Category Archives: Barcelona

Barcelona bus route removed from map apps to tackle tourist overcrowding

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Residents welcome removal of number 116 route, often used to get to Park Güell

While some places will go to any lengths to attract visitors, residents of La Salut neighbourhood in Barcelona are celebrating a move to wipe themselves off the map.

For years, residents had complained that they could not get home because the number 116 bus was always crammed with tourists visiting Antoni Gaudí’s Park Güell. The park is the city’s second most popular attraction after the Sagrada Familia basilica.

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Easter processions cancelled in southern Spain due to rainstorms

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Spain is hit by strong winds and rain from Storm Nelson and four drown on storm-battered coasts

Easter processions in southern Spain have been cancelled after heavy rain from Storm Nelson, as the country was hit by strong winds and four people drowned on its storm-battered coasts.

All of the big processions in Seville on Holy Thursday were cancelled because of the rainstorms that were otherwise welcome in a region that has been experiencing a severe drought.

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Sagrada Familia in Barcelona ‘will be completed in 2026’

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New date for Antoni Gaudí’s basilica announced but enormous, controversial stairway will take another eight years

Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia basilica has a new completion date of 2026, which will come 144 years after the first stone was laid.

The president of the organisation tasked with completing Antoni Gaudí’s masterwork announced the date last Wednesday, which coincides with the centenary of the death of the building’s architect.

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Former Brazil footballer Dani Alves denies rape as Spain trial wraps

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Ex-Barcelona defender is accused of raping a woman in a nightclub in December 2022

The former Brazil international footballer Dani Alves has denied raping a young woman at a Barcelona nightclub as he took the stand on the last day of his trial in Spain.

“If she wanted to leave, she could have left, she was not obligated to be there,” the 40-year-old told the court in Barcelona on Wednesday, adding that the woman “at no time” asked to leave.

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Former Barcelona footballer Dani Alves’s rape trial to begin on Monday

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Brazilian, 40, has been charged with the rape of a 23-year-old woman in a nightclub

The former Barcelona and Brazil footballer Dani Alves will appear in court on Monday charged with the rape of a 23-year-old woman in a Barcelona nightclub.

Alves, 40, faces damning scientific and video evidence, as well as witness accounts.

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Barcelona community resource named world’s best new public library

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Gabriel García Márquez library in working-class district specialises in Latin American literature

A Barcelona library specialising in Latin American literature has been named the best new public library in the world by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions at its congress in Rotterdam.

The library, named after the Nobel-winning Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, opened last year in the working-class neighbourhood of Sant Martí de Provençals.

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‘A plague of locusts’: Barcelona battles port authorities to curb cruise tourists

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Councillors and residents hope to limit the number of daytrippers arriving by boat to preserve the city’s streets and character

The ships, at times dwarfing the average apartment building, begin lumbering into Barcelona while much of the city is still asleep. Stretching as long as five buses, some come to embark or disembark passengers, while others disgorge thousands of daytrippers keen to glimpse the city’s modernist architecture and stroll the narrow streets of the gothic quarter.

It’s a scene that plays out daily in Barcelona – much to the chagrin of some local officials. Last Monday, five cruise ships were slated to arrive; this Friday, on 14 April, eight are expected.

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‘Like a vacuum cleaner running all day’: noisy nightlife making Spanish streets ‘uninhabitable’

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Tensions between residents and revellers have reached boiling point after loosening of serving restrictions during Covid

The sun has barely set when the music starts thumping on Madrid’s Calle Ponzano. As queues start to form outside the already heaving bars, the party spills out on to the pavement, leaving customers jostling for space with an ever-growing cacophony of smokers and passersby.

Lost in the fray is the brightly lettered message – pleading with punters to keep the noise down – from banners that flap from balconies above. It is a last ditch effort by those who have found themselves living on the frontline of a battle playing out across Spain as exhausted neighbours face off against raucous drinkers.

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Imaginary Friends: Barcelona art show aims to connect with our inner child

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Exhibition evoking childhood experiences brings together installations by nine artists

Nine leading contemporary artists have come together to create an interactive exhibition in Barcelona for kids – and anyone in touch with their inner child.

“Before the pandemic we had the idea of mounting an exhibition of contemporary art for people of all ages, something that children could relate to but also so that older people could relive the experience of being a child and participate as if they were children,” said Martina Millà, who jointly curated the show at the Fundació Joan Miró with Patrick Ronse, the artistic director of the Be-Part contemporary art platform in Belgium.

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Barcelona shopkeeper fined €7,501 over job ad seeking ‘woman over 40’

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Labour inspectors say Javier Marcos’s shop assistant job ad discriminated on grounds of both sex and age

A Barcelona shopkeeper has been fined €7,501 (£6,600) for placing an advertisement for a shop assistant stating that the applicant should be “a woman over 40”.

Javier Marcos, who runs a small curtain-making business in the Fort Pienc area of the city, said he wanted to replace his only female employee, who is retiring, with someone with a similar profile.

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‘Out of your league’: Shakira song mocking ex Gerard Piqué breaks YouTube record

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Video with DJ Bizarrap ridiculing footballer’s new relationship racks up 63m views in 24 hours

A savage new song by Shakira in which the Colombian star, philanthropist and committed believer in the veracity of hips ridicules her former partner Gerard Piqué has logged more than 63m YouTube views in 24 hours, making it the most watched new Latin song in the platform’s history.

Shakira and Piqué, who played football for Barcelona, Manchester United and the Spanish national team, separated last year after more than a decade and have two children. The former centre-back, 35, has since begun a relationship with a 23-year-old woman, Clara Chía.

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Barcelona students to take mandatory climate crisis module from 2024

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Course thought to be world first agreed after university bowed to pressure from seven-day End Fossil protest

All students at the University of Barcelona will have to take a mandatory course on the climate crisis after the establishment agreed to meet the demands of activists conducting a sit-in occupation.

In a move thought to be a world first, all 14,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students will have to take the course from the 2024 academic year. It will also devise a training programme on climate issues for its 6,000 academic staff.

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Barcelona school and residents create solar energy community

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Council-supported project beginning on roof of school in Poblenou could grow across the city

A secondary school and a residents’ association have teamed up with Barcelona city council to create a solar energy community with the capacity to grow – rooftop by rooftop – across large areas of the city.

The solar panels on the roof of Quatre Cantons secondary school in the former industrial district of Poblenou supply power to the school and 30 households in the surrounding area.

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Barcelona to install sound level monitors in bid to beat noise pollution

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Noise meters will be deployed to confirm ‘acoustically stressed’ areas where action will be taken

Barcelona’s streets and plazas have long been home to a raucous cacophony of restaurant patios, buskers and throngs of residents and tourists. Now the city is on a mission to find out just how noisy these spaces can get, with the installation of sound level monitors in 11 areas.

“It’s an absolute priority,” said Eloi Badia, the Barcelona city councillor for climate emergency and ecological transition. “Noise pollution – with all of its sleep disorders, pathologies and stress – is one of the most important public health issues we have in the city, second only to air pollution.”

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Barcelona honours Gabriel García Márquez with new library

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The Colombian Nobel laureate, who lived in the city from 1967-75, is to have a €12m building specialising in Latin American literature named after him

In the digital age, building a new library filled with old-fashioned printed books seems idealistic, almost quixotic.Not so in Barcelona. The city council is about to open a new €12m (£10m) library next month, the latest instalment in a programme that dates back 20 years.

The library, in the working-class district of Sant Martí de Provençals, has been named in honour of the Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez.

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Former head of Barcelona’s youth system accused of sexual abuse of children

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  • Albert Benaiges was coach at Barça academy from 1992 to 2012
  • Benaiges denies accusations of more than 60 witnesses

Albert Benaiges, the former head of FC Barcelona’s youth system and the man who was credited with having discovered Andrés Iniesta, has been accused of sexual abuse of children in his charge over 20 years, accusations the 71-year-old strongly denies.

According to an investigation carried out by the Catalan newspaper Ara, more than 60 witnesses have come forward to detail his actions when he was a PE teacher at a school in the Les Corts neighbourhood of Barcelona during the 1980s and 1990s. One former student has made a formal statement to the police and others are expected to follow.

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If health and education are essential services in Spain, why not housing? | Irene Baqué

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A renters’ movement in Catalonia is saving families from eviction and trying to fill the gap left by the state

Earlier this year, I found myself in the city of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat to the south-west of Barcelona. It lacks the fame and tourist hordes of the Catalan capital, but the two places are connected by the same dire housing crisis.

Guided by Júlia Nueno, organiser of a grassroots tenants’ movement, I found a community of neighbours in L’Hospitalet who hold their meetings in a public park yet are managing to take responsibility for something the authorities are failing at: putting a roof over people’s heads. Their challenge is daunting in a corner of Spain that still bears the scars of the 2008 economic crisis and remains in the grip of the Covid pandemic.

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Sindicat: evading eviction in one of Europe’s most densely populated cities – video

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Near Barcelona, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat is one of the most densely populated cities in the EU and home to a large migrant community. Dedicated to protecting the most vulnerable members of this fringe society, a group of young volunteers set up Sindicat, a renters union that is working relentlessly to counteract the housing crisis engulfing the often undocumented residents

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Sindicat: evading eviction in one of Europe’s most densely populated cities – Guardian documentary

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Near Barcelona, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat is one of the most densely populated cities in the EU and home to a large migrant community. Dedicated to protecting the most vulnerable members of this fringe society, a group of young volunteers set up Sindicat, a renters’ union that is working to counteract the housing crisis engulfing the often undocumented residents

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