Málaga, 16 September 2026 — When someone asks where they can park, they need an answer. When thousands of people ask that same question, in particular places and at particular times, the city also receives a signal about its mobility needs.
Turning those conversations into help for citizens and, at the same time, into useful knowledge for the city is the proposal with which Internal·IA presents TuCiudad at the 6th Smart City Congress of the Spanish Network of Smart Cities (RECI), held for the first time alongside Greencities, Urban Intelligence & Smart Mobility, at the Málaga Trade Fair and Congress Centre (FYCMA).
TuCiudad is a conversational AI platform that lets people talk, over WhatsApp and by voice, to the information, the data, the services and the systems each administration connects. What sets it apart is not only that it answers, but that it understands what the person needs, queries the right source and turns every interaction into a useful answer, an action or aggregate information that can help improve services.
The solution has been developed at Málaga TechPark from real deployments in Málaga, Seville and Marbella, in settings where the technology has had to answer thousands of people, cope with changing information and adapt to the everyday language of residents and visitors.
«One answered query helps one person. Thousands of queries, looked at in aggregate, also help us understand where the city’s needs are. Conversation does not only make it possible to answer: it can also help us understand better what people need.»
Francisco Orellana, CEO of Internal·IA
Two years of TuFerIA: from adoption to integration
The progress made over the last two editions of the Málaga Fair reflects the path that now leads to TuCiudad.
In 2025, the first edition of TuFerIA confirmed that people were willing to use WhatsApp as a natural channel for the information around a major event.
In 2026 the goal went a step further. TuFerIA was launched together with Málaga City Council through its Operational Services department and with the collaboration of the Mobility Department, adding connections to Mobility, SMASSA, EMT, the Málaga Metro, Canal Málaga, the official events calendar and the fairground car parks.
During this second edition, 65% of the activity came from people who returned to the assistant, and one in three conversations included three or more questions.
But the figure that best explains the technological progress is another one: TuFerIA made close to 3,000 queries to live data sources, and more than half of them were about car park availability.
2025 validated adoption. 2026 validated return use, integration and the ability to answer with information that changed throughout the day.
Málaga, Seville and Marbella: technology proven in different settings
TuCiudad is not born from a lab demonstration, but from a series of deployments that have tested the same architecture against very different needs.
During Holy Week in Málaga, over two editions, the technology has included GPS location of the processions, routes, timetables, car parks, road closures, EMT bus lines, weather, audiovisual content and support in several languages.
In 2026 it added visual recognition of floats and brotherhoods from photos sent over WhatsApp. On Palm Sunday alone, the assistant processed more than 5,000 messages.
At the Seville April Fair, TuFerIA has also run for two years. Its latest edition added a connection to 37 municipal car parks, available spaces, up-to-date traffic, alternative routes, weather, support by text, voice and phone call, and a channel for reporting incidents in collaboration with ÁTICA.
In Marbella, the smart Christmas assistant gave access, over WhatsApp, by voice and in several languages, to the municipal programme spread across different neighbourhoods and departments. The project was conceived as a pilot towards new themed assistants and municipal services.
Málaga has shown the volume and depth of use. Seville has shown that the technology can move to and adapt to another city. Marbella has validated its use within an institutional municipal service.
TuCiudad now turns that accumulated knowledge into a product ready to grow alongside each administration.
Mobility: from answering queries to detecting needs
Mobility is one of the areas where this progress is most visible.
A car park query can be answered by accessing the information available at that moment. But a concentration of questions about the same area, service or time slot also makes it possible to identify what worries users and where the greatest information needs arise.
The same applies to questions about public transport, access, road closures, routes or incidents.
TuCiudad lets conversation play a double role: helping the person straight away and generating aggregate indicators that can help improve information and service planning.
«The disruptive part is not putting a chatbot in front of citizens. It is making a simple conversation able to trigger the city’s real systems and, on top of that, give useful knowledge back to the administration.»
Francisco Orellana
A conversational infrastructure for every city
TuCiudad does not replace municipal platforms or force all information into a new system. It acts as a conversational layer that connects the sources and tools the administration authorises.
Each municipality decides which services to include, which sources are queried, which rules apply and in which situations the conversation should be handed over to a person.
The platform can start with a specific case —an event, mobility, the events calendar or a support service—, measure its use and progressively add new areas.
Internal·IA takes part as a Bronze Partner of the 6th RECI Smart City Congress, held in Málaga alongside Greencities in an edition marked by the debate on the responsible, transparent and human use of artificial intelligence in cities.
From Málaga TechPark, the company presents TuCiudad as the evolution of a proven track record: moving from answering thousands of questions to better understanding what people need as they live in, move around and use their city.
The congress in the press
Internal·IA took part as a Bronze Partner in the opening of the 6th Smart City Congress of the Spanish Network of Smart Cities (RECI), held in a joint ceremony with Greencities. Greencities, the urban intelligence and sustainability forum organised by FYCMA, coincided with the RECI congress for the first time and brought together more than 80 cities and municipalities and more than 200 companies and organisations.
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