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Barcelona adds a new quantum computer connected to MareNostrum 5
Barcelona takes another step in the European race for quantum computing. The Barcelona Supercomputing Center will incorporate EuroQCS-Spain, new quantum infrastructure that will integrate with MareNostrum 5, the great supercomputer installed in the Torre Girona chapel. The idea is not to replace classical supercomputing, but to combine it with quantum capabilities to solve increasingly complex scientific problems.
The project has funding of 9.8 million euros and forms part of the European strategy to deploy quantum computers in public supercomputing centres. That network seeks to enable researchers, public administrations and companies to access their own technology without always depending on external providers in a field already considered strategic for the European Union’s digital sovereignty.
EuroQCS-Spain will make it possible to advance hybrid computing, a formula that combines traditional and quantum calculation. This approach may be useful in fields such as mathematics, cryptography, physics, molecular chemistry, logistics or training artificial-intelligence models, where some problems are too computationally heavy to tackle with conventional methods alone.
The new system joins the path opened by MareNostrum-Ona, the first Spanish quantum computer using European technology, presented in 2025 at the BSC. That installation was already conceived as a quantum partition integrated into the MareNostrum 5 ecosystem, available to the research community and connected to the Spanish Supercomputing Network.
One of the most relevant points for Barcelona is the role of the Catalan company Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech, specialising in analogue quantum computers and full-stack technological development. Its participation strengthens a local ecosystem in which public centres, universities and emerging companies are beginning to move in the same direction: building their own technology rather than merely consuming it.
The installation at the BSC also has symbolic value. The Torre Girona chapel, a historic desacralised building in Les Corts, has already housed several generations of MareNostrum supercomputers. It now once again serves as a showcase for a science that seems to belong to the future, but is beginning to have very concrete applications in health, climate, materials, digital security and artificial intelligence.
For Barcelona, the arrival of EuroQCS-Spain is not only technology news. It strengthens the city’s position on a European map where advanced computing, AI and cybersecurity will determine much of the scientific and economic competitiveness of the coming years. If MareNostrum 5 already placed the BSC among the continent’s major computing centres, the quantum layer adds another ambition: that part of Europe’s digital future will be tested, programmed and understood from Barcelona.