Art historian and cultural manager Maribel López (Barcelona, 1973) has been chosen to direct the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona through an international competition. Having been the director of the Arco art fair in Madrid for the last eight years, she will return to her hometown, where she took her first professional steps. Maribel López will thus succeed Marko Daniel, who has been director of the foundation for eight years, until this past June, after the board of trustees "announced four months ago, by surprise, the end of his tenure just one month after renewing his contract for three years. López's name is a departure from the trajectory of the center's directors, who had always been experts in Miró and avant-garde art (Francesc Vicens, Rosa Maria Malet, and Marko Daniel), while his profile is more linked to management. López will have a four-year contract, extendable by two more, and a salary of 115,000 euros annually.

Àlex Rigola wanted to recover the magic of A Midsummer Night's Dream which he premiered in a macro-production in Düsseldorf in 2014. The idea was to place a production with a large cast in a small room like the Heartbreak Hotel theatre. "When I think of Grec, I think of a festival, a party and, therefore, Grec should serve for special things to happen in the city's venues", argues Rigola, who was a candidate to direct the festival. With this maxim, he premieres a show that requires a special commitment from all participants, both interpretative and economic, because even filling the room doesn't make the numbers add up: twelve performers will perform throughout July on a stage for seventy seats (which are practically sold out).

A new editorial category has emerged this summer in bookstores: books for playing in Catalan. Shops have even set up a new arrivals table to accommodate the avalanche of illustrated activity book publications, which are already climbing the bestseller lists.

The challenge that Àngels Gonyalons has in hand in the new show she premieres at the Grec Festival is so complicated that, before starting, she has a request: "I hope the audience turns off their mobile phones and the watches that turn green and seem like aliens in the stalls. It's a great acting challenge and a very delicate mental gymnastics, and I'm training a lot so that nothing distracts me, but...", she says, and asks theaters to invent a method for confiscating mobile phones before entering. The director of the Teatre Romea, Josep Maria Pou, believes it is "a lost cause". The actress resists: "There is a certain connotation of 'I paid for the ticket and I do what I want', and no: you are going to a very important and delicate ceremony, and there is a code, you are not in your dining room with a bowl of popcorn".

The requirement of C2 level Catalan for new teachers will not be effective next academic year. Education has once again suspended the obligation to have this certificate due to a lack of qualified individuals who can "guarantee the right to education", as confirmed by the department to ARA. While it was announced in December that all teachers wishing to enter the teaching pool for the 2026-2027 academic year would have to prove their C2 Catalan, this Thursday a resolution published in the Official Gazette of the Generalitat goes back and modifies the linguistic conditions for interim staff.

Mario Gas (Montevideo, 1947) is one of the great names of the Catalan stage. Since his debut – he counts 18 years, with the direction of Asalto nocturno (1965), although he had been acting since he was eight – he must have directed about 150 productions. He has been an actor, director, voice actor, set designer, lighting designer and creator of legendary shows, such as Sweeney Todd and The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Around 80 years old, he continues to be combative and fighting from the theater. Until June 28, he interprets the autobiographical cabaret at La FàbricaLa lluna és blanca, muy blanca… and has just published memoirs, Conversaciones con Mario Gas (Fundamentos), written by Santi Fondevila and Teresa Petit. With him, we review fifty years of our theater.

The same day that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) backed the 25% of Spanish in classrooms, Barcelona brought together the main experts in linguistic diversity in an international forum organized by Linguapax and financed, precisely, with European Union funds. One of the speakers was the Welsh sociolinguist Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones, president of the European Language Equality Network (ELEN) and director of the Centre for Welsh and Celtic Studies, who knows the Catalan case in depth – and, moreover, also speaks it.

Thousands of people signed up for the bombing. Plaça Nova was packed like an egg at a quarter to nine in the evening, when a helicopter emerged from behind the spires of Barcelona Cathedral to drop a hundred thousand bookmarks with poems in defense of freedom. "How beautiful, to remember peace at a time of wars. To change aggressiveness and death, for poetry and peace," say Pedro and Maria Luisa, from L'Hospitalet, who did not leave over the weekend to see this unusual action.

The Catalan linguistic immersion model, which has weakened over the years and with social changes, is one of the fronts that needs to be reformulated to improve the situation of Catalan. When asked how, the Minister of Linguistic Policy points to Northern Catalonia. "La Bressola has an immersion model that, with 2% Catalan-speaking students, manages to make Catalan the language among equals without adult supervision. If this is possible in its context, it must be possible in other centers," he stated in the last interview with ARA. In Catalonia, only half of 6th graders always speak Catalan with teachers and only one in four always speaks Catalan when doing group work with classmates. Outside the classroom, 60% of students do not use Catalan with their peers. How do they manage at La Bressola to ensure students actually converse in Catalan in the classroom, playground, and dining hall?

There is a party that makes protagonists of the boys and girls who have the most important superpower taught at school: the pleasure of reading. Perhaps they don't yet know that this passion will serve them for life, because for now they go unnoticed in the classroom, but Clark Kent will always become Superman. This week we have infiltrated the Champions of young readers: the final party of the Public Reading Competition organized for twenty-two years by the Fundació Enciclopèdia Catalana. Fundació Enciclopèdia Catalana.

From Catalonia, we observe with attention how Euskera has rejuvenated its speaker pyramid thanks to the school, but the language is far from being majority in the streets. Imanol Larrea is the director of the Soziolinguistika Klusterra, the research and revitalization center for Euskera that is financed with public and university funds and thanks to pro-language entities. A sociologist and doctor in communication from UPF, he is a great connoisseur of the Catalan reality – he lived in Catalonia from 2008 to 2015: he speaks Catalan perfectly – because he did his thesis here, worked in linguistic reception, and has collaborated with Catalan research groups. He now dedicates all his efforts to creating knowledge about Euskera to outline policies that will lift Basque out of a worrying stagnation. From June 17 to 20, he participates in the Forum on Linguistic Diversity, organized by Linguapax International, with dozens of experts to analyze the global linguistic diversity crisis and how to reverse it.

The imprint linked to the University of Vic, Eumo Editorial, will become part of Abacus Futur,, the second largest Catalan publishing group, which already manages about fifteen imprints such as Ara Llibres, Viena, Navona, Arcàdia, La Casa dels Clàssics, Univers, and La Galera. As ARA has learned, the Fundació Universitària Balmes, which owns the publishing house (and also the University of Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya), has sought a solution to guarantee the company's continuity. "Abacus is the partner that best fits the brand," say sources from UVic-UCC. The agreement still needs to go through the foundation's governing body, but the operation is closed, to the point that the publishers of both houses are already working hand in hand.

"Thank you for inviting me. I know how you are with tourists. I appreciate you are not throwing anything at me," says the Englishwoman Sheena Patel as a joke to break the ice. We are at the presentation of her first novel, Soc fan, at La Central de Consell de Cent. The writer really knows how to deliver opening lines, because her novel's is: "I stalk a woman on the internet who is sleeping with the same man as me." Bam. "I'd give anything for a joke," she'll confess later, which is another good streak.

The Flaix de Tardor cocktail of international shows will be served again from October 16 to 29 in five Barcelona venues. It will be the second edition of a mini-festival of seven shows situated at the start of the season, reminiscent of the old Festival de Tardor or the Xavier Regàs Memorial. The cycle serves to provide a concentrated taste of what is happening theatrically abroad, at a time when the Temporada Alta festival is also taking place in Girona-Salt, which does have a core of international companies more stably than in Barcelona. The same Girona producer, Bitó, is the one programming this "explosion of international theater" in Barcelona, says the festival director, Narcís Puig, who has public support from the Barcelona City Council (180,000 euros) and the Generalitat (180,000 euros) and the complicity of the five theaters through which the programming expands. The budget is 435,000 euros. For the Councilor of Culture, Xavier Marcé, the Flaix de Tardor "normalizes a programming of international reference shows" and "uniquely defines the city's cultural offer". Last year, Flaix achieved an occupancy of 89%, with 5,300 spectators.

With the exciting aroma of the paellas that would serve as a popular lunch and with some fireworks escaping in the background, Sala Beckett presented its new season this Friday on a street-level stage. "Welcome to the Beckett's birthday party in Poblenou!", exclaims director Toni Casares with a burst of voice. Ten years ago, the venue moved from a basement in Gràcia to this large headquarters in the old industrial neighborhood, a former cooperative exceptionally renovated by the award-winning Flores i Prats studio. "It is a success story resulting from a conflict that could have ended badly. The process of expelling activities inherent to the city due to speculative processes was then beginning," recalled the current Secretary of State, Jordi Martí, formerly delegate of Culture and deputy mayor of Barcelona City Council. He participated in the search and capture of the new space to save a theater project that had proven fundamental for Catalan authorship and with a historic past of commitment. As recalled by the Councilor for Culture, Xavier Marcé, "the venue was founded in the late 70s by José Sanchis Sinisterra and Teatro Fronterizo".

A passenger traveling from Girona - Costa Brava airport to Brussels last Wednesday was shouted at and reprimanded by a security control agent for asking for instructions in Catalan. According to what he explained to ARA and also stated in the complaint filed with Aena, after passing through the scanner, the man had to stop to go through the explosive substances control. The agent who was checking the luggage asked him "In what language?", to know how to give him the instructions. "Catalan", he said. That's when the shouts started. "I'm not a call center where you press five and I speak whatever language you want!", she told him. And she shouted towards the other security colleagues "They don't pay me enough to learn Catalan!", and other phrases of this kind, with an attitude that the other security colleagues supported.

Sometimes, environments outside your bubble allow you to speak more freely than in front of an expert but disapproving audience. Eager to see if I can catch fresh fish, I attend a talk about creative industries organized by BCD at Juno House (an elegant club located in the old flour mill on Aribau street) with the general director of Penguin Random House, Núria Cabutí, and the editor of Edhasa and president of the Catalan Publishers' Guild, Daniel Fernández. The talk begins with a brief but interesting linguistic dispute (and the event ends up being held in Catalan) which links to the fact that "Barcelona is the capital of publishing in Catalan and Spanish". "There is no other industry that, from Catalonia, leads as the publishing sector leads", highlights the event's presenter, the publicist Enric Jové. "Well, it has been difficult for us to get the Ministry of Industry to understand that we are an industry. The book's business volume in Spain is 3,000 million euros. In a very good year, Spanish cinema grosses 80 to 100 million. But they have the Goyas and a brutal propaganda machine —says the president of the Guild—. However, we are an industry that has intellectual prestige. That's why Amazon started selling books".

It has been fifteen years since Mercat de les Flors, Festival Grec and Temporada Alta first brought shows by Peeping Tom to Catalan audiences. The fascination with those incredibly original creations by a Belgian company, with never-before-seen dancer movement and a hyperrealistic, almost cinematic atmosphere, sealed their love affair with the city. Directors Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chartier even moved to Barcelona, although Peeping Tom maintains its headquarters in Brussels, and, especially in alliance with the Teatre Nacional, they have staged their latest shows from here, international co-productions that tour mainly in Europe and North America with a Catalan hallmark. This is the case with Chroniques, which can be seen in the Sala Gran of the TNC for more days than usual for dance: from June 4 to 14.

The Culture section of ARA receives an email from a company representing a high-ranking Catalan executive requesting to change a photograph from an old news story to a current one. Behind that curious request is 202 Digital Reputation, a consultancy specializing in digital reputation. Industrial engineer Carlota Gatius took advantage of COVID to train in digital business and swapped a job at Deloitte for this personal project, with a partner (Ruben Gálvez) and her own capital. Five years later, at 202, they work with big brands and top executives, mainly to weather reputational crises on the internet. In the era of LinkedIn, Instagram, and AI, the image we project online may be as crucial as the work we do.