Finding an office to rent in Barcelona is hard. Finding a big, nice and well-located office in Barcelona is even harder.

That’s until you see what @22HQ has to offer: Pere IV 86 is a unique building from the 1940s with more than 3,600 m2 of office space, terraces on every floor, industrial character with high Catalan vaulted ceilings and light filled spaces.

The building will be available Q1 2021 and @22HQ is looking for a single company interested in filling the whole space or multiple companies in need of more than 1,000 m2 each. If you’re interested in this unique opportunity, reach out to them by using the form on their website.

Startup funding news 💸

• According to Sky News, giant SoftBank Vision Fund is in talks with Glovo to invest in the last mile delivery startup
• Fever raised $35 million from Rakuten and previous investors such as Accel Partners and Atresmedia. The company says that more than 70% of its revenues come from outside of Spain. This brings the total raised by Fever to more than $70 million
• Proptech startup Prontopiso raised €14 million in venture debt from Inveready and Sabadell VC
• Oviedo-based 3D virtual conferencing platform Virtway raised €4 million to expand into the UK
• Blockchain geolocation startup GeoDB raised €1 million on equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube
• Legaltech company LexGo App raised €330,000 from Akola and IESE
• Another legal startup, Emerita Legal, raised €260,000 via Startupxplore
• Galician fintech startup Coinscrap raised €180,000 from BBooster Ventures, Indexa Capital and Fernando Cabello-Astolfi (Aplazame)

M&A activity 🎊

• France’s Pernod Ricard announced the acquisition of Spanish startup Bodeboca for around €10 million. Bodeboca had revenues of €10 million last year and posted a profit of €100,000. The company had raised €2 million from Faraday Venture Partners, Caixa Capital Risc and business angels such as Aquilino Peña (Kibo) and Michael Kleindl (Seaya). This is Pernod Ricard’s second acquisition in Spain in the past few months, after also buying Uvinum last year

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Madrid-based Adara Ventures has a new €65 million fund to continue to invest in deep tech and software startups. Last year was a big one for Adara, with the sale of AlienVault for reportedly $600 million to AT&T
• Madrid-based VC firm Kibo Ventures has plans to raise a new €100 million fund, the firm’s third fund to date. Kibo also plans to open an office in Lisbon to tackle the Portuguese market
• International investment firms GP Bullhound and FJ Labs to invest in VTC license holding company Auro
• Repsol, in partnership with Ship2be and Open Value Foundation, launched a €50 million social investment fund, which will invest in social enterprises focused on energy transition and the inclusion of vulnerable groups in Spain
• El Pais interviewed Elena Benavides, Investment Manager at Gala Capital. After years of focusing on more established companies, Gala Capital now also invests in startups

Startup funding news 💸

• El Confidencial profiled Veronica Pascual, CEO of ASTI Mobile Robotics, a Burgos-based company that develops robots for intralogistics. ASTI had more than €30 million in revenues in 2018, a profit of more than €3.5 million and 240 employees
• Indie Hackers profiled fullPage.JS, a project by Alvaro Trigo that’s making $15,000 in MRR. The interview goes into quite a bit of detail about how Alvaro got to this stage
• Spotahome has a new Managing Director for the Spanish market, Eduardo Garbayo. Prior to Spotahome he was director of strategy new digital businesses at BBVA
• El Confidencial profiled Juan Casanova and Andres Casanova, the two brothers behind hit sauce maker Espicy. The brothers are also behind escooter startup MYGO
• Powen is a Spanish startup that aims to bring photovoltaics to the masses in Spain and Mexico, by mostly focusing on individuals and small companies. Powen says that it has more than 80 employees and is growing 300% year-on-year
• Cabify to include taxi drivers and services in its platform in Madrid and Valencia. Movo, Cabify’s escooter division, is now live in Valencia as it waits for the local government to pass a law to regulate the market
• Looks like hardware startup Tviso could be filing for bankruptcy after being unable to secure new funds or sell to Rakuten
• Internal issues continue at proptech startup Housers. The company ousted its CEO a few months ago, and now he’s trying to get back into the company
• Startup profiles: Wise Athena, Psonrie, Fixme

Big company news 🏦

• Amazon to create in Madrid a new software development centre for Kindle with more than 200 engineers
• Cinco Dias talked to Wayra, Renfe and a couple of startups about innovation in Spain in the field of transportation and logistics

Tech and policy 💂🏼

• PSOE backtracks in its plans to impose a tech tax on multinationals that operate in the Spanish market such as Google, Amazon, etc. Wants the tax to be managed from Brussels and Europe-wide
• The Supreme Court suspends Barcelona’s one hour wait imposed on Cabify and Uber
• There are now more than 8,000 VTC licenses in Madrid, accounting for more than 50% of the Spanish total. That means a ratio in the Spanish capital of 2:1 in VTC licenses vs. taxis

Interesting reads 🤓

• Ecommerce transactions grew to €40 billion in 2018 in Spain, a 29% increase compared to the previous year
• El Confidencial wrote a profile of Susana Ferreros, a telco engineer that works as data scientist for football club Arsenal and also for the Spanish women’s basketball national team
• Design studio Mendel Saltaren published The Product Design Handbook, which explains how they work and why design systems are important
• Tomas Santoro (SumaCRM): ’How we create our customer profiles and buyer personas’

Podcasts of the week 🎧

• K Fund interviewed Ana Pastor and Tomas Pastor of Newtral
• En.Digital interviewed Maria Jesus Espinosa of Podium Podcast
• MasQueStartups’ Enseñame Tu SaaS section featured Claudia Alcelay of certificacionpm