Category Archives: Barcelona

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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Museum celebrates Barcelona’s disappearing Gypsy heritage

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Artefacts reflect joys and sorrows of a community persecuted in Spain since Catholic reconquest in 1492

It doesn’t look like a place of legend, but the narrow Carrer de la Cera is the birthplace of la rumba catalana, the infectiously rhythmic stepchild of flamenco created by Barcelona’s Gypsy community in the 1950s and popular today throughout the world.

Now the city’s gitanos have their own museum, a tiny, vibrant space on the Carrer de la Cera, which lies in the multicultural el Raval neighbourhood. The museum will open its doors on Sunday.

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‘Perfect harmony’: Lionel Messi seals PSG move as he signs two-year contract

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  • Deal worth about €35m a year net and has option to extend
  • ‘I can’t wait to set foot on the Parc des Princes pitch’

Lionel Messi will be presented as a Paris Saint-Germain player on Wednesday after signing a two-year contract. The deal includes an option to extend by a year and gives the forward a net salary of about €35m (£29.6m) with bonuses factored in.

Related: The little devil who became a deity: Messi exit leaves a void like no other

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‘We can’t go back’: the Russian gay family who took refuge in Spain

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Family was targeted in hate campaign on social media after appearing in a food chain’s ad

A Russian lesbian family who received death threats after they appeared in an advertisement for the food chain VkusVill say they feel safe in Barcelona and accepted for who they are.

The family were targeted in a hate campaign on social media after they appeared in the ad. The company later apologised and replaced the photo with one of a heterosexual family.

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Russian gay family in controversial ad flee to Spain after threats

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Lesbian couple faced hate campaign after supermarket chain VkusVill called the promotion ‘a mistake’

A lesbian couple and their family, who were featured in an advert for a Russian supermarket chain that led to a national scandal have fled the country after facing online abuse and death threats.

Mother Yuma, daughters Mila and Alina, and Alina’s girlfriend Ksyusha have said they were forced to leave Russia for Spain after they featured in an ad in which they said they enjoyed VkusVill’s onigiri rice balls and hummus.

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Lionel Messi leaving Barcelona after ‘obstacles’ thwart contract renewal

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  • Messi has spent whole career at Spanish club and is free agent
  • Barcelona say La Liga regulations made new deal impossible

Barcelona have announced that Lionel Messi is leaving the club after “financial and structural obstacles” made it impossible to renew his contract. The forward, who has spent his whole career there, had been expected to re-sign after his deal expired in June.

“Despite FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi having reached an agreement and the clear intention of both parties to sign a new contract today, this cannot happen because of financial and structural obstacles (Spanish Liga regulations),” the club said.

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Environmental impact of bottled water ‘up to 3,500 times greater than tap water’

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Researchers also find impact of bottled water on ecosystems is 1,400 times higher than that of tap water

The impact of bottled water on natural resources is 3,500 times higher than for tap water, scientists have found.

The research is the first of its kind and examined the impact of bottled water in Barcelona, where it is becoming increasingly popular despite improvements to the quality of tap water in recent years.

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Barcelona cannabis clubs face closure in new legal setback

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Police and city authorities agree that ‘pioneering’ model has reduced street dealing and consumption

Barcelona’s 200 cannabis clubs face closure after the supreme court shut a legal loophole that has seen the city become Spain’s marijuana capital.

It is the latest in a series of setbacks for the asociaciónes, as they are popularly known. In 2017, the court overruled a law passed by the Catalan parliament which said “private consumption of cannabis by adults … is part of the exercise of the fundamental right to free personal development and freedom of conscience”.

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Departures at high-profile Barcelona museum provoke anger in art world

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Hundreds sign petition after the jobs of Tanya Barson and Pablo Martínez, two senior figures at Macba, are axed

A row has broken out in the international art world over the departures of Tanya Barson, the English curator, and Pablo Martínez, the head of programmes, from the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (Macba).

The pair departed on 16 July, the day after Elvira Dyangani Ose, the director of the Showroom in London, was appointed as the museum’s new director.

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