On 25 September last, Spain's acting Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Pedro Duque, visited the company's office in Boecillo Technology Park (Parque Tecnológico de Boecillo) in Valladolid.

After words of welcome from GMV’s CEO, Jesús Serrano, the proper visit began with a presentation of GMV’s main areas and some of the projects run from its Valladolid office, given by Miguel Ángel Martínez, GMV’s General Manager of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), accompanied by the manager of GMV’s People Strategy and Culture Department, Ignacio Ramos.

During this guided tour the minister saw with his own eyes the company's ongoing progress in electronic fare collection systems, such as the ticket and farecard validation arrangements within the onboard video-surveillance projects for the metros of Barcelona and Seville. He was also shown the new onboard TV10 validator for payment with contactless EMV bank cards. This new validator is now up and running in an urban bus-fleet pilot scheme of Almeria and will soon be phased into the urban buses of Pamplona and all busses and turnstiles of the transport network of the Balearic Islands transport consortium.

The minister was then given explanations of the validation system of the project carried out in Sydney's light rail network in Australia for ALSTOM, in which GMV is supplying the advanced fleet-management system and passenger-information system, which bring in significant breakthroughs such as automation of some functions that drivers had up to now carried out manually and the incorporation of advanced, specific regulation functions for trams and light rail vehicles.

Taking advantage of his trip to Valladolid to give the opening address of the 8th Congress of the Spanish Remote-Sensing Congress, the minister's visit to Boecillo Technology Park thus afforded him a good overview of GMV's current range of inhouse solutions. For our part it served as a very pleasant reminder of the time when the minister worked for the Valladolid company, which he himself opened back in 1998, the year he made his first space voyage.