If we were to ask the 'escapulada' faithful when they believed that, who knows, perhaps this season Europa would look more to the sky (LaLiga Hypermotion) than to hell (Segunda RFEF), many would recall the day in Algeciras. This is because, when the 101st minute of the seventh matchday was reached, a gallop by Adnane Ghailan, known as "the tailor" because he can make you a suit at the slightest slip-up, ended with a 2-3 on the scoreboard. An agonizing victory for the Catalans, another historic date for the collection of the Gràcia club and the impression that their presence in the category would not be merely token.

Although Sidonie's first Catalan album, "Catalan Graffiti," will be released next November, the Barcelona-based group has already begun playing some of the new songs at concerts outside of Catalonia. The reception has been mixed at times. However, the band is confident that Spanish audiences will put aside their linguistic prejudices and welcome the album with the same enthusiasm as if it were in Spanish.

Julio Iglesias, Luis Miguel, Shakira, Juan Gabriel, Ricky Martin. There's a long list of Latin singers who have racked up staggering sums of money over the last half-century, especially in the United States. Of course, while the numbers have been unmitigated, they haven't always enjoyed the prestige of their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. It took a new generation and the era of urban music to break down the cultural barriers and prejudices that had historically held them back. Of this new crop, the first to unite a massive, universal, and cross-cutting audience with specialized critics is Bad Bunny.

How many truly indisputable albums has Catalan pop music produced in the last fifty years? You can count them on the fingers of one hand—or both, if we're being generous. No one would dare to doubt that Diopter nor its significance. Nor is the transversal explosion ofThe best European teachers. Nor of course of For my friend, To alenar either Happiness. Have them, but few. We could dedicate an entire journal to detailing the reasons, but the fact is that when one of them turns fifty, the celebration should be worthy of it. This year marks the album's first half-century. Any night the sun can rise, by Sisa, the galactic artist, the star counter, the astronomical musician whose life was changed by this album. And, in the process, it also changed the future of the country's music.

It was the summer of 1989 when Francisco Casavella, a major novelist and a true rumba fan, explained how difficult it was for a music "that has been forgotten for years, marginalised by stupid clichés and even more stupid snobbery, to reap the desired fruits in an instant." Francis, as his friends called him, spoke of Catalan rumba –"the rumba that knocks you down"–, and in addition to possessing the best-tuned pen in the city, he seemed to have the gift of predicting the future. The writer did not suspect that the entire world would listen to that music just three years after that statement. It is estimated that some 3.2 billion people connected at some point with the closing ceremony of the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992. And as is well known, the best was when the rumba sounded from the stadium's loudspeakers and the stage almost fell. It was so heavy and so emotional.

Tinder, Bumble, Happn, Grindr, Badoo, Meetic, AdoptaUnTio and many more. Dating and partner-finding apps have revolutionised the way humans interact in terms of sexual and emotional relationships in the West. These types of apps are so common that it even seems impossible to have other ways of getting along beyond trading images and chatting on the mobile phone screen. In this sense, the data is clarifying, because it is estimated that 40% of new couples formed in the State have met on Tinder. But although they may seem from another era, physical marriage agencies have not disappeared, quite the opposite. This sector, which was created in Catalonia in the sixties, exists and works as well as in past decades. There are far fewer of them and they do not compete head-to-head with the millions of users who use the digital environment, but they claim to offer an extra level of attention and personalisation that no machine can ever give you.

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I will listen to the first album by La Rauxa, the ye-ye pop project by Laura del Pino, one of the founders of Les Testarudes, with members from Trau.From the beginningit is an excellent debut, full of luminous songs and infectious choruses. Nostalgia? All of it, but when a project is made with such good taste and respect for old music, one can only get up, dance, and applaud. It will be one of the great Catalan albums of this year.

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"I can finally go to the public pool and change in the changing room without fear of people looking at me and seeing me as something strange." Arantxa admits that after having undergone a radical lateral mastectomy, the result of an operation due to breast cancer, she felt "like an alien who is missing something." Browsing through Instagram, she discovered a paramedical tattoo artist who changed her life. "I am delighted with the result. Not only would I do it again, but I have recommended it to a friend who was in a similar situation to me," she explains. Resident in Madrid, Arantxa is one of the people who have decided to get a paramedical tattoo, an action that has noticeably improved her day-to-day life.

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Santillana Holidays, Santillana holidays was an advert you couldn't get out of your head, and a refrain that stuck deep inside you. Doing your homework and summer revision notebook was the only unavoidable obligation during the school holidays: picking up a pencil and trying to decipher the problems proposed in the book became a ritual for thousands of Catalan children. What they did not imagine then is that as adults they would continue to do it, this time for pure enjoyment, and that they would turn it into a wonderful summer tradition. A small miracle in the form of the Holiday Notebook for Adults the pop exercise book from Blackie Books, created by Daniel López Valle and illustrator Cristóbal Fortúnez in 2011. A regular leader in the rankings of best-selling non-fiction books as of June, it is celebrating its first decade of success and is constantly growing: it has expanded to Italy, where the second edition is a sales phenomenon, and has increased its potential audience even more thanks to the Golden Notebook a publication specially designed for people over sixty.

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In Catalonia we have an infallible method to measure the popularity of a musician: appearing in the choral song of the Marató de TV3. In the 2020 edition there was Miki Núñez, Antonio Orozco, Els Catarres, Nina and Dyango. And Lildami, conclusive proof that urban music in Catalan has definitively entered the collective imagination of the masses. It has taken almost twenty-five years to stop thinking of local rhyme as an anecdote and to start thinking about a scene that is still incipient, but with a promising future. It's a question of normality: if young people from all over the world are asking for urban the native language has to take its rightful place. The wind is blowing in our favour, but the key is the emergence of a number of young, talented and uninhibited musicians who have made a splash. These are the key facts and names of the past, present and future of music in Catalan.

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Turning a monstrous crime into a work of art. This action carefully defines In Cold Blood (1965), by Truman Capote, considered the starting pistol of one of the great journalistic and literary revolutions of the 20th century: the non-fiction novel. The New American journalism (authors such as Norman Mailer, Gay Talese, Harper Lee) brought a shine to a phenomenon that has reached the present day at its best thanks to the fascination with true crime.

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The annual summaries confirmed the expected trend: today urban music is still the star genre of the industry. For three years now, its artists have dominated the most listened lists on Spotify, and all thanks to having become the music chosen by young people, who have adopted it almost as a lifestyle. It is because of its great influence among millenials and the Z generation that it is important for an urban artist to make Catalan the main language of his or her work. P.A.W.N. Gang, Lildami, Mr. Chen, Cooba and the Queency are rap, trap and reggaeton projects in Catalan that are penetrating the urban scene with strength. This is amplified even more intensely when a big artist adopts the language.

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