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Primavera Sound, Sónar or Cruïlla BCN. These are some of the music festivals that the city of Barcelona hosts. However, according to Marcelo Rosero, director of the Salsa & Latin Jazz Festival, the city “lacked high quality salsa and latin jazz music”. This new festival is taking place in a square at Poble Espanyol (Barcelona). Rosero has compared the programme of the festival with a restaurant saying that it has an “exquisite menu” and a “buffet where all is jewellery”. The festival will have “top-level bands” and its “musical acts are very important internationally”, Rosero has concluded.

Ryanair, the low cost Irish airline, announced this Friday the closure of four flights from Barcelona due to the rising costs approved by the Spanish government and imposed by the AENA, the institution responsible for Spanish airports and aerial navigation. Ryanair has also cancelled eleven flights in Madrid, including a service from Girona. Michael O’Leary, the Chief Executive of Ryanair, announced that the services will stop from November. Barcelona Airport will lose connections to the East Midlands, Leeds Bradford, Hamburg and Trieste.

The Mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias has finished a seven-day visit to China. The aim of the trip was to promote Barcelona’s economy and attract new foreign investment in the Catalan capital. The Mayor spoke of the trip in a very positive light, pointing out the economic potential of Barcelona and highlighting the Chinese companies’ appreciation for the opportunity to invest in Barcelona.

Barcelona’s premier guided bus tour is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year after having been in operation since 1987. Described as “the most convenient way to discover Barcelona's most interesting and attractive sights” the popular open-top bus tour has catered for over 21.7 million visitors and sight seers in Barcelona. Over the years it has showcased Barcelona’s most popular locations, monuments and parks as well as opening up the city’s less well known areas to millions of visitors. One of city’s most successful tourism projects now offers city tours, sightseeing tours and a captivating tour of the major floodlit landmarks at night.

Illegal street sales, colloquially called in Catalonia ‘top manta’, is a daily problem that police and councils face and find difficult to solve. This non authorized business has a turnover of about €100 million per year. Coinciding with the beginning of the tourist season, the Confederation of Commerce of Catalonia (CCC) has started a new campaign called ‘Estirem de la manta’ (‘Pull the blanket’) to deal with this irregular practice. The objective: to raise awareness of the social and economic harm of this illegal activity with tourists and natives in order to tackle the problem. The CCC estimates that there are about 2,500 people currently working in this prohibited business in Catalonia.

The 5th edition of the Catalan capital’s music festival ‘Cruïlla Barcelona’ kicked off with Iggy & the Stooges, Nneka, Gogol Bordello, Julieta Venegas, La Pegatina, M.I.A, The Specials, Cypress Hills, 2manydjs, Sharon Jones, Amadou & Mariam, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Gustavo Gordera being some of the 35 artists who will play their music from Friday to Saturday night.

The Catalan defender has been at FC Barcelona’s offices the day before he signed his new contract with the Catalan club. The visit is the first step in a busy 36 hours for Barça’s latest signing and recent Euro 2012 winner.

The ‘Gaudí Experiència’ offers the visitor, in 9 different languages, an interactive experience, diving into the work of the Catalan genius who designed the Sagrada Família, La Pedrera, the Casa Batlló and the Parc Güell. In fact, the new museum is located next to the famous park. It shows how nature’s elements including cypress trees, water and the Montserrat Mountain inspired Gaudí.

6 of the 8 Barça players that won the EURO title with Spain were named to the best team of the EURO. Valdés, Pedro and the Dutchman Afellay are the only Barça players that did not make the all-star team.

The FC Barcelona midfielder wins the award that his fellow Barça teammate, Xavi Hernández, won in the 2008 EURO. Iniesta was named man of the match against Italy (Group Stage), Croatia and in the final against the Azzurri.

Barcelona’s Metropolitan Taxi Institute (IMET) will apply a flat rate from next year, which could be set at €15 for trips from or to El Prat Airport. The measure would only apply to taxis belonging to Barcelona and its metropolitan area. Beyond searching for “short term” measures to adapt the taxi sector to a drop of about 40% in demand because of the crisis, the IMET, along with the taxi organisations, are working to get back into the market.

FC Barcelona Alusport has won the Liga after beating El Pozo Murcia (3-6). El Pozo took charge until the final minutes of the game when Barça then tied. In the 5 minutes of extra time, the blaugrana team demonstrated its best side and scored the winning goals.

Choosing between these two rival cities to build the macro complex of hotels, casinos and business centres is “very difficult”, according to the Chief Operating Officer of Las Vegas Sands Corporation, Michael Leven, who visited Barcelona on Monday and Madrid on Tuesday

From October 15th to 17th, Barcelona will host Seafood, the largest show in southern Europe in the field of marketing fishing products. In its first edition, the show will feature nearly 300 exhibitors, 40% of them international, as well as many representatives of exhibiting companies and processors of seafood.

This year’s ‘Grec ‘Festival offers 68 plays, dancing, music and circus performances from July 1st to the 31st, 30 of them from international artists. Ramón Simó, the new director of the event, considers that this year’s Grec is more international, contemporany and multidisciplinary than ever before and its objective is to bring to Barcelona the best shows from Europe and the world.