Hey, how you doing? My name is Jim Kent from Barcelona City FM and we are here at the
official Barcelona International Day which is a celebration of all of the different
international communities right here in Barcelona. The question is, who's going to side? Let's
go now. Join me this way. In last years Barcelona has been able to keep an important attraction
for foreign companies, for foreign students and for foreign professionals. I'm sure that
people come because we have a nice weather, we have beach, we have sun and we have all
that but I'm sure that they wouldn't remain or wouldn't continue coming if we were not
be able to build a good value proposal based not only in quality of life but also based
in good quality price relation for cost of doing business and many others. I'm representing
talent such people. We are recruitment agency located in Barcelona. We have offices also
in Madrid and in Lisbon and from these three offices we deal with international recruitment
processes and what we do is putting in contact international candidates with multilingual
profiles with those clients who are mainly in multilateral companies. I'm the director
of the American School of Barcelona and we're here today really to support kind of an internationalization
of Barcelona in the last few years. International community is really grown. Basically the story
of our school is we're by the leading international baccalaureate school in Barcelona. Our IB average
is in the top 20% in the world. We have in addition to that a very strong American curriculum
and so our school is about two thirds international and a third local and in addition to having
a really strong academic program we're proud about our school is the sense of community
among the international family. We're not a bubble school of international and we're
not a local school. We're a mix and people are really attracted to that and then kind
of the programs that we have are actually come from that route and so we have a lot
of programs for our kids that they work in the local community. We work at a children's
hospital. They work in local schools teaching English. They work with doctors and then we
also go out into the international community where we have trips to New York. We're part
of the model United Nations program where we host here in Barcelona with 400 kids from
around the world come. We go to the Hague, we go to Milan, we go to Portugal.
We've been here for 13 years in Barcelona. We provide guidance and advice for people
in the international community in English on all their financial affairs from payout
tax, from investments, how to buy property and even how to set up a business. People
are asking questions regarding healthcare, regarding the value of the pound of course,
talking about will I be still able to have a property here in Spain. Questions that are
understandable and for the majority of cases I think the answer to all of those questions
is that things will stay pretty much as they are at the moment. The difficulty is until
the high school 50 has been completed and signed we won't have anything definitive but
we are able to help people plan and make sure that whatever the outcome they're going to be able to be.
We were named the best international school in Barcelona so we're delighted. It's our
fourth year with our IB group of adults which are the above average in Europe and Spain
and so we're really thrilled about it. And we had 100% passing rate for the IB this year
for the first time. I think a lot of people think of international schools as just for
corporate families coming in and out but our international families now taking away the
Americans and the Spanish is over 40, 41, 42%. And so one of the trends we're seeing and
I think this has a lot to do with what the town hall is doing here in Barcelona Global is people
are becoming Barcelonians by choice. So they're not just moving here with their job or relocating
but they're choosing to move their family here and buy a home.
OK, hey well guys thank you so much for joining us today at the International Day. We've met loads
and loads of stool holders. Some people thought that 2016 was going to be a complicated year
for the international community in Barcelona but as this day demonstrates Barcelona is
yet again confirmed as the number one international hub on the Mediterranean for internationals.
See you next year.
