Society

Maria Busqué decided to move to Berlin so that she could live off a musician's income, something she found almost impossible in Catalonia. This is a story from the new Catalan emigration.

With the aim of fostering vocational training in Catalonia, the Catalan Government approved a decree to modify it today. All students will have to learn foreign languages. Combining studies and a job will be easier. Programmes’ curriculum will be adapted to sector needs and student requirements.

More than 30 years after the end of the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco, some towns have yet to remove the symbols that celebrated the victory of the general back in 1939. In Tortosa, the council is following procedures to change the name of a neighbourhood that refers to the day that the fascists conquered the town.

The Catalan Minister for Education said that not all the 40,000 students that were meant to start the laptop programme at the next academic course will be able to do so. Although the main reason is due to the economic cutbacks, the Minister said that the are also pending teaching evaluations regarding the use of laptops.

The previous Left-Wing Catalan Government had set a maximum speed limit of 80 km/h for the highways inside Barcelona’s Metropolitan Area. Less pollution and fewer accidents were the measure’ aims. However now, after some controversy, the current Centre-Right Government changed the measure and today cars are able to circulate at 120 km/h again.

A year after setting up, the CNAG (National Centre for Genome Analysis) is the second most important DNA centre in Europe. It is located in Scientific Park of Barcelona and each day processes 100 Gigabytes of information, stored a 1.2 Petabyte supercomputer.

Barcelona-El Prat Airport’s terminals become home to many homeless people from Barcelona Metropolitan area but also from around the world, but not for much longer. The Spanish Airport Authority decided to close the terminal from midnight to 5am to stop this activity. Passengers or people waiting for passengers will ac cess the terminals through secured doors.

The total number of foreigners contributing to the Social Security system in Catalonia at the end of 2010 was 401,753 people. Three out of four foreigners in Catalonia come from outside the European Union.

The Catalan Minister for Health, Boi Ruiz, announced today that patients will get a symbolic bill when leaving the centre informing them about the drug treatments’ costs. The Minister also stated that “for the moment” patients will not have to directly pay a part of the medical costs.

The new initiative is based on sports like Pilates. The pilot school is located in Montellà, in the Catalan Pyrenees. The measure was an initiative from the school zone director, who was concerned about future back problems. It was agreed on with the parents, the school and the Catalan Ministry of Education.

It is the most effective AIDS vaccine to date. It has been tested on HIV patients and reduces the viral load up by three times. It needs further test but in the future the new vaccine could replace the current retroviral treatments.

The Catalan radio station Pakcelona made the most of the closure of it’s local FM broadcast to strengthen it’s presence on the World Wide Web.

A workshop held in Birkbeck University explored the dialogue between Barcelona and London in hosting the Olympic Games- showing that London can learn from the Catalan City's experience as host in 1992 but has its own challenges to overcome.

Catalan Police assisted the investigation of an international criminal ring this week. The criminals were involved in money laundering and the financing of cannabis plantations. It is estimated that the group could have spent about 3 million buying properties in Catalonia’s Costa Brava.

The Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona will have 2 new buildings in 2014 dedicated to biomedical research. The new space will be of 17,000 square metres. The new buildings will be integrated into the daily activities of the university health centre. Then, at a second phase, the space for research will reach 28,000 square meters.