Consolation prize for Barcelona and the Agbar tower after it lost out on the headquarters of the European Medicines Agency. Last November it was learnt that the symbolic building wouldn't welcome the EU body, but it's now been revealed it will host a Facebook operations centre.
As first reported by newspaper Cinco Días, Mark Zuckerberg's company will bring the fight against fake news to the city. It will do so through the firm Competence Call Center (CCC); it was learnt ten days ago that they had rented eight floors in the building, some 9,000 square metres (97,000 sq.ft.). The company already works for Facebook against fake news from offices in Germany.
The Barcelona office will employ some 500 people; it remains to be seen whether it is to supplement or substitute the German branch.
Facebook hasn't commented on the report. CCC, however, has already started the hiring process. The currently advertised vacancies are predominantly for community managers, with positions for speakers of a variety of languages, including Catalan, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. They are also looking to fill a number of other roles, including positions in human resources, IT and quality control.
The fight against fake news
Fake news has been a pending issue for Facebook, especially since it has been accused of potentially influencing the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Their attempts so far to tackle it have not been particularly successful.
Last month, the website turned on a new system, for the moment only for users in the US, to detect purported news articles which are not true after discovering its users find it difficult to distinguish real from fake news, especially when it comes to politics. The posts appear with a button labelled "i" telling users who the publisher is, related stories, where it has been shared and which friends have posted it.
"Great news"
From PSC, Jaume Collboni described the decision as "great news", saying that he believes Barcelona "needs to recover its confidence and highlight its capacity for innovation". "These are key factors for creating quality jobs," he said.
Jaume Ciurana, spokesperson for PDeCAT in the city, agreed that it's "great news for Barcelona and for Catalonia" and said it shows that "they remain a very important magnet for investment and initiatives of international reach and impact". The opening of the new office, he says, "also shows us that the self-interested lies about Catalonia's economic future have been proven completely false".