Buenos Aires heads ‘nonstop from 19th to 21st century’

Buenos Aires has consistently bred exceptional individuals. In academia, the Universidad de Buenos Aires, the city’s main university, has produced no fewer than five Nobel laureates, the most recent being César Milstein, for medicine in 1984, and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who was awarded the Peace prize in 1980. In sports, Buenos Aires has raised some of the best footballers on the planet, including Diego Maradona, who almost single-handedly hauled Argentina to World Cup triumph in 1986 in Mexico. Even Pope Francis is a porteño.

In business, four of Latin America’s six “unicorns — tech start-ups valued at $1bn or more", hail from Buenos Aires. Guibert Englebienne, co-founder of one of them, Globant, says the city has a government “that is willing to really connect Buenos Aires to the rest of the world”. As well as this month’s Latin American version of the World Economic Forum, the capital hosts the Summer Youth Olympics next year. “We have everything lined up for Buenos Aires to continue growing,” he says.

Foreign investors are taking notice. There is “a huge amount of pent-up demand that is not satisfied”, says Mr Pérez, who is building a number of luxury towers in the capital’s exclusive waterfront district of Puerto Madero. After the pre-Macri years of Peronist economic stagnation, “the future of Buenos Aires is incredibly rosy,” he argues.

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