'El Foment,' the new cultural magazine that aims to be a "national tool."

GironaIt's not every day that a magazine is born in Girona with the aim of reaching all the Catalan countries. And even less so from a project that, like a "matrioche," has been growing for five years From the heart of the Barri Vell neighborhood, expanding throughout the city, the district, and soon the entire Principality. It was unveiled this week. The Promotion, a new quarterly publication of at least 116 pages published in "record time," in the words of the director, of just four months.

As its name suggests, it is another piece in the set of projects of the El Foment Foundation, promoted by the Girona businessman, activist and philanthropist Candi Granés and that has the Mercaders Square in Girona as a meeting point with two gastronomic projects, La Fonda and La Taverna, and two spaces dedicated to language and culture, La Escuela and El Centro.

The magazine is headed by journalist Andreu Mas, who, as he explained on Tuesday to a packed auditorium at the Espai Fundación La Caixa in Girona, took on the challenge in December of producing a magazine in record time, knowing that he had in his hands not only a publication to project El Foment, but an "e." As of this week, the magazine can be found free of charge in various shops and gastronomic establishments in the Girona region, as well as at newsstands throughout Catalonia.

For the moment, the project is only being launched in print, but with the aim of soon launching a digital newspaper with up-to-date cultural information. The fact is that El Foment has quickly become a meeting place in Girona city to defend the Catalan language and culture, but in a playful, uninhibited, and relaxed way. And after five years consolidating the project, as Granés explained on Tuesday, they now aspire to extend it to more parts of the Principality.

Emerging musicians

The magazine and the new digital edition, which will have a multimedia component, should also be a tool for introducing new generations of musicians, both in popular and more modern genres, who have found a space in which to make themselves known at the El Foment School. This is the case of NUN, the singer-songwriter duo formed by Girona-born singer Núria Fossas and Torroella-born guitarist Maria Oliver, who presented their debut album, Aüc, at the School last Friday and yesterday enlivened the event with moving lyrics such as "To the women (who cry in the dark)." Likewise, the project seeks to transcend and go beyond the city of Girona, where El Foment has already expanded in recent years by co-organizing popular events, such as the first three glossa fights of the San Narciso Fairs, and is now preparing to hold a massive event on the coast this summer.

Valtónic's exile

The first issue of the magazineThe Promotion The cover features writer Martí Gironell, but inside there's an interview with Mallorcan musician Josep Miquel Arenas, better known as Valtóyc, where he opens up and reflects for the first time on the impact of exile and the depression he suffered. "I even thought about committing suicide, I really thought about committing suicide many times," he says when asked if "to find yourself, you first have to lose yourself." Regarding his decision to quit music last summer, he explains that he was tired of having created a "very politicized character" and that now he "has a good life" and finds it difficult to write about social injustice. Finally, regarding the Trial, he defends "honesty" and asks not to "infantilize" people. "Then you have a devastated country," he concludes.