Known as the Mesa del Mercat Proactiu (Proactive Market Platform), the committee has now appointed a team that includes Josep Duran, a lawyer and the assistant to the chair of the Fresh and Frozen Fish and Shellfish Wholesale Consignees Guild of Barcelona and Province (GMP), and Josep Maria Marcos, an industrial engineer and the director of the Guild’s development area, who will see to transforming these projects into specific actions that will make it possible, in the words of Mr Marcos, “to develop from a buying-and-selling Market into a service-rendering Market”.

These actions pursue four major goals: to boost fish consumption among the population, to encourage the retail sector’s enterprising spirit and business growth, to improve the services the Central Market offers to customers and wholesalers and, finally, to create a Central Market Observatory, based on data compiled by studies and useful information.
As Mr Duran remarked, “Right now we are finalising the definitions of the specific actions that will go into effect and which will make it possible to attain the goals we have set from the work desk. And too, we’re working to secure subsidies, both public and private ones, to ensure the Project’s viability.”

A Major Fish Reference Centre
At present, one of the projects best defined by the Platform is the creation of the Interactive Fish Centre. “The idea is to create a reference centre in Catalonia specialising in fishery products,” Mr Duran continued. “For this reason, we have designed a centre that will inform about the entire process the products undergo, from catch to consumer, with particular attention on the guarantees (sanitary standards, traceability, sustainability, etc.) for fish and seafood in every link of the distribution chain and their nutritional and health-giving values.”
In theory, this centre, to be located in the Central Fish Market, will focus on visits by schoolchildren as potential consumers of the future. However, plans are also in the works to open it to the rest of the public.