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The first prize of the 51^st Francesc Viñas International Singing Contest, which rewards young opera performers from all over the world, was awarded recently ex aequo to Korean soprano Seyoung Park, aged 31, and Korean tenor Junghoon Kim, aged 25. British singer Anna Patalong won the second prize, while Peruvian Ximena Agurto came in third place. The award ceremony, which was held in Barcelona’s Liceu Theatre last weekend, included a concert with performances by all the winners conducted by internationally-renowned director Guerassim Voronkov and accompanied by the Liceu Symphonic Orchestra.

The Born Cultural Centre has been selected as the venue to host the latest edition of the 080 Barcelona Fashion Week, from the 27^th until the 31^st of January where the newest collections for Fall/Winter 2014-2015 will be showcased. In the show’s 13^th edition, more than thirty designers and brands are ready to participate from Albéniz to Zazo & Brull to already established names such as Custo Barcelona, Desigual, Mango, Sita Murt, TCN or Punto Blanco. The fashion show will take over different spaces inside the Born Cultural Centre leading to the closure of the cultural and historical centre, which has closed its doors to the public from the 25^th to the 1^st of February 2014.

FC Barcelona offer a brilliant all round performance as team cruise past Malaga with goals from Piqué, Pedro and Alexis. The Catalans put the institutional turmoil of the last week behind them, as they treated the Barça fans to a great night of football and reaffirmed their top spot in the Spanish League. Fast, precise and full of attacking threat, Barça returned to the Camp Nou after 18 fays without a home game and from the off they had Malaga pinned back in their own half. After just 5 minutes, Alexis rounded off a great team move with an effort which rattled the woodwork. Malaga showed that they could pose a threat too though, when Duda brought a good stop from Valdes from a free kick. Ibrahim Afellay got a big round of applause when he came on for Alexis.

Neymar’s father has authorised FC Barcelona to lift the confidentiality clauses in his son’s contract. The Catalan club has insisted that the transfer total was €57.1 million and detailed all the payments referring to the player’s salary and other agreements reached with organisations connected to him. Barça’s new President, Josep Maria Bartomeu, and Director of the Football Management Area, Raül Sanllehí, clarified a number of stories published in various Spanish newspapers and as an exception, revealed details of Neymar’s salary. “We have not lied. Football games are won on the pitch, not behind closed doors in offices”, said Bartomeu.

The Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) and Roche pharmaceutical company have signed an agreement stating that the Catalan public institute will pay for treatments against cancer depending on clinical results adapted to each specific patient. For now, the agreement provides that Roche will supply two drugs against the most common cancers, mostly breast and colon. According to the agreement, the probabilities of success will be thoroughly examined and if they meet the requirements, the Catalan Government will fully pay for the treatment. If not, Roche will assume the costs progressively according to the degree of success.

The People’s Party (PP) is holding a convention in Barcelona, with leading figures of the party, including PM Mariano Rajoy, to reject Catalonia’s self-determination and independence. On Friday, the PP’s Secretary General, María Dolores de Cospedal, stated that her party “will not allow Catalonia to split from Spain through machete strikes”. She added that “no one can bite off [a chunk of] a country” and that an independent Catalonia “will be born in bankruptcy”. In addition, the leader of the PP’s Catalan branch, Alícia Sánchez-Camacho, accused the Catalan President of “imposing” the self-determination vote. Besides, she emphasised that the PP “had suffered a lot” in the Basque Country, which is also happening in Catalonia. Within the convention there is a conference of a former PP member who chairs the Association of Terrorism Victims.

According to the Spanish Statistics Institute (INE), the 49.26 million overnight stays registered in 2013 amounted to a 1.82% increase on the previous year, thanks to a 5.34% rise for foreign guests. On the other hand, due to the economic crisis, the number of overnight stays for Spaniards fell by 6.82%. The number of visitors who stayed in one of Catalonia’s 2,122 hotels in 2013 reached a total of 16.240 million people, an increase of 0.02 % over 2012. The number of foreign guests also increased, by 3.62 %, while the number of Spanish visitors fell by 5.66 %. Catalan hotels registered a 55.55% occupancy rate, above the 55.51% posted in 2012.

On Thursday, Barcelona’s L’Auditori concert hall has hosted the opening concert of the Barnasants festival for independent singer-songwriters. This year around, Dani Flaco set things in motion with a performance that spiked interest in the festival. The Catalan singer is scheduled to give two further concerts: one on Friday and one on Saturday. In his latest album, Flaco shifted away from his rockiest side to quieter and more intimate airs of acoustic folk. The 19^th edition of Barnasants’s music festival, epitomised by the slogan ‘La pàtria és el poble’(The motherland is the people), will address Catalan resistance, by offering over a hundred concerts to the audience, from both old and new generations of songwriters.

Andreu Mas-Colell, Catalan Finance Minister, accused the Spanish Government of aiming “to undo” the system of Autonomous Communities. He also expressed his fear that the so-called ‘coffee for all’ system [the generalised devolution of the early 1980s that shaped the 17 Autonomous Communities] will become a ‘decaffeinated coffee’ system, implemented ‘in depth’. With this play on words, Mas-Colell was referring to a deep recentralisation and homogenisation process. Furthermore, the former professor of Economics at Harvard and Berkley, denounced “the budget treatment” that the Spanish Government gives to Catalonia as “totally unfair”. In this vein, he proposed that an international and independent body should calculate the fiscal balances between Catalonia and the Spanish State.

The President of FC Barcelona, Sandro Rosell, has resigned this Thursday evening with immediate effects. The First Vice President has assumed the Presidency until the end of the term, in 2016, according to the Catalan club’s rules. In the last few weeks, Rosell has been involved in an alleged scandal regarding Neymar's signing for FC Barcelona. Nothing has been proved and the judge still has to ask Rosell to testify. However, the FC Barcelona President would have taken the decision to resign in order not to involve the club in the judicial process. “In all of these years we have seen that our successes are the result of our victories on the pitch and overcoming innumerable obstacles off the pitch: political, external and, what’s worse, at times the pressure has come from our own environment”, said Rosell. “It has been an honour to serve the Barcelonistas. It’s been a privilege to be the president of FC Barcelona”.

Two Spanish Ministers have sent two warning messages on the same day. On the one hand, the Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, announced “a 25% or 30%” of “immediate” loss of wealth for an independent Catalonia “according to several studies”, which have not been mentioned by name. Margallo warned Catalans about the “harmful and lethal consequences” that independence would bring. He also stated that the self-determination process can also cause “an employment loss” since it is hurting Spain’s external image. On the other hand, the Spanish Justice Minister, Alberto Ruíz Gallardón, guaranteed that “Spain has the necessary tools to defend […] the national sovereignty, which is in the hands of its citizens as a whole”. Furthermore, Gallardón emphasised that “Spain is a great nation that is worth living in and loving, and which is worth fighting for”.

Catalonia ended 2013 with an unemployment rate of 22.26% and a total of 820,400 people unemployed, according to the Active Population Survey (EPA) for the fourth quarter. In late 2013 Catalonia registered 64,700 fewer unemployed people compared to the last quarter of 2012. At Spanish level, the unemployment rate was set at 26.03 %, with a total of 5,896,300 unemployed people. At the end of 2013, there were 69,100 fewer unemployed than in the last quarter of 2012. Furthermore, between September and December there were 8,400 fewer jobseekers in Spain. In the same 3-month period there were 20,100 fewer jobseekers in Catalonia. The Catalan Deputy Minister for Employment stated that these figures were “the best since the start of the crisis” since “for the first time, the number of employed has increased and the number of unemployed has decreased”.

Banc Sabadell, the second largest banking company in Catalonia, has ended 2013 with a net profit of €247.8 million, three times more than in 2012, after consuming €1,736.6 million in provisions and allowances for non-payments of loans, impairment of property and other financial operations. Due to the new regulations of the Bank of Spain on credit repayment and the acquisitions of other banking companies, the percentage of delayed or unpaid loans has climbed to 13.63%, 46% more than in 2012. Without the refunding operations, it would have been fixed at 11.13 %. The bank’s core capital, which is the main solvency indicator, stood at 12% and, with the new Basel III, it was set at 10.1%. Jaume Guardiola, CEO of Sabadell, believes that this trend can be the “turning point” of a crisis that was first anticipated when the results for 2012 were announced.

Three goals from the Catalan and an own goal from Juanfran give FC Barcelona a 1-4 victory at the Ciutat de Valencia. Leo Messi assisted Tello all three times. Three goals for the Catalan – his first hat trick in the FC Barcelona strip – finished the game and perhaps the quarter-final tie. FC Barcelona bounced back from this weekend’s draw in the Spanish League as they comfortably defeated Levante in the first leg of the Copa del Rey quarter-finals. They did it despite having to deal with a very similar match to the one played this Sunday. Now, Barça and Levante will close out the three-game series next week on Wednesday, January 29, at the Camp Nou (22:00 CET).

All the opposition parties except the Left-Wing Catalan Independence Party (ERC), which shares a parliamentary stability agreement with the governing Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Coalition (CiU), have criticised the Catalan Government’s budget for 2014 – which amounts to €29.31 billion – for being “anti-social”. The Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), the People’s Party (PP) – which runs the Spanish Government, the Catalan Green Socialist and Communist Coalition (ICV-EUiA), the anti-Catalan nationalism party Ciutadans (C’s) and the radical left-wing and independence party CUP all opposed the budget proposal. The CiU and ERC defended the bill and have accused the other parties of “not presenting real alternatives”. The budget’s approval was delayed by a month after the PP appealed against the bill because it includes €5 million for a consultation vote.