barcelona

In their final home game of the season on Sunday, FC Barcelona treated the fans to an enthralling afternoon. With the team inching ever closer to wrapping up the 2015/16 La Liga title and facing cross-town rivals RCDEspanyol in a late-season derby  certified as a must-win  for both sides, the blaugrana eleven gave the Camp Nou crowd an hour and a half of total football. The defence swarmed, the passing was crisp, and the trident was lethal. The only thing standing between FCB and a new piece of hardware is next Saturday's tête-à-tête with Granada, who avoided relegation on Sunday with a rout of their own in a 4–1 thumping of Sevilla.

A record 118,000 visitors attended Barcelona International Comic Fair, 5,000 more than in 2015. One of the main attractions of this edition was he 80th anniversary of Spanish comic book artist Francisco Ibáñez, who created the famous Mort & Phil. Another mayor exhibition, 'Comics on wheels', included some 200 originals works from around the world that showcased the relationship between two realms: comics and vehicles. Many professionals, comic fans and schoolchildren did not want to miss the opportunity to enjoy the opening of the event, which also drew together the video game industry and manga. Barcelona International Comic Fair was held from the May 6^th until the 9^th of May at Fira Barcelona Montjuïc venue. 

Tourists spent 2.467 billion euros in Catalonia in the first quarter of 2016. This sum is equal to 6.7% more than the same period last year, according to the Tourist Expenditure Survey (Egatur) published by the Spanish Statistics Institute (INE). In March alone, the amount that foreigners spent in Catalonia was 922 million euros, a decrease of 5.6% compared with March of last year. On a country-wide scale, foreigners spent 12.255 billion euros in all of Spain in the first quarter of 2016, 7.4% more than last year. These figures indicate that Catalonia absorbed 20.1% of foreigners’ expenditure in Spain in the first three months of the year.

The Catalan President Carles Puigdemont announced that the Government will prepare new legislation to protect the core policies of the social emergency law suspended by the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC). The new law will include “practical tools with legal security” that will “reformulate” the suspended articles of the legislation but “keep its spirit”. Drafting a new law was the main compromise of the social emergency summit organised on Tuesday by the Catalan Government, the local authorities and the main political parties in Catalonia following the Spanish Government’s legal challenge against the social emergency law. Puigdemont described the negotiations as “long, intense and very useful” and said that the new law is needed “to restore everything the Constitutional Court has suspended”. The meeting, he said, “wasn’t about political discrepancies but about showing that this issue concerns us all”.

From the 6th until the 9th of October, Barcelona will host the main annual video game fair in Spain, which until now has been held in Madrid. This was announced by the Spanish Video Games Association (AEVI), which will host the event along with Fira de Barcelona. The video game-centred fair is called ‘Barcelona World Games’, which will replace the original name ‘Madrid Games Week’. The event will take place at the Montjuïc exhibition centre, and will gather together the leading companies in the industry, which are to present the new products to be expected for the Christmas season. The general director of AEVI, José María Moreno, released a statement saying that that the fair will be "an opportunity to find new audiences and markets, generate synergy between industry professionals and discover the potential of gaming in the fields of economy, culture and education".

The Nikken Sekkei Studio (Japan) and the Pascual-Ausió architect firm (Catalonia) teamed up for the winning project for the New Camp Nou, which was presented to the media at the current stadium, in the presence of the first team. The New Camp Nou stadium will play on the current stadium´s signature overhanging roof, and it will hold itself to the highest standards of sustainability, utilising collected rainwater and solar power. To be concluded for the 2020/21 season, the New Camp Nou will have a capacity of 105,000, a growth which will allow members on the waitlist for seats to acquire tickets. The Les Corts neighbourhood in Barcelona provides the ideal backdrop for the new stadium, as it offers space for expansion, and since the additional buildings have been tailored to blend in with the surrounding area. 

Luis Enrique’s team made their intentions clear right from the kick-off. They wanted goals. And with four goals and three assists, Luis Suárez had a night that Barça fans will be remembering for years to come. the Urguayan now has 49 goals in 48 games this season for the blaugranes. After the win in Galicia, he was only happy to have helped the team: “The most important thing is that the goals have served to help achieve a vital win given that we were coming off the back of a bad run. We will keep trying to reach our objectives. I am sure that the work will pay off.” Rakitic, Barta, Messi and Neymar Jr did the rest. The 8-0 win over Deportivo sends out a warning message. They said there were five finals ahead, and the first has been won with flying colours. Barça are back with a vengeance.

Two goals from Antoine Griezmann send Atlético into the Champions League semi-finals and end Barça’s hopes of another treble. A first half header and a second half penalty from Antoine Griezmann cancelled out the Catalans’ 2-1 lead from the first leg, and it means that the dream of repeating the famous treble of 2014/15 is over. Messi ended a frustrating evening for Barça by sending the kick over the bar, and Atlético desperately clung on for the remaining minutes. Luis Enrique suffered his first knockout from a cup competition as Barça boss. Until then, the Asturian had a perfect record, taking Barça through to the next round of cup tournaments on 13 occasions. After suffering a disappointing exit from the Champions League just 12 hours earlier, the FC Barcelona players were back in training on Thursday morning focused on 'La Liga'

Barcelona’s Port registered an 8% growth in container traffic this March in comparison to the same period last year, reaching 493,000 TEUs (one TEU = one 20ft container). Both exports and imports saw a growth of more than 5%, along with an increase in container cargo coastal trade. All in all, 11.1 million tons of merchandise were registered from January to March of 2016. This is also represented by an increase both in liquid and solid merchandise in bulk. Meanwhile, the Barcelona El Prat airport experienced a rise in passengers in the first trimester of 2016, marking 16.1% more than the same period of the previous year, at a total of 8.5 million people. Along with this, both the Girona-Costa Brava airport and Reus airport, located in the Girona and Tarragona provinces respectively, witnessed an augmentation in traffic in the month of March. 

20.4% more passengers used Barcelona El Prat Airport’s facilities this past February than in the same month last year. According to data released by the European airport trade association (ACI Europe), Barcelona’s airport leads the ranking of EU airports in terms of growth and tops group 1, which includes those airports with more than 25 million passengers per year. Dublin holds second position, with a registered growth of 17.2% in February, followed by Copenhagen (+16%) and Madrid Barajas (+15.5%). Regarding those European airports which are not within the EU, Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen is the only airport whose increase in the number of passengers surpassed that of Barcelona (24.3%). The increase in the number of passengers using El Prat is double the average growth registered for February in the EU overall, which was 10.3%. 

Four out of the ten Spanish universities included on the 2016 Times Higher Education (THE) list of the top 150 universities under 50 years old are native to Catalonia. The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) was named 12 out of 150, with Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) ranked 15^th. Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) as well as the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) were included among the rankings. Though the universities are young, THE’s editor-at-large and the editor of THE’s World University Rankings, Phil Baty, cites Catalonia’s “strong sense of civil engagement” as a driving force in the universities’ growth and stand-out performance in this year’s rankings among educational institutions both young and old. 

FC Barcelona stayed true to their billing as a team endowed with a heaping dose of resilience, valiantly bouncing back from Saturday’s stinging home league defeat to emerge victorious on the very same pitch in a good old-fashioned Champions League thriller, with two goals from Luis Suárez. In the 25th minute, Fernando Torres fired from two paces right of the penalty spot through the legs of Ter Stegen for a 1–0 lead. It was Torres’s 11th goal in 15 career matches against FC Barcelona. It wasn’t until the 63rd minute when Luis Suárez redirected a deflected shot from the boot of Neymar Jr into the net to tie the match. The Camp Nou exploded, with an 88,534-strong chorus providing the soundtrack as the Catalans pushed even harder to take the lead. Luis Suárez's second half brace reversed early one-goal deficit in heart-stopping quarter-final opener and meant another victory for Barça.

FC Barcelona host Atlético Madrid for the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final on Tuesday, with the Catalans aiming to bounce back from Saturday’s Clásico defeat which ended a 39-match unbeaten streak. Luis Enrique will be without Aleix Vidal, who suffered an injury to his right abductor during Monday’s training session, as well as Jérémy Mathieu and Adriano. Diego Simeone's side always provide a tough test: Atlético came out victorious when the two teams met at the same stage of the competition two years ago but, since the appointment of Luis Enrique, Barça have enjoyed a run of six straight wins against Los Rojiblancos. The two sides met at the same stage of the competition in 2013/14 where they shared a 1-1 draw at Camp Nou before Atlético earned a 1-0 win in Madrid to go through to the semis.

Saturday night’s match at Camp Nou, was an epic game that had it all — a tear-inducing pre-game tribute to the recently passed Johan Cruyff and a minute of silence, frighteningly fearless tackling, heart-stopping end-to-end play and, somewhat surprisingly, a tight, evenly matched encounter standing in juxtaposition to an uncommonly large gap between the two arch-rivals in the league table. The loss, a dramatic reversal from the first meeting between the two rivals this season, when FC Barcelona routed Real in Madrid, 4–0, is FCB’s first defeat since 3 October and snaps their Spanish record 39-game unbeaten streak. What had been a ten-point gap between the league's first- and third-place teams now sits at seven.

Saturday’s battle with arch-rivals Real Madrid at Camp Nou kicks off on Saturday, 2 April at 8.30pm CET. A stadium-wide tribute to Johan Cruyff, former Barça player and coach years later, will appear in the form of a mosaic made up of some 90,000 cards that will form the slogan 'Gràcies Johan' (Thanks, Johan). Saturday's La Liga match against Real Madrid will also be attended by the eight living FC Barcelona presidents who will all be sitting in the Josep Suñol Presidential Box at Camp Nou. In the sportive sphere, Cláisco will be the first managerial duel between Luis Enrique and Zidane. Of the 85 Clásicos that have taken place at Camp Nou, Barça have won on 49 occasions, while 19 have ended in Real Madrid wins and 17 in draws. In their last encounter, Barça scored 4 goals at Santiago Bernabéu.