At the beginning of the 20th Century, in 1909, hence just a few years after the Wright brother’s historic flight in Kitty Hawk, the Catalan engineer Gaspar Brunet i Viader designed and built an aircraft, together with his industrial partner Juan Olivert, that after some testing at the Can Tunis airfield in Barcelona was to conduct, in September that same year, a successful short test flight in Paterna (Valencia). Just 5 months later, in February 1910, Lucien Mamet conducted, also in the Can Tunis airfield, the first public exhibition flight in Spanish history, in a Blériot XI.

In the years to come, many other flights and initiatives linked to aviation followed and flourished in Barcelona and in Catalonia. The Barcelona City Council, always with a strong will to develop this sector in Barcelona, created in 1919 the Aviation City Comitee, later transformed in the Airport Managing Comitee (headed by the Major), with the primary goal of creating an important airport in Barcelona.

A local aeronautical industry also flourished and developed accordingly, with two important aircraft engine factories: Elizalde SA, founded in 1909, that produced many different types of aircraft engine (“Beta”, “Sirio”, “Tigre”), and Hispano-Suiza, founded in 1904, that also designed and produced a wide range of engines (“140 HP”, “500 HP”, “600 HP”). Both companies began their activity in the automotive sector.

Barcelona, today, is transforming its airport in order to consolidate a major platform for the South-West of Europe with a forecast for 2015 of 40 milion passengers and close to 200.000 tons of cargo per year. This will certainly boost industrial activities tied to air transportation.

The Sabadell Airport, just 25 kilometers from Barcelona, on the other hand, is one of the most important Spanish airports for general aviation. Just to mention a few figures, the Sabadell Airport manages 40% of all Spanish general aviation flights. In addition, Sabadell and Cuatro Vientos (in Madrid), train 80% of all Spanish pilots.

As far as aerospace industry is concerned, today 90% of the current aeronautical industry in Spain is located as follows: 60% in Madrid, 15% in Andalucía and 15% in the Basque Country. When the BAIE adventure started up, the aerospace industrial turnover in Catalonia represented less than a residual 1% of the total aerospace turnover in Spain. Today we are very glad to point out that this figure has grown to almost a 5% of the Spanish aerospace sector.

BAIE members are active in activities tied to comercial aircraft design in aspects such as design & engineering and production of structural components (metal and composites), jigs, interiors, onboard software and instrumentation and communications equipment. Other important aeronautic activities of BAIE members in specific niches are the design and manufacturing of complete balloons, parachutes, ULMs and boarding bridges.

The SPACE sector in Barcelona and Catalonia

In October 1957, Barcelona was for a few days at the center of the world when, in coincidence with the celebration in the city of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), was the first city in Western Europe to tune in to the signal emitted by SPUTNIK-1. This was achieved through amateur techniques at the ASTER astronomical association.

Long before that date, in 1909 the renowned Catalan astronomer Josep Comas i Solà accomplished one of his most important astronomical achievements when he was the first astronomer to describe Saturn’s moon Titan as having an atmosphere, after his observations with the Observatori Fabra telescope, in Barcelona. Just recently –in 2005- the Huygens probe (developed by Europe) of the NASA-ESA Huygens-Cassini spacecraft bound for Saturn, crossed Titan’s atmosphere and landed on its surface, sending astonishing images of the surface and recording different parameters of the atmosphere during the descent.

In more recent times, in the 1960s and 70s, the Catalan biochemist Joan Oró made pioneering contributions in the conception and design of the first mission-ever to take and analyse samples of the martian soil on-site: the NASA unmanned Viking missions.

In Spain, almost all space industry is working on European Space Agency (ESA) programs, and Catalan presence within this industry accounts for a figure close to the 9% of the Spanish participation. Catalonia is present, among others, in the areas of software development for orbital missions control and guidance, communications, life sciences in human spaceflight, earth telescopes and radars, astronomy, satellite sensors, onboard hardware and systems integration.

As compared to the aeronautics/space divide in Europe (typically 91% vs 9%), Catalonia has a compartive divide of 76% aeronautics vs 24% space industrial activity, thus showing a higher than the mean technological level and quality, as required by the space sector.