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This Monday Catalan pupils begin their school year. 1,280,232 students from elementary, primary and secondary education returned to the classrooms with normality. However, controversies are lingering over this year. The Catalan language at schools, the sixth hour of tuition and budget restrictions all frame the school year’s kick off. The day finished with teacher and parent demonstrations in front of town halls defending the Catalan school model.

The award will be presented on September 22nd at Barcelona’s Palau de la Música. The awards are named after Catalan writer Terenci Moix, who was a film lover and a true expert on Hollywood’s classical period.

The strong heat diminishes the production of grapes of the wine region Priorat, but their quality is better. Priorat’s Protected Geographical Indication, which brings together some 600 farmers, expects a fall in grape production of around 15%, but the surviving grapes will be of great quality. Priorat red wines, produced in South-West of Catalonia, are internationally appreciated and are famous for their strong character.

Iesso was the Roman town that is know nowadays as Guissona, in Western Catalonia. The facilities offer a walk throughout the ruins and an entertaining audiovisual guide to life in the ancient city of Iesso.

The Formula 1 circuit next to Barcelona, which hosts Spain’s Grand Prix, has been the stage of the fourth round of the ECO series 2011 race last Sunday, in which thirty electric and hybrid vehicles competed.

FC Barcelona have drawn at Real Sociedad in a game that seemed under control after Xavi and Cesc had scored early goals. However, the Catalans lost control of things in the second half, and allowed the home to score twice in a minute.

Within the whole Spanish state, property transactions collapse by nearly 41%, while the average value of each house increases every month

The spokesman for Education at the European Commission warns that "monolinguals are potentially at a disadvantage" in terms of finding work. “From very young children should speak their mother tongue and two other languages”, he says.

In a solemn ceremony and accompanied by his family and friends, the FC Barcelona manager has received the greatest honorary distinction from the Parliament of Catalonia.

The delegation from the Generalitat in the United Kingdom commemorated the National Day at the Tate Modern London, where a major retrospective exhibition of the Catalan painter Joan Miró is currently on display.

The FC Barcelona Brazilian full-back believes that the title won’t only be decided in games against their direct rivals, and highly values the games like the one this weekend against Real Sociedad.

The chairman of the committee on Education, Doris Pack, defends the Catalan model of education and says that people coming from outside Catalonia have to make an effort to learn the language of their new home: "It's like immigration in Germany, we do not have Turkish schools, newcomers need to get used to speak the language", she argued in an interview with the CNA.

Technicians have completed the construction of stages and arts companies have rehearsed. For 4 days Tàrrega will host 261 performances of 54 shows, 16 of them premieres. More than ninety national and international companies will participate in this the 31st edition of the fair.

The judge Eloy Velasco has accepted the case, that deals with the attacks against members of parliament commited by protesters against the spending cuts. There are calls on the Prosecutor of Barcelona to release the proceedings and recordings of the investigation

The Catalan President says that he will not work with the conservative PP after the Spanish general election if the party “crosses the red line” and tries to push a language agenda which puts at risk the current Catalan educational system. The leader of the PP in Catalonia, Alicia Sánchez Camacho, says Mas should accept the Courts ruling that have obliged the Government to offer Spanish as well as Catalan as a language of instruction at school.