The Patio Herreriano museum, in Valladolid, has hosted this morning a double session of the ‘Next Spain: Connected Spain’ forum with two round tables on digitization in the rural world and sustainable growth. At the beginning of the conference, organized by the Vocento group and the newspaper El Norte de Castilla, the Minister of Mobility and Digital Transformation, María González Corral, stressed the importance of ensuring that many daily processes are carried out with the Internet. Digitization, definitely.
“We are facing an inalienable challenge for progress, which we must face through collaboration between the public and the private”, González Corral has indicated. Next, he has referred to some of the objectives of the legislature for what is still the “largest territory in Europe, larger than several countries of the Union”.
Among these goals would be the digitization of services in small towns -such as lighting or garbage collection- or the extension of fiber and broadband. For the latter, the minister recalled that European funds will be invested, with the promise that she shares with the central government, to achieve 100 Mbps broadband coverage for 100% of the population in 2025.
The deputy director of the Vocento Foundation and director of the ABC Culture Classroom, Carlos Aganzo, and the director of El Norte de Castilla, Ángel Ortiz, also participated in the meeting. Aganzo, who has acted as master of ceremonies, has introduced the speakers and the mayor of Valladolid, Óscar Puente, who has spoken briefly between conferences. As soon as it began, the deputy director highlighted digital as “a world of opportunities, full of talent and a future”. Ortiz, for his part, has defended the will of the newspaper to “lead the digital ecosystem” of Valladolid. “I would like that when you stop by our pages you imagine that we are a car”, he has suggested, “there are many, but some are more comfortable, safer or ecological than others, and we aspire to be the car that you dream of driving”.
The first of the tables has had the content creator and tractor driver Rodrigo Carrillo and the cultural promoter Alba Castrillo. Moderated by Silvia Rojo (El Norte), these entrepreneurs, dedicated respectively to the production of lavender or to the management of the Cervera de Pisuerga musical cycle, have reviewed issues related to digitalization in the field. To the institutions, they have asked for “involvement” and “accessibility”. “Even if there is the Internet, it is very difficult to launch projects without protection, without the collaboration of the municipalities,” said Castrillo, who has been reinforced by Carrillo’s words. “To talk about Empty Spain is to put a fashionable corset on the countryside, but fashions are over, and although there are many needs, it is necessary to dynamize”, he emphasized. In this sense, there has been no lack of references on their part to services that cannot forget their presence, such as bank offices or medical offices.
In this field of services, the speakers at the second session, moderated by Aganzo himself, reiterated their commitment: Javier Alonso, head of Telefónica Castilla y León, or Carmen Rodríguez, director of Caixabank’s Business Area, as well as Roberto Arranz and Francisco José Cenador, regional directors of Grupo Red Eléctrica and Mapfre. In a debate on tools to structure the territory or to compensate for the precariousness of women in the field that their studies show, they have expressed their willingness to listen and a margin for improvement for the whole of society. “We are ahead of Europe in connectivity, but behind in digitization,” Alonso summarized, thus reflecting the lack of coordination between resources and their application on a day-to-day basis, something that entails a change in habits.
