Two first half goals from Neymar were enough to book Barça a spot in Friday’s Champions League semi-final draw, as Luis Enrique’s side denied the French champions any chance of a comeback from last week’s 1-3 win in Paris with a performance that combined champagne moments and cool headed determination. Luis Enrique’s side got a 5-1 aggregate win over PSG.
Barça are just a possible 90 minutes away from a place in the semi-finals of this season’s Champions League. Standing between them and the last four are a PSG side who will have to overcome a 3-1 deficit from the first leg if they are to upset the odds and take their place in Friday’s draw in Nyon, Switzerland. The blaugranes trained on Monday for the final time before the second leg against the French League champions with Iniesta having received the medical all clear. The midfielder is included among 23 players named for the match. Jérémy Mathieu trained on his own in Barça’s final session after picking up a knock against Valencia on Saturday, but he is also included, as are Dani Alves, who missed the win in Paris due to suspension and Thomas Vermaelen, despite not receiving medical clearance.
Neymar Jr gets the first and Luís Suárez adds two absolute blinders to put Barça on fine course for the Champions League semi-finals. Barça unleashed all their class in the French capital on Tuesday evening to inflict a more than convincing 3-1 defeat on Paris Saint-Germain. In a wonderful performance all round for Luis Enrique’s team it was hard for any single player to stand out, but with two brilliant solo goals, Luis Suárez managed to do just that. Barça will start next week’s second leg at the Camp Nou with a two-goal head start. Things could not be better for a side that will have set legs trembling all around Europe after tonight’s exquisite display n Paris.
As was expected, the Constitutional Court has accepted the Spanish Government's appeal against the Catalan Law on External Action and Relations with the EU, which was approved last November and was already foreseen in the 2006 Catalan Statute of Autonomy. The Court's acceptance of a Spanish Government appeal automatically represents a temporary suspension of the legal measure for an initial 5-month period. The temporary suspension does not mean that the law will ultimately be suspended, but that there are enough reasons to study whether the Catalan law fits within the Constitution or not. According to the Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy, the law goes beyond the Catalan Government's attributions and invades the Spanish Executive's exclusive powers regarding international relations and the direction of Spain's external policy.
The draw for the Champions League quarter-finals brought the blaugranes face to face once again with the current French League champions. The two teams were in the same group earlier in the competition with Barça pipping Laurent Blanc’s team to top spot in Group F. With the Catalans having overcome Manchester City in the last 16 and Paris Saint-Germain having eliminated Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea, the two clubs are now set to battle it out for a place in the Champions League semi-finals. Luis Enrique’s side trained at the Parc des Princes on Tuesday with the Barça coach having brought his entire squad to Paris minus the recovering Thomas Vermaelen and the suspended Dani Alves. Paris Saint-Germain coach Laurent Blanc will have to make do without the former Barça striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Barcelona's Picasso Museum unveiled on Friday the first exhibition in the world analysing how Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí artistically admired and influenced each other, despite their political differences. The Catalan museum has opened the most awaited temporary exhibition of the season, which will run until 28 June. 'Picasso/Dalí. Dalí/Picasso' showcases 78 works of these two giants of 20th century art, including paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures and carvings. They tell the story of their artistic relationship and how their works evolved by setting many parallels between the two. The exhibition also includes 33 documents such as some letters that Gala and Salvador Dalí sent to Picasso, which had only been on show once, in Paris.
The draw for the Champions League quarter finals has been made, and Barça have been drawn against PSG in a head-to-head battle for a place in the semi-finals of Europe’s premier club competition. The first game will be played in Paris on April 15, and a week later, on April 21, the sides will meet again at the Camp Nou. The two teams, who know each other well from this year's Group F, were the first pair to be drawn. In their group-stage matchups, PSG won the first match in Paris 3–2, but Barça were victorious in the return at Camp Nou, winning 3–1 to top the group, leaving PSG in second. The first match will be without a few big players. Paris Saint-Germain's Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Marco Verratti, and Barça's Dani Alves will all be serving suspensions.
Barcelona’s office rental sector is improving after years of decline. Real estate company Inmobiliaria Colonial has set the tone by releasing 23 million new shares. Colonial is one of Europe’s leading companies in the office rental market and besides the new shares, they have also bought the main office of food multinational company Gallina Blanca. The property, positioned on L’Hopitalet del Llobregat’s Plaça Europa, one of Greater Barcelona’s business districts, has an area of almost 5,000 square metres and has been sold for €10.4 million. The shares and the purchase both belong to a new strategy to recover from the crisis and get the market back on track.
Following the agreement reached last week between the President of the Catalan Government and leader of the governing centre-right pro-Catalan State coalition CiU, Artur Mas, and the President of the left-wing pro-independence party ERC, Oriol Junqueras, on calling early elections in September as a plebiscite on Catalonia’s independence from Spain, the Catalan Executive’s budget for 2015 is now closer to definitive approval. On Monday, the ERC MPs started to withdraw their full amendments to the different sections of the Catalan Government’s budget. Now, the ERC is asking the CiU and the Government to debate their specific amendments on precise programmes in order to have “a fairer budget” which is less regional and more that of a country in its “national transition”, they said.
On Wednesday evening, spontaneous demonstrations were organised in front of the French Consulate in Barcelona and in other places across Catalonia in solidarity with the victims and in condemnation of the Jihadist slaughter that killed 12 people in the Paris headquarters of the weekly satirical magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’. On Thursday morning, hundreds of citizens gathered in front of the main Catalan town halls as well. Furthermore, Catalan authorities have also paid tribute to the victims on the day after the massacre. The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas; the Mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias; and the political groups of the Catalan Parliament all stood in front of their office buildings and observed a minute’s silence to pay homage.
The former European Commission’s Spokesperson for Economic Affairs during the Eurozone crisis, Amadeu Altafaj, is to become Catalonia’s Permanent Representative to the EU institutions. This position has been created as a way to increase the political weight of the already existing Catalan Government Delegation in Brussels in the middle of the debate about independence from Spain. Altafaj, who has also worked as Deputy Chief of Cabinet of the Commission’s Vice President for Economic and Monetary Affairs, Olli Rehn, since 2012, will now direct this delegation and become Catalonia’s voice in the EU institutions’ offices. On many occasions, Altafaj has been vocal about Catalonia’s self-determination, supporting it and emphasising that an independent Catalan State would be economically viable.
Barça’s trio of stellar strikers blew away PSG at the Camp Nou on Wednesday evening, coming back from an early Ibrahimovic goal with two first half strikes from Messi and Neymar – surely a candidate for goal of the season so far – and a third after the break from Luis Suárez. The three forwards fired the Catalan team to top spot in Group F of the UEFA Champions League. Juventus, Basel, Bayer Leverkusen, Arsenal, Manchester City, Schalke 04 or Shakhtar Donetsk will be FC Barcelona’s opponents in the Champions League round of 16 to be played from February 17. All will be revealed on Monday December 15.
At 8.45 PM CET, all eyes will be on the Camp Nou as top place in Champions League Group F is settled. A huge night awaits us this Wednesday evening. Barça are at home to Paris Saint-Germain. In other words, Messi, Neymar, Suárez, Iniesta, Xavi and co are up against a similarly star-studded side featuring the likes of Ibrahimovic, Cavani, Lavezzi, Thiago Silva and David Luiz. A fascinating winner-takes-all match with top spot in the Champions League group to play for. On the last day of the group stage, only three points will do if the Catalans want to topple the French club’s two-point lead.
Juan Goytisolo (born 1931 in Barcelona) is the latest winner of the Cervantes Prize, which is considered to be the Nobel Prize for literature in Spanish. On Monday at noon, the jury’s verdict was read by Spain’s Minister for Culture, José Ignacio Wert, and it emphasised the author’s "ability to delve into language", his "complex stylistic proposals" and "his desire to bring together" different cultures. Goytisolo, who currently resides in Marrakech (Morocco), will receive the award at a ceremony to be held on April 23 in Alcalá de Henares, in Madrid's region. The Cervantes Prize is awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and is worth €125,000. Goytisolo's works have been translated into English, French, German, Polish, Slovak and Romanian, among others.
The citizen participation process on independence has kicked off at 9am on November 9 despite the temporary suspension of the Constitutional Court. Finally, the 1,317 voting centres hosting 6,695 polling stations have opened their doors without major incidents, as has been confirmed by the Catalan Government. Long queues of voters were waiting to cast their ballot in a festive atmosphere from early morning. The vote is being run by 40,930 volunteers, but the Catalan Executive is actively behind the process. During the day it will offer turnout figures and it should announce the results on Monday. The ballot boxes are located in high-schools run by the Catalan Government or in municipal centres in small towns and villages. A delegation of international observers is monitoring the process. Several Spanish nationalist parties and organisations have filed judicial complaints asking for the vote to be stopped and members of the Catalan Government to be arrested. In addition, the Public Prosecutor Office – obeying the Spanish Government –asked the Catalan Police to identify the volunteers opening the voting centres, but the Catalan Government refused to do so as they had authorised volunteers to access public venues.