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Three new Catalan government delegations will be opened during this term of office. According to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Jordi Solé, the new delegation in Lisbon will be in full operation “in the following months” while those planned for the Vatican City and Morocco are still pending deployment by the Government. Although these three new delegations have already been appealed by the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC), Solé insisted on the “key role” that these institutions play in Catalonia’s foreign affairs strategy and emphasised the government’s will to “continue deploying Catalonia’s institutional representation in the world”. The Catalan government already has seven delegations abroad, as well as three more projected in the short-term and some others to be opened in the near future.

Opening today, photography exhibition ‘Barcelona. The Metropolis in the Age of Photography 1860-2004’ tells the story of the Catalan capital with 1,000 works. The collection of photographs, magazines, documentaries and films is provided by 58 lenders which are primarily in Catalonia but also to be found in Madrid, Pamplona, Salamanca, Paris, Lausanne, London and even New York. The history of the city of Barcelona is separated into six major moments, within which one can observe the metropolis change with the World Fair, the expansion of the city, the opening of new streets, the rhetoric of new artistic movements, social struggles, the Civil War and the subsequent photographical documentation of the transition to democracy. Ending in 2004, this chronological exhibition represents curator Jorge Ribalta’s many years of intensive work exploring the relation between photographs and a city. 

Johan Cruyff, a Barça player during the early seventies and one of its most iconic coaches later on, died this Thursday at the age of 68. Born in Amsterdam in 1947, he joined the Catalan squad in 1973 and relaunched its prestige by winning La Liga in 1974. He played 184 matches and scored 51 goals in the blaugrana shirt and was voted, on three occasions, world player of the year. However, his most revolutionary role was played from the bench. He was Barça’s coach for nearly 10 years and his name will always be linked to the ‘Dream Team’, the name popularly given to the squad which won the first European Cup for Barça at Wembley in 1992 and four successive La Liga titles between 1991 and 1994. Cruyff failed to overcome lung cancer and died after months of battling, surrounded by his family.

Barcelona representatives aimed to make the Catalan capital a “veg-friendly” city this Tuesday in an unexpected proposal. The proposal launched by the city’s economy commission received support across almost all of the city council parties, and hopes that Barcelona can become a “friend of vegan and vegetarian culture”. With this, the proposal includes plans to support more businesses and individuals looking to benefit from including more “veg-friendly” options. Additionally, the commission’s proposal includes plans to publish a list of stores and restaurants in Barcelona that are helping people who are vegan, vegetarian, or just want to reduce the amount of meat and animal products they consume. To make it a reality, Barcelona will establish a BCN VEGPoint which will serve as a support and networking centre for businesses looking to become more veg-friendly.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and current Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy presided over the tribute to the victims of the Germanwings aircraft which crashed in the French Alps one year ago, on its way from Barcelona to Düsseldorf, with 150 on board. Both presidents exchanged “cordial” words during the institutional event but avoided commenting on any political issue, sources from the government stated. This Wednesday’s coincidence was the first meeting between Puigdemont and Rajoy since the Catalan President took office, on the 12^th of January. The Catalan government’s spokeswoman, Neus Munté, noted that Rajoy didn’t call Puigdemont when he was instated as President or to “show condolence” after the coach crash which killed 13 international students this past Sunday in the south of Catalonia.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont condemned the terrorist attacks which killed at least 34 people this Tuesday in Brussels and stated that terrorism “won’t bend the democratic will to build a Europe based on values such as peace and coexistence”. He also called the Belgian consul in Catalonia to offer his help and support. The Catalan anti-terrorist coordination cabinet met this Tuesday and decided to keep the level for terrorist attacks at level 4 (out of 5). However, extra security measures have been taken at the Catalan airports and throughout Barcelona’s metro network. The Catalan government’s spokeswoman, Neus Munté, urged the Spanish executive to convene the National Security Board in order to set in place “the maximum coordination possible”. “When it comes to security and anti-terrorism the government cannot act provisonally”, she stated. 

Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, travelled this Monday to Catalonia on a private visit, as he was related to one of the victims of the coach crash which occurred in the South of Catalonia on Sunday, killing at least 13 internationals who were returning from a trip to Valencia. 7 of the 13 victims, all of them female, were Italian, two were German and the rest were from Romania, France, Austria and Uzbekistan respectively. All of the victims were aged between 19 and 25. Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, received Renzi at the airport in Tortosa and will accompany him during his visit. Eight families have already travelled to Catalonia to start the identification of the victims and three more are expected to arrive throughout this Monday.

11 MEPs from different parties, amongst them Catalan liberal party CDC MEP Ramon Tremosa, have sent a parliamentary question to the EC’s vice president, Federica Mogherini, regarding the repeated use of the Spanish port of Ceuta by Russian military ships. According to Ceuta’s local press, this port, located in North Africa, was used by Russia’s fleet at least 57 times between 2011 and 2015 along the ships’ route towards the Black Sea. The fleet included frigates, destroyers and attack submarines. The use of this port by Russian ships coincided with the European fines against Moscow due to its participation through third parties in the civil conflict in Ukraine. Thus, MEPs have asked Mogherini to clarify whether this support from the Spanish authorities contravened ­­­­the European fines and why.

2015 was the second best year, in terms of foreign investment, since the historical series began in 1993. Catalonia attracted €4.8 billion this past year, 57.8% more than the foreign investment registered in 2014, and only exceeded by the record €4.9 billion registered in 2010. Thus, Catalonia attracted 22% of the foreign investment received in the whole of Spain, second only to Madrid, which attracted 46.5% of the international investment. However, foreign investment in Madrid decreased by 1.2% this past 2015 in comparison to 2014. These data indicates that Catalonia’s push for independence is not dissuading foreign investors, on the contrary; during the first trimester of 2015, Catalonia was the leading region in Continental Western Europe in terms of investment. 

At least 13 women have been killed after a coach which was carrying foreign students crashed this Sunday on the AP-7 motorway between Barcelona and Valencia. 48 have been injured and 23 are still in hospital, some of them in a critical condition. The accident occurred near Freginals, 150 km south of Barcelona and although it is categorised at an accident blackspot, the investigation into the crash points to human error as the most likely cause of the tragedy. Most of the 57 people on board the bus were students on the Erasmus programme who were returning to Barcelona after a trip to Valencia, where they visited the ‘Fallas’ fireworks festival. Their nationalities have not been made public while the process of identification continues.

Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont expressed Catalonia’s willingness to accommodate 4,500 refugees and provide “a solution for those millions of people running away from war”. In a letter to the EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont stated that the Catalan government and institutions are “working to accommodate around 4,500 refugees” and assured that Catalonia is “ready to receive up to 1,800 refugees” right now, “600 of which would be hosted directly by the Catalan government”. On the other hand, the Spanish executive responded to Puigdemont’s action and accused him of acting “unilaterally” and “adding more problems” to the existing situation. “A region in Europe wants to be the solution to the problem, this is impossible”, stated current Spanish vice president, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría. 

Josep Maria Ballarín, popularly known as ‘Mossèn Ballarín’, was a Catalan priest, writer and intellectual. Regarded as a symbol of Catalanism and defined by some as an atypical priest, he represented one of the most heterodox branches of the Catalan church. Ballarín published more than 40 books and achieved great popularity with ‘Mossèn Tronxo’ (‘Tronxo Priest’) in 1989, which sold more than 100,000 copies. His novel ‘Santa María, pa de cada dia’ (‘Saint Maria, daily bread’) won the Ramon Llull prize in 1996, one of the most prestigious awards in the field of Catalan literature. In 1995 he was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi, a prize given by the Catalan government to those individuals or institutions whose work in the political, social, economic, cultural or scientific field has been outstanding. Ballarín died this Friday at the age of 96.

The situation of the Catalan language in the Spanish state has been debated, for the first time ever, in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament. This Thursday the European Language Equality Network (ELEN), Europe’s only international civil society organisation dedicated to the protection and promotion of regional, minority and endangered languages, warned of the “outrageous” discrimination regarding the use of Catalan in many spheres of public life in Spain. ELEN’s general secretary, Davyth Hicks, presented the latest report published by ‘Plataforma per la Llengua’ a non-governmental organisation that works to promote Catalan as a tool for social cohesion and stated that Spain is “violating the Charter of Fundamental Rights” and, therefore, called for proceedings against Spain for “linguistic discrimination”.

Spain’s executive has repeatedly insisted on the alleged illegality of the new Catalan Ministry for Foreign Affairs and has taken its creation and competences before the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC). The Catalan government decided to change the name of this department as a “preventive measure” to avoid the TC taking further measures against it but the Spanish executive again appealed and urged the TC to suspend the Ministry, “regardless of the denomination”, after considering that its competences “remain unchanged”. This Thursday, the Parliament has decided that they won’t obey the TC’s cautionary suspension of the new Ministry, the opposite to what the Catalan People’s Party (PP) and Spanish Unionist ‘Ciutadans’ urged the government to do.

Barça top Arsenal 3–1 (5–1 aggregate) to sew up a berth in the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals for the ninth straight season. Goals from Neymar, Luis Suárez and Lionel Messi were more than enough to knock Arsenal out of the UEFA Champions League on a wet and chilly Wednesday night at Camp Nou. This is the third time FC Barcelona have bounced Arsenal from Europe’s top competition, after previously doing so in 2010 and 2011. The triumph qualifies Barça for the tournament’s quarter-final round for the ninth consecutive season. It is also their ninth straight victory across all competitions, and it brings their overall unbeaten streak to 38 games.