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After 29 days, the Brazilian player has finally managed to put his ankle injury behind him. After getting injured against Getafe, Neymar has missed eight official matches. The Brazilian superstar has been training with the squad since Monday, but only today was it finally confirmed that he would be fit to play, if picked, against Rayo Vallecano at the Camp Nou on Saturday evening. Neymar has played 25 games this season, scoring 11 goals. During his time away from duty, Neymar Jr has celebrated his first birthday as a Barça player, visited the club museum and appeared on the cover of Japan’s ‘Zone’ magazine.

The President of Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Miquel Valls, stated on Thursday that the independence process was not affecting Catalonia’s economic recovery. During a press conference, Valls emphasised that such a statement was based on concrete “facts”. He stressed that Catalonia had tripled the amount of incoming foreign investment compared to the Spanish average, and that the Catalan economy had also registered better figures in enterprise creation and business confidence, employment and other indicators showing an economic recovery According to the report on conjecture and economic perspectives, the Catalan GDP grew by 0.7% during the fourth quarter of 2013, whereas the Spanish GDP dropped by 0.1%. Valls also recalled that the consultation vote on the political future of Catalonia would involve “citizens and not businesses”, thus responding to the employers who recently voiced their opposition to Catalonia’s independence.

The Catalan Ministry of Home Affairs has constituted an Ethics Committee for the Catalan Police Force, called Mossos d’Esquadra. It will be chaired by Francesc Torralba, Director of Applied Ethics at Barcelona’s Ramon Llull University. The Ethics Committee was firstly created by the former Left-Wing Cabinet, when the Home Affairs Ministry was run by a Green Socialist (ICV-EUiA). However, it was suppressed in 2011 by his successor from the Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Coalition (CiU). Now, following recent scandals, such as the death of an arrestee, it has been restored. The Ethics Committee is made of ten members who have a non-renewable term of four years: five representatives of the police and home security are joined by five independent university professors in the field of law, ethics and sociology. Their first assignment will be drafting the Catalan Police’s new Code of Ethics.

A goal from Messi secures passage to the final of the Copa del Rey. Barça will face off against Real Madrid on April 19. The team managed by Gerardo Martino preserved their 2-0 advantage and they qualified without too much difficulty. When push comes to shove, this team responds: they are in the final after having won seven of their eight Cup matches this season and with Leo Messi, who scored the go-ahead goal in San Sebastián, as the highest goal scorer of the competition. In the final minutes of the match Griezmann netted the equaliser, but it was too little to late to trouble a Barça side that had completed one of the best first halves so far this season.

Chinese Group Platinum Estates has purchased the former headquarters of Telefonica in Barcelona, located in the Eixample neighbourhood, for €56.4 million, according to a statement by Renta Corporación, which managed the transaction. Furthermore, investors will allocate €45 additional million to transform the building, once belonging to the first telecommunications company in Spain, into a block of flats. The building, located on the Roma Avenue, was the propriety of Cerep Investment, a company controlled by private equity Group Carlyle, until it went bankrupt in the spring of last year. The buyer is a family group based in Hong Kong, which is part of Platinum Estates and is led by textile tycoon Harry Mohinani, of Hindu origin.

The Catalan Government has approved 3 new environmental taxes on the air pollution emissions of commercial flights, industrial gas and particle emission, and the nuclear production of electric energy. €50 million are expected to be raised per year once the law will be enforced, which is scheduled for mid-year. The Spokesperson for the Catalan Government, Francesc Homs, has admitted that flights at Barcelona’s El Prat Airport would likely be affected. However, he ensured that none of these 3 new taxes would have a negative impact on the consumers. The law specifies that the tax cannot affect pricing, neither for plane tickets nor for electricity, pointed out Homs. He then put in contrast the €98 million fees an airline can have to pay to the Spanish Airport Authority (AENA) with the €1 million in taxes that may be levied by the Catalan Government.

Jaume Cabré’s latest novel, Jo confesso (‘I confess’), which was recently awarded the Courrier International Prize for ‘Best foreign book’, will be translated into 20 languages. The work has already been published in 9 languages ??and will be available in English in 2015. The Catalan writer has been praised internationally for his novels delving into the human condition and reflecting on mankind’s propensity towards evil. In Jo confesso, a multi-layered novel starting in Barcelona in the 1950s, the main character investigates his family’s past and wealth, going all the way back to the very origins of evil, notably Spanish Inquisition, Franco dictatorship and Nazi Germany. Cabré’s contribution to the projection of Catalan culture abroad will be rewarded this Tuesday by Barcelona’s City Council.  

On Tuesday Catalonia’s education stakeholders – including unions, pedagogic organisations and parent associations – asked the Catalan Executive and Parliament to lead “the boycott” of the Spanish Government’s Education Reform, known as LOMQE. This reform aims to recentralise education powers, foster religion and impose Spanish as a language of instruction in Catalonia. Furthermore, on Monday evening thousands of people demonstrated in front of Catalonia’s High Court (TSJC) in support of the current school model in Catalonia, which is based on the linguistic immersion principle that guarantees the knowledge of both Spanish and Catalan. Political parties, trade unions, cultural associations and teaching organisations were protesting against the TSJC’s recent ruling that imposed a requirement that 25% of a school’s curriculum be taught in Spanish if a single pupil asks for it. The TSJC was interpreting a judgement by the Spanish Supreme Court, framed in a broader offensive against Catalan language.

Barça overcome the elements to re-take the Spanish League’s top spot in Seville - a spot they’d held all season until last weekend. Although Martino’s side weren’t as dominant as normal this Sunday evening, they showed a lethal finishing touch up front to come back from the hosts’ early strike with Alexis, Messi –two lovely goals – and Cesc give Barça an important win in the rain. On the quarter hour Seville took the lead thanks to an unlucky rebound off Bartra as Alberto Moreno shot from the edge of the box.In the first half, Seville had four clear chances and only put one away, whilst Barça finished off the two opportunities they had to go in with a 1-2 lead.

At ten past twelve this Thursday morning, an Airbus A380 belonging to Emirates has landed at the first terminal of Barcelona’s El Prat Airport. It is the very first of such aircrafts, the largest in the world, to operate on a regular route in Spain. The A380 will allow Emirates to expand by 40% - with 2,200 additional seats per week - the current daily number of passengers flying between Barcelona and Dubai, a route which was launched two years ago. Emirates has decided to introduce the A380 in Barcelona due to increasing demands as well as to reinforce the company's commitment to an “important market for Europe” according to Emirates’ Vice-President of Commercial Operations in Europe, Thierry Aucoc.

FC Barcelona are one step closer to the final of the Copa del Rey thanks to goals from Busquets and Zubikarai (og) in the first tie of the semi-finals. This Wednesday the Camp Nou experienced a match that had it all, from the stands to red cards to plays that bordered on the nonsensical, like Barça’s second goal of the night. Gerardo Martino sent in a nearly identical team to the one he fielded on the weekend, only Valdés – who was replaced by Pinto – wasn’t named to the starting line-up. Now FC Barcelona will have make good on their 2-0 advantage when they travel to Anoeta next Wednesday.

A total of 92,833 spectators attended the Teatre Lliure during 2013. This is the best figure registered by the Catalan theater venue in its history and led to €1,151,594 in revenue. The occupation rate reaches 73.2%, the same as last year.  The Teatre Lliure has two venues: one in Montjuïc and the other in Gràcia. The first one is the largest one and registered 62,893 spectators with a 69.2% seat occupation rate. The Gràcia venue posted 30,140 spectators for an 84.9% occupation rate. ‘Els feréstecs’ (The Wild) was the most popular show.

Barça want to leave this weekend's 2-3 defeat to Valencia behind. The match presents a good “opportunity to vindicate the team” declared FC Barcelona’s Manager Tata Martino on Tuesday. Martino called up all available players, but he must cut four players from the squad before kick off, scheduled this Wednesday at 10 pm CET. Catalans and Basques will duke it out for a spot in the final of the Copa del Rey, a competition the Blaugrana recently won in 2012 and 2009. On paper the tie looks fairly levelled despite the 4-1 result from the Spanish League match between the two sides. Both Barça and Real Sociedad, since the new year, have practically identical records.

The President of the Port of Barcelona, ??Sixte Cambra, said on Wednesday that the total container traffic had reached around one million TEUs for the full year (the reference unit for cargo ships, equivalent to 20 feet containers). “This is the record number of the best pre-crisis times, which happened in 2007” stated Cambra during an informational breakfast in Madrid. The President of the Port of Barcelona also underlined the change in trends since in 2007, in spite of the record number of containers, “more than 60% were imports; in 2013 over 60% were exported containers.”

The management of Barcelona-based Almirall pharmaceutical multinational and trade unions have signed an agreement on Monday, reducing the initially planned number of laid-off employees from 250 to 180. The document, which has mostly been ratified in production and research centres in Greater Barcelona as well as by the marketing network, also provides specific compensations for the workers aged 55 years and over, and the maximum compensations set by the law for the rest of the laid-off staff. According to the General Workers Union (UGT), 30% of the laid-off employees will correspond to voluntary redundancies, which will be proportionally distributed among the different groups of workers.