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This year's edition of Barcelona's performing arts summer festival, Grec, attracted around 80,000 spectators and achieved a 58.15% capacity utilisation in the shows which require payment. According to provisional statistics, taken before the event was over, for the 79 shows that made up the summer festival there were 136,291 seats available and 67,623 tickets were sold, filling 49.61% of the potential capacity. However, overall there was total of 79,254 spectators. Last year 66,466 people attended the shows which required payment and 55,766 tickets were sold. The total number of spectators who attended the festival this year, both paying customers and those who went to free shows, amounted to 127,471 people, whilst in 2013 there were 119,000 individuals.

An old factory in the 22@ technological and business district of Barcelona, named Ca l'Alier, will be transformed into an innovation centre focused on Smart Cities. The French multinational Schneider Electric and the American networking giant Cisco Systems will invest €6 million in the building's renovation in order to set up their new research centres. The two companies then plan to invest a total of €37 million in the centres over the next 5 years. Barcelona´s City Council will also occupy a part of the renovated building for offices for its new Institute of Technology for the Habitat (BIT Habitat). The renovation of the Ca l'Alier factory will be the first step towards the creation of the Smart City Campus, which will be located throughout the 22@ technological district, a developing business area in Barcelona located around the old Poblenou industrial neighbourhood. The new Ca l'Alier research centres are expected to open in the summer of 2016 and to create 160 jobs.

The FC Barcelona forward will join the Premier League's Stoke City side this summer. After spending nearly his entire footballing life at FC Barcelona, Bojan Krkic says goodbye to his club. The Catalan forward, who was always one step ahead of his age in terms of skill and quality, leaves FC Barcelona with the distinction of being the all-time highest scorer in the Barça youth system. His tally from all his years at La Masia exceeds the 400-goal mark. He also performed well when he shared the senior side dressing room with some of the best forwards on the planet. First he vied for a starting spot with Eto’o, and then with Ibrahimovic and Leo Messi. During his four seasons on FC Barcelona's first team (2007-2011), he scored a total of 26 goals. He was then loaned out to Roma, Milan and Ajax.

Barcelona´s bicycle sharing service, Bicing, has announced plans to launch an electrical bike service designed to aid longer journeys around the city. This service aims to improve the effectiveness of the current Bicing service by promoting the use of electrical bicycles, which will further enhance the image of Barcelona as a ´Smart City´. An initial trial of the new service will begin this December when 300 electronic bikes will be spread over 45 Bicingstations across the city. As with the original Bicing service, this new scheme will be directed towards regular residents of Barcelona and will be unavailable to short-stay tourists.

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) is expanding into the nearby Àngels Square in the heart of the historic neighbourhood Raval. On 17^th July the museum unveiled the details of its future plans, which are designed to increase the flow of visitors to the art centre. These include increased exhibition spaces and the expansion of the existing MACBA Study Centre. The project is estimated to cost a total of €2 million, 1.5 million of which will be provided by Barcelona City Council, and it is hoped that this will increase the number of visitors to the museum by 15% per year.

The 26^th edition of Girona´s Film Festival runs from the 15^th to the 19^th of July and will screen 175 films; a mix of feature films and short movies from 35 different countries. The festival will kick off with the restored version of Josep Maria Forn´s Los Culpables, shot in Girona in 1962. The event will also contain a new section entitled ´Made in Costa Brava Girona´, which will showcase new and old films shot in the north-eastern part of Catalonia. The festival is made up of 14 sections, six of which will include the presentation of non-monetary awards. Acclaimed Spanish designer, Javier Mariscal, will be a member of the judging panel.

Barcelona has gone from 22^nd to 7^th place in the list of 468 European cities with the best economic prospects; it is ranked the 19^th most competitive city in the world and the 10^th in Europe; it stands at 10^th in the world in terms of receiving new business investments; and it became the 4^th city hosting the largest amount of congresses at world level. The report was produced by the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona in collaboration with the City Council. Furthermore, another study compiled by ESADE business school stressed that Barcelona is the 1^st European city in money spent per tourist in shopping, ahead of London and Paris. The Mayor of Barcelona, ??Xavier Trias, welcomed the news but also emphasised the ''shadow'' of having more than 100,000 unemployed in Barcelona, a number he finds “unbearable.”

An agreement between the Centre-Right pro-Catalan State Coalition (CiU) – which runs Barcelona's municipal government in minority – and the People's Party (PP) will allow shops located in tourist areas of the Catalan capital to be open on Sundays during the summer season, from 10am to 6pm. Shops in Catalonia are normally closed on Sundays, with few exceptions for the Christmas or sales seasons. However, shops in small tourist towns are allowed greater flexibility during holidays and can open on Sundays. The case of Barcelona is quite unusual, since it is the largest tourist destination in Catalonia but it is also a big city with a dense network of small and neighbourhood shops. These small shops could be damaged if they have to open longer hours (with the increase of financial and personal costs associated) in order to compete with multinationals.

The Catalan Parliament has finally approved the legal framework allowing the construction and the activities of the BCN World mega-resort, to be located next to PortAventura amusement park in the Costa Daurada. Now, the company Veremonte has the final green light to start construction, after it already had announced the first investors some months ago. Casino giant Melco, hotel brand Melià, US Hard Rock, Value Retail shopping malls and Investindustrial, which owns PortAventura, will participate in the $6 billion project. Furthermore, Ferrari announced it will build its first theme park in Europe there. BCN World involves 6 mega-casinos, large-size hotels, shopping malls, convention centres, theatres, golf courses, parks, a beach club, technology institutes and smart city developments.

From Monday to Wednesday, there have been many demonstrations and small riots in Barcelona and other cities throughout Catalonia to protest against the eviction of the Can Vies squat, a social centre managed by associations and anarchist trade unions. The Can Vies squat was running since 1997 and it was a symbol among the alternative left and anti-system movements. It was occupying a small building owned by Barcelona’s Metropolitan Transport Authority (TMB), which had somehow tolerated the occupation of its facilities. However, since a few years ago the building has been affected by a town planning project. On Monday the Catalan Police started to empty Can Vies, after it had been paralysed for a long time by civil mobilisations. However, on Monday evening the building was finally emptied, bricked up and a bulldozer started to demolish it. This sparked the conflict. The Mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias, insisted he will not negotiate until the violence ends.

Perhaps the most famous holiday in Catalonia, Sant Jordi combines culture with romance as books and roses are exchanged. As we all know by now, the legend of Saint George is a celebration of love epitomized by the brave knight who saved a princess from a terrible dragon thus harvesting a beautiful rose from its blood. So how did that become a day for buying and promoting books? Back in 1928, some Catalan booksellers decided to promote the holiday by setting some bookstalls all over the city to celebrate the anniversary of the death of two of the biggest names in literature, Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare. Catalan Book Day was born and it would be declared World Book Day by UNESCO in 1995. The day after the Easter break combined with great weather resulted in a 3% increase in book sales. Swedish author Jonas Jonasson, Spanish authors Almudena Grandes and Pilar Urbano and Catalan writer and athlete Kilian Jornet were the bestsellers for 2014.

Barcelona’s City Council has achieved a cumulative budget surplus of €23.5 million for the last few years, after posting a budget surplus of €139.3 million in 2013. In a press conference on Wednesday, the Deputy Mayor for Economy, Business and Employment, Sònia Recasens also announced that the city had eventually executed 97.55%, (€2.25 billion) of its planned expenditure. Such a figure is higher than the average execution ratio for 2009-2013. The execution ratio for investments amounts to 94% (€356 million) and is also significantly higher than in 2009-2013. In addition, debt levels represent 46.7% of the annual ordinary revenue. Furthermore, the City Council paid its providers in 29.2 days on average. Thanks to these figures, the City Council will make available 1,000 new social housing units in Barcelona.

Goals from Messi and Alves see off City and book Barça's place on the quarter finals.FC Barcelona laid down a marker for the rest of Europe on Wednesday evening, cruising through to the last eight of the Champions League with a 2-1 win over Manchester City (4-1 on aggregate) with a performance that put to bed the doubts around the team after their weekend league defeat in Valladolid. Javier Mascherano insisted before the game that Barça weren’t down and out and tonight the team proved him right with an important win over one of the strongest teams left in the competition.

On Wednesday evening at the Camp Nou (20:45 CET), Barça will leave La Liga to one side and try to make good on the 0-2 from the first leg against Manchester City at the Champions League. City need two goals to force overtime and three to directly access the quarter-finals of the competition. One of challenges FC Barcelona face is to leave behind the negative results from Spanish League play. The 0-1 away to Valladolid, which left Barça four points adrift of the top spot in the league, should be left behind as the team come into the match at the Camp Nou. It’s time to change the chip, as they say in Catalonia and Spain. All available players, besides injured Isaac Cuenca and Jonathan Dos Santos made the team.

Some 250 people have joined hands around the old Cathedral of Lleida (Western Catalonia) for the third consecutive year, urging the monument and its surroundings to be declared UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the heart of the Catalan city, the tremendous ‘Turó de la Seu Vella’, literally the Hill of the Old See, is formed of several buildings, with the most significant being the 13^th century cathedral, known as ‘La Seu Vella’. The hill also hosts the remains of La Suda or King's Castle (Castell del Rei o La Suda), well preserved military fortifications built from the 14^th to the 18^th century and other archaeological gems. An official nomination bid was eventually presented this January, setting up the first stage of a lengthy procedure.