catalan

‘Castells’ or the traditional human towers originally from Southern Catalonia and generally built during town festivals were included in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO last year. An exhibition at the Palau Robert in Barcelona will celebrate this first anniversary. It reflects on the tradition’s cultural and social value, and its role as one of Catalonia’s best known symbols.

The Catalan Government and the Irish low-cost airline Ryanair have put an end to their dispute and have announced an agreement to operate from Girona-Costa Brava and Reus for the next five years starting in April 2012. Ryanair has guaranteed that in the first twelve months more than 3 million passengers will pass through Girona Airport and 500,000 through Reus Airport. However, it has one condition: the Spanish public airport operator AENA cannot increase taxes at neither Girona nor Reus airports. If that happens the agreement will become null and void. Ten days ago, Ryanair had completely abandoned Reus. Flights through Girona had been significantly reduced in the summer and they had cut the number of flights operating in the winter months.

The trade union organising the protest has said that 70% of doctors took part in the strike, while the Catalan Ministry of Health reduced the figure to only 20%. Doctors are protesting at the budget cuts in the Catalan healthcare system in order to decrease the public deficit, which included a 5% salary reduction. The doctor’s union called for a strike on November 15th and 16th, coinciding with the negotiations on the 2012 budget and the Spanish elections. The Catalan Government stated that the strike asks for unrealistic salary increases and considered it has “failed”. 20,000 medical consultations have to be postponed.

China, Japan, Philippines and Malaysia are some of the countries that will host the exhibition ‘The Turn of the Century in Spanish Contemporary Art’, formed by works from the Barcelona Contemporary Art Museum (MACBA) and the foundation of the Catalan savings bank ‘La Caixa’. The collection of both entities consists of 5.500 artworks and is considered one of the most important compilations in Southern Europe. The exhibition touring in Asia will include artworks from Spanish sculptors and painters like Antoni Tàpies, Eduardo Chillida or Miquel Barceló, from the last 50 years.

Ramon Navarro has published a new book that aims to “clearly” describe the results of three generations of research about the origins of Christopher Columbus

The Catalan energy company reduced its debt to 54.4%, thanks to disinvestments. Gas Natural Fenosa ended the first nine months of the year with a net profit 0.3% lower than that in the same period in 2010. However, taking into account the effect of the disinvestments, the net profit increased by 11.6%.

The last ‘SCImago Institutions Ranking’ classified the 3,000 best research institutions in the world. Harvard University tops the ranking, but the Catalan institute, is ranked second in Spain and among the best European research centres. Catalonia, and in particular Barcelona is consolidating its position as a biomedical science centre at international level.

The main Catalan bank allocated 1.953 billion euros for insolvencies and raised its core capital to 11.8%, 2.9 percentage points more than the ratio it had in December 2010. These operations made their net profit decrease by 16.6% compared to the previous year. Besides, CaixaBank announced that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim will quit its board to rejoin that of the bank’s industrial holding ‘Criteria CaixaHolding’. Slim’s seat will be occupied by former Chairman of Citigroup and the New York Stock Exchange John S. Reed.

Perajaume is one of the main Catalan artists of our time, part of a generation that is already gaining a lot of international recognition, with artist’s such as Jaume Plensa. Perajaume is known for his landscape visual poetry, expressing the excess of the current times and exhorting the return to natural roots. The exhibition is not a conventional retrospective, but instead a “programmatic proclamation”, an element of reflection on the function, the limits and the fate of art when opposed to excess.

With this label, foreign house buyers can be 100% sure that the new bought property fulfils all the quality and town planning regulations. The Catalan Minister for Territory and Sustainability, in charge of Housing, Lluís Recoder, announced the creation of an official label recognising the “quality of real estate”, in order to offer more legal safety and guarantees to consumers. Recoder hopes this certificate will help the sector, as consumers will be in a safe framework, from a juridical point of view.

For the first time in the world, a foetus having the spina bifida congenital disorder went through a new intra-uterus surgery technique. A medical team from Barcelona’s Vall d’Hebron Hospital operated on the foetus in its 24th week by placing a biological fabric on the spinal cord, in order to protect it from amniotic liquid and to ease the gap’s closing. The baby is now five months old and doctors are confident she may walk without any problems.

‘Tots Sants’ or All Saints Day is celebrated in Catalonia with the traditional panellets, a small sweet made of marzipan pastry and coated with different ingredients available at every bakery in every Catalan town. Together with grilled chestnuts and sweet potatoes, the elaboration of the panallets points out the definitive arrival of autumn.

Steven Spielberg has bought the rights to adapt a series produced and broadcast by Catalonia’s public TV station. The American name will be ‘The Red Band Society’ and Marta Kauffman, creator of ‘Friends’, might be in charge of the script. The main characters in the series are a group of teenagers with cancer, who develop a friendship and explore their imagination in hospital. ‘Polseres vermelles’ was a huge success on Catalan television and the second season is in production.

The Catalan Government considered the figures “worrying” but puts them to a “complicated” financial situation that has provoked an economic uncertainty. On Tuesday, the Government announced an action plan to reduce unemployment in the short term. In Spain, there are almost 5 million unemployed people, which represents an unemployment rate of 21.52%. Lleida has Spain’s lowest unemployment rate, set at 13.02%.

The Spanish stock exchange celebrated the European Summit’s results by increasing 4.96% in a one day of trading. The main managers of the Spanish banks are convinced they will get the requested core capital with their own resources. In addition, they believe they will need 13.5 billion euros, and not 26.1 once the detailed calculations are made. Spanish financial circles consider the new rules, adopted to counteract French and German banks’ exposition to Greek sovereign debt, do not particularly benefit Spanish banks, which almost do not hold any Greek debt. In addition, as was the case with the stress tests, the criteria to analyse the bank situation ignores Spain’s proposals and imposes those benefiting German banks.