Children without holidays and young people who cannot become independent: what has most caught our attention this week

BarcelonaWe want to recommend a range of activities for the coming days, such as a visit to the CosmoCaixa planetarium, a magic show, the 11th edition of Europa Cantat Junior, in Girona, and the FilmoXica summer series dedicated to bicycles, among others.

At the same time, we propose a review of current events through Andrea Zayas' comic strip, the section To think about it and the data and statements that have caught our attention the most.

Cultural and leisure activities

Are you ready to help Magic Pablo overcome the Great Challenge? Auri, one of the most powerful wizards that has ever existed, will examine the young man's qualities to see if he is a worthy successor. Magia kids. Gran Reto is a story where a group of friends led by Pablo himself will go through the trials that the great Auri has devised, experiencing the value of friendship, personal growth, and the importance of imagination. It is a family show where magic, dance, and theater merge, and which you can see every Saturday in July at the Teatreneu multisales.

This August there will be a Solar eclipse that can be seen from Lleida and Tarragona, among other places. The last time this phenomenon occurred in Spain was in 1959, but it was only seen in the Canary Islands. On the peninsula, we have to go back to the year 1905. During this phenomenon, a multitude of people position themselves under the ephemeral shadow cast by the moon along a strip 200 kilometers wide. The eclipse lasts only a few minutes, during which the darkness in the strip is total, and even allows stars to be seen in the sky. You can find out more details about this phenomenon at the 3clipsi Planetarium at the CosmoCaixa Science Museum from June 26 to September 6. The entrance fee is only 6 euros and it is advisable to buy it in advance online.

If you are looking for family-friendly plans as well as a place to escape the heat, you cannot miss the FilmoXica summer cycle, which this year has one of the inseparable elements of good weather and holidays for children as its thematic focus: bicycles. The film selection includes classics such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,The Goonies, The Triplets of Belleville or My Uncle. The screenings will take place every Saturday and Sunday at 5:30 PM and admission is free with the FilmoXica card.

If you like choral singing, from July 11th to 19th, Girona will host the 11th edition of Europa Cantat Junior, the international reference festival for children's and youth choirs, which will bring together 1,200 singers from 43 choirs from 12 countries around the world. Among the many activities, we highlight Bajamos a la plaza, the great open-air concert that will kick off the event on July 12th, at 8:30 PM, on the steps of the Girona cathedral. With an itinerant and non-competitive nature, Europa Cantat Junior returns to Catalonia twenty years after its celebration in Vic to turn Girona into the capital of live music.

Today we bring you an interesting initiative from Berta Mas, director of Gastronomia Brutal. It is about Oficios que alimentan, an educational project that introduces children to the world of food through trades, territory, and direct experience. Inspired by the Japanese shokuiku model, which integrates food education into the school curriculum and understands food as an educational tool, Oficios que alimentan proposes an experiential approach to the world of food. “We don’t teach how to cook, but how to understand food: where it comes from, how it is produced, how it is cooked, how it is eaten, and how it is respected,” says Mas.

Children in Barcelona imagine what they would like the city to be like in the year 2036. Their proposals can be seen at the Barcelona City Hall. This is the final exhibition of The City We Want, an initiative promoted by Arquiniños and framed within the programming of Barcelona World Capital of Architecture 2026. Since October 2025, a hundred children between 8 and 12 years old have participated in this free extracurricular activity developed simultaneously in the 10 districts. Through workshops, outings, and model building, the children have explored their neighborhoods, observed the city, worked with plans, and developed proposals on how they would like to transform the spaces they inhabit. The inauguration is open to the public with prior registration.

If you have children and young people at home who enjoy writing, we present an interesting proposal. In the Gràcia neighborhood of Barcelona, La Fantàstica has opened, a creative writing space designed to support children and young people, created by the writer Berta Mongé. More than a workshop or a school, La Fantàstica is a meeting place centered around writing. In very small groups, participants have time, guidance, and an environment that fosters concentration, confidence, and personal creativity, understanding writing as a way to explore the world and understand oneself, as well as to invent stories and put words to what concerns them.

Super3 makes the leap from the screen to the physical world with the opening of Fantàstix, the Super3 imagination factory. This new cultural and experiential leisure space, located in the heart of Barcelona, is born to champion the power of stories and imagination. With a surface area of 2,000 m², Fantàstix offers an immersive one-hour tour where children between 2 and 12 years old and their families stop being passive spectators to become protagonists of a collective adventure, led by the most well-known Super3 characters, such as Titó, Mic, Beta, and some protagonists from Fuet, Ladybug and Maya the Bee. The Super3 imagination factory is open Monday to Friday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and on weekends and holidays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tickets at the box office and on the website Fantastixsuper3.com.

If you are looking for family plans, know that Barcelona will host the first European edition of Balloon story, an international immersive experience created with more than 600,000 recyclable balloons that arrives in Europe for the first time after visiting New York and Sydney. Balloon story transforms large-format spaces into visual worlds made with recyclable balloons. The tour includes monumental installations and immersive scenographies with figures such as dinosaurs, giant octopuses, and rockets, in a visual, sensory, and family-friendly proposal. The exhibition can be seen at Espai Inmersa.

This week we propose you go see the exhibition Fabià Puigserver with a child's gaze. It is a collective exhibition of plastic material created by the students of Escola La Sedeta in Barcelona. The exhibition is the result of the approach taken by the school to the figure of Fabià Puigserver – set designer, costume designer, stage director, and founder of Teatre Lliure – within the framework of the Escoles Tàndem program of the Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera. It is a visual journey through Puigserver's life and also through the beginnings of Teatre Lliure, reinterpreted from the pure, playful, and creative perspective of children. The exhibition, curated by set designer Sebastià Brosa, can be seen in the bar of Teatre Lliure.

Literary recommendations

This is the summer to look at the sky, which is why we recommend this book to explore the cosmos. From planets to comets, black holes or stars, space is full of amazing wonders. An opportunity to travel through the universe from the ancient astronomers who tracked the sky looking for comets to the most advanced solar probes, historic trips to the Moon or the discovery of dark matter to understand not only what we know but how we know it. A very appropriate knowledge book to arrive at the solar eclipse on August 12th well prepared.

Things that happen (to me), by Andrea Zayas Buchaca

To think about

One out of every three Catalan families with children cannot go on vacation because they do not have enough financial resources to pay for them, according to the Survey of Living Conditions. One way these families have for their children to disconnect are summer centers or camps, but unfortunately in many cases they cannot afford them either. That is why it is crucial that all these children can at least have open pavilions, to be able to play without a scorching sun, or libraries and civic centers to enjoy moments that remind them that they are also on vacation.

He said

The data