barcelona

12.7% more passengers used Barcelona El Prat Airport’s facilities during the first half of 2016 than in the same period last year. According to data released by the Airports Council International (ACI) and adding the figures corresponding to July, 25,028,393 people used El Prat’s facilities in the first seven months of the year. Thus, Barcelona’s airport has the second-largest passenger growth in group 1, which includes those airports with more than 25 million passengers per year, only behind that of Dublin, which registered 13.4% growth. However, in June, El Prat was the European airport which saw the highest increase in the number of passengers (10%) and its pace of growth was double that of the European airport average. According to ACI these good results are mainly due to the high amount of low-cost flights operated to and from El Prat, which was double the amount operated from Madrid. Moreover, the number of movements from January to July reached 117,326, which represents 6.5% more than in the same period last year.

FC Barcelona have won the 51st edition of its own Joan Gamper Trophy with a 3-2 win over Italian guests Sampdoria on the night that the Camp Nou made its first contact with the 2016/17 squad, and especially with the five new signings. All of them were given time on pitch in front of a carnival atmosphere that was led by a sparkling performance from MVP Leo Messi, who scored the second and third goals after setting up the first in extraordinary fashion. The Gamper Trophy stayed in Barcelona for the fourth time in a row, and also provided Luis Enrique with the chance to see all of his players in match action ahead of the first competitive fixture of 2016/16, the Spanish Super Cup first leg in Seville on Sunday.

The possibility that two Francoist sculptures may be displayed in Barcelona’s city centre as part of a temporary exhibition has unleashed controversy in the Catalan capital. ‘Franco-Victory-Republic: impunity and urban space’ aims to “force society to think about what Franco’s dictatorship represented” and the “impunity” this period has had “during Spain’s democracy”, explained Barcelona’s deputy mayor, Gerardo Pisarello. However, taking the exhibition to the streets by displaying the Francoist sculpture ‘Victoria’, and an equestrian sculpture of Franco himself, hasn’t gone down well with some political forces and associations in Catalonia. “In this country the executioners were not judged and the victims were not properly buried” stated ERC’s President in Barcelona’s City Hall, Alfred Bosch, adding that he considers the wounds that Franco’s dictatorship provoked not yet healed. 

The Catalan Government and Barcelona’s City Hall will join efforts to house those companies which want to leave the UK due to Brexit. “We will specifically address entrepreneurs, start-ups and ICT companies”, explained Catalan Ministry for Business and Knowledge Jordi Baiget.“We to want tell British entrepreneurs and multinational companies that Barcelona and Catalonia are a great destination”, added Barcelona’s deputy Mayor, Jaume Collboni. More than 2,000 Catalan companies regularly export to the UK and 22.4% of Spanish exports to the state are from Catalonia. Regarding imports, the Barcelona area received 2.2 billion euros from UK-based companies in 2015, 5.8% more than the previous year. In June the Catalan Government also offered to host the headquarters of the European Medicines Agency, which is currently in London.

More and more people in Catalonia are turning to ecologically friendly food. According to the Perception and Consumption of Organic Food barometer, half of all Catalans consumed ecologically friendly food during 2015. On the way towards an ecologically and environmentally friendly city, Barcelona City Hall is promoting some initiatives to make Barcelona a more ecological city in many facets like health, sustainability, trade and social welfare. Green Markets are integrated into the new municipal policies. The aim is to promote small- and medium-sized local and ecologically friendly Catalan producers within a maximum radius of 150 km around Barcelona. The intention of the City Hall is to spread the campaign to six markets this year and, bit by bit, to transform the whole network of markets in Barcelona into an example of respect for the environment. 

The Barcelona Games World video game fair, to be held from the 6^th to the 9^th of October, has released more information about its upcoming event in 2016. Previously held in Madrid, the event will now also focus on mobile games, to “open (the fair) to other forms of interactive digital entertainment”, according to Josep Antoni Llopart, director of the fair. This decision was made in part thanks to Barcelona’s “bond” with the Mobile World Congress event. Still, the gamer will continue to be “the centre of the experience”, with over 90,000 expected to attend, competitions and prizes of up to €15,000, and the giants of the sector present (such as Nintendo, Sony, etc.). What’s more, another novelty is that the fair will be used to connect businesses, offer jobs, and help people who would like to do studies in the field of gaming. Lastly, there will be a ‘space for socialisation’ on the fairground, complete with lectures, concerts, music sessions with DJs, fashion shows and competitions.

The economic contribution to Catalonia’s GDP from the 2015 Sonar music festival was 72 million euros. Along with Sonar+D, a series of conferences about the relationship between creativity and technology, the event brought in 111,000 visitors from 104 different countries. This data was presented at the pre-festival press conference on Thursday. Indeed, the festival has been interested in tracking its economic impact since it created a study group to do so in 2004. To be held on the 16th, 17th, and 18th of June, Sonar 2016 will include 130 concerts by artists from 28 different countries, and will be based on a “more social” rhetoric. Meanwhile, Sonar+D will include activities in about 180 different formats, with 400 registered participants, and more than 4,000 professionals from 57 countries. Some new additions to the festival will be the new SonarCar stage, and a one-hour delay of the Sonar by Day portion of the festival. In 2016, Sonar is also offering a map of Barcelona showing the creative training offerings one can find in the Catalan capital. The metro strike should not affect the festival.

The Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, rebuffed on Thursday a request by the radical left-wing party CUP to “rebuild bridges” of trust after their veto of the 2016 draft budget bill. “The best bridges are those that you do not burn”, he said in a plenary session in the Catalan Parliament. The Catalan Government, led by the pro-independence coalition ‘Junts pel Sí’, expected the parliamentary support of the anti-capitalists following an agreement between the two parties in January that saw former Catalan President Artur Mas stepping aside and Puigdemont taking office. But CUP presented an amendment to the budget bill, the most important law of the parliamentary term, thus making it impossible for the Government to pass it. Following this, Puigdemont announced he will submit himself to a vote of confidence in September. CUP MP Mireia Boya said that the pro-independence forces should “rebuild bridges” from “today”, adding that the anti-capitalists feel “responsible but not guilty” for the current situation. Meanwhile, sources close to the Government suggested to the CNA that Puigdemont will use the summer to widen support for his government and depend less on CUP.

The largest cruise ship in the whole world, the ‘Harmony of the Seas’, has set sail in the Mediterranean from the Port of Barcelona. Indeed, the Royal Caribbean cruise company has selected the Catalan capital as the base for its Mediterranean cruise ships. Thus, Barcelona is now the only city in the world to have served as a turnaround port for Royal Caribbean’s three biggest ships. The ‘Harmony of the Seas’ is gargantuan: a capacity of 9,000 people, weighing more than 200,000 tons, and offering access to two surf simulators, a natural park and the highest slide possible. This all helps to contribute to the success of the Port of Barcelona: this 2016, the record from 2011 is expected to be equalled, with 2.6 million passengers welcomed at the Port, through 750 stopovers from the 40 cruise companies that operate at the infrastructure. Indeed, 30 million euros are forecast to be added to the economy of the Catalan capital. 

Barcelona commuters have endured this Monday long queues and delays due to a new strike by employees of the city’s metro. Despite the minimum services agreed by the Catalan Ministry of Work, platforms have been especially crowded during peak time this Monday morning, with some trains so full that no more passengers could be taken on board. Metro workers have called a week of strikes between the 30th of May and the 2nd of June, with an interruption in service expected on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on the metro, and on Friday in the bus service.

The ‘Bruce Davidson’ exhibition, the very first retrospective dedicated to the American photographer to be held in Spain is to open at the non-profit institution Fundación MAPFRE in Barcelona. The exhibition will run from the 28th of May until the 28th of August, after which it will embark on an international tour. Photographer Bruce Davidson has more than fifty years of uninterrupted work behind him (as well as membership of the prestigious photography co-op, Magnum), which are featured in chronological order in the exhibition. Along with Davidson’s most important photographs and series, the artist’s never-before-featured new works will also be on display. In the exhibition “we can see the stylistic evolution of his work but can also see a small condensed history of American photography from the second half of the twentieth century, which is, undoubtedly, a universal reference for photography”, explained the curator of the exhibition, Carlos Gollonet.

The American airline has started this Thursday its summer travel season launching the service between Washington-Dulles and Barcelona-El Prat airports. The flight will be offered until the 29th of October and will leave Barcelona every day at 11.15 am and arrive in Washington at 14.30 pm the same day. The return leg will take off from the United States at 18.10 in the evening and land in Barcelona at 08.05 the following morning. The Barcelona-Washington non-stop daily flight is the latest addition to the intercontinental offering from the Catalan airport, which also has connections with New York and Sao Paulo, amongst others.

The eviction of squatters from the so-called ‘Expropriated Bank’ in Barcelona’s Gracia neighbourhood has caused three consecutive nights of riots in the city and has raised concerns in the press about an excessive use of force by the police. The Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, urged the police to avoid “a violent escalation”. Colau, a former activist herself, said that she trusts the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan Police, but admitted to being “worried” by reports that suggest that the riot squad’s behaviour was disproportionate. “I don’t know and I don’t want to prejudge anything. I trust the Mossos but I need to ask for caution and urge all police actions to aim at avoiding any escalation of violence”, she said, asking the officers to, first and foremost, “protect the neighbours”. Meanwhile, the Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating former mayor Xavier Trias, who for a year paid the rent of the ‘Expropriated Bank’ in order to avoid an eviction.

At this year’s edition of the Warsaw Book Fair, where Barcelona along with Catalan culture and literature were guests of honour, 1,700 people attended activities meant to promote the culture of the region. The activities were organised by the Institut Ramon Llull (IRL), which is a public institution in charge of promoting Catalan culture and language. A total of 72,000 visitors attended the Book Fair, which was held from the 19^th to the 22^nd of May. 800 booths from 25 different countries participated in the cultural event, and the booth specifically dedicated to Catalan literature saw the participation of 580 people in its activities. The activities were led by a coalition of Catalan writers composed of Sebastià Alzamora, Blanca Busquets, Jaume Cabré, Jenn Díaz, Rafel Nadal, Marc Pastor, Jordi Puntí, Care Santos, Màrius Serra and Jordi Sierra i Fabra, whose goal was to promote Catalan literature and contemporary creation. 

The Camp Nou was treated to a night of emotions and spectacle – capped when the football squad appeared one by one, in order of shirt numbers, to rapturous cheers from the adoring crowds. Luis Enrique and his staff were also honoured in a fitting tribute to all the hard work they do, and which so often goes unnoticed behind the scenes. Celebrations like this are becoming common place of late at the Camp Nou, and may things remain that way! With 28 titles won in the last decade, the legend just keeps growing. The night erupted in a sea of red and blue confetti and pyrotechnics and so the curtain came down on another triumphant season at FC Barcelona. After the summer, it all starts again!