industries and typical architecture from the Modernism in the XIX century. Nowadays, it is possible to visit and find interesting expositions in most of these buildings. Furthermore, one of them is now a science and technology museum.

Jazz, hockey, theatre, human towers... These are some of the activities that describe Terrassa.

For example, Terrassa is considered one of the Catalan and Spanish jazz capitals. Every spring, an important jazz festival takes place in Vallparadís, a large park situated in the middle of the city where you can find cultural events all year long.

Barcelona

The capital of Catalunya, just 40 minutes away from Terrassa by train!

Barcelona is a cosmopolitan city, which the Mediterranean opens to the rest of the world, establishing a bond with other cultures and producing a history marked by diversity. Magnificent examples of artistic trends throughout the ages can be found here, providing a great Romanesque, Gothic and above all Modernist legacy; the later represented by the work of architectural genius Antoni Gaudí.

Alternative Art galleries, urbans sports, festivals, fairs, exhibitions and more fill the calendar with ideas that bring us closer to a culture always hanging on the latest trends, not just personal but also urban, artistic, mobility and even food. Yet Barcelona's people have fixed habits: looking after and promoting their history, preserving buildings and streets, while maintainig their traditions throughout the year. Celebrations like the "Festa de la Mercè", literally the "Festival of Our Lady of Mercy", the city's patroness, which is going to take place during the congress, is a very good example of this.

If you want to know more about Barcelona, here you hace 10 reasons to visit it!

Otherwise, you may want to take a virtual flight around the city!

Catalunya

Located in the northeastern extreme of the Iberian Peninsula, Catalunya covers an area of 32,000 km² and has over 7 million inhabitants.

Catalunya is an autonomous community within Spain with a government of its own known as the Generalitat. But its history, language and distinct cultural, political and legal tradition have shaped the diference between Catalunya and Spain, making some people want Catalunya's independency. So be careful when talking about this topic when you are here :)

Catalunya's own language is Catalan, a Romance language which has co-official status alongside Castilian (Spanish). Catalan literature, though affected by the political vicissitudes of the country's history, boasts outstanding prose writers and chroniclers (Ramon Llull, Ramon Muntaner, Josep Pla), magnificent poets (Ausiàs Marc, Jacint Verdaguer, Joan Maragall, Josep Carner, J.V. Foix) and gifted novelists (Joanot Martorell, Narcís Oller, Mercè Rodoreda).

Catalunya's artistic heritage is a permanent reminder of the creativity of its people. Examples of this are Empúries, the Roman monuments in Tarragona, the vast Romanesque heritage (both rural and urban), the civil and religious works of Gothic art, the great painters of the 19th century (such as Marià Fortuny), the flowering of Modernist art or Art Nouveau (with Gaudí, Domènech i Montaner and Puig i Cadafalch) and the world-famous Catalan artists of the 20th century (Nonell, Mir, Gargallo, Miró, Dalí and Tàpies). Catalunya possesses a large number of museums, ranging from the famous Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, with its extraordinary collection of Romanesque art, to the small ethnographic museums of country towns.

Unfortunately, the Catalan aerospace engineering is still very young, but it is growing faster and faster evey year. The main companies and organisms are associated in Baie (Barcelona Aeronautics & Space Association).