It's July, but classes haven't ended for everyone. There are 143 secondary school students from Barcelona (and their teachers) who, defying the temperatures, have extended the school year for three extra weeks to do an intensive Catalan course. After last year's pilot program, this summer the Barcelona Education Consortium has expanded the initiative with seven groups of about twenty students between 12 and 16 years old, most of whom need to consolidate their B1 Catalan level. They are all young people who have arrived in the city in the last year, mostly from Latin America but also from Morocco, China, Pakistan, or Ukraine. During the school year, they have attended one of the ten accelerated welcome classrooms (AAA) in Barcelona's high schools. Unlike the 238 ordinary welcome classrooms in public and private schools, the AAAs are designed for newly arrived secondary students to have an intensive immersion in Catalan for four months before joining their assigned educational center.

It is likely that nothing would have united Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Solal Mariotte if it weren't for the dance and music of Jacques Brel (1929-1978). She is a renowned 66-year-old Flemish choreographer, one of the great names in contemporary European dance, creator of some seventy shows, founder of the company Rosas and the P.A.R.T.S. school. He, a 25-year-old French dancer, trained first in breakdance, then at the Annecy conservatory and Keersmaeker's school, where they discovered their common passion for the Belgian singer. "Jacques Brel is part of my history, while he discovered Brel on YouTube when he was a teenager," explains the choreographer. "She has taught me everything," admits Mariotte, provocatively. He is joking, but really few artists so young have had the opportunity to create and perform a duet with a living totem of dance, in a project with a large budget and an extensive tour, which arrives at the Teatre Grec this Thursday and Friday.

It seems to me that the event was announced as the presentation of Empar Moliner's latest novel, but no: it ended with the writer performing a monologue standing up worthy of stand-up comedy, telling a story that she assured could only have one ending to be good, a bang-ending, the kind she also uses in her columns for ARA, in her stories, and, I see, in her events. The audience laughed because they felt treated by their favorite writer who, in fact, ended up inviting everyone "to a free hop" at the party we're having for subscribers next week at Damm.

The singer Aitana and Antonio Díaz, El Mago Pop, have acquired the Aquitània Theatre in Barcelona, a 326-seat venue located at 33 Sarrià Avenue. According to a statement, the objective is to "generate new opportunities for professional creators in the sector, promote the production and exhibition of new shows, and contribute to the strengthening of Barcelona's cultural fabric." The programming will focus on "new proposals, new audiences, and new generations of creators."

New ruling against Catalan in schools. The Supreme Court (TS) has ruled that Spanish cannot be excluded from the signage of public educational centers in Catalonia. It does so by annulling a section of a document on the organization and management of educational centers for the 2022/23 academic year, which was approved by the Generalitat in July 2022 and stated that "the signage of the center's spaces is in Catalan, Occitan in Aran, and in Catalan Sign Language if applicable, which are the reference languages of the educational system." The Supreme Court rules against a judgment by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), following an appeal filed by the Assembly for a Bilingual School of Catalonia with the support of the Prosecutor's Office.

The powerful voice of Bonnie Tyler, who poured her heart out in Total eclipse of the heart, and the cracked voice that surrendered to heartbreak in It's a heartache, has finally fallen silent. As confirmed by the BBC, the Welsh singer has died at the age of 75 in Portugal, in Faro, where she had settled to live during the seasons she was not performing. Her discography leaves behind a handful of immortal hits, a vocal surgery, an unexpected revival, and a steadfast dedication that has kept her on stage for practically half a century uninterrupted. "I'm never going to retire. What do you want me to do? Stop and die? I love performing too much," she stated in a television interview in the summer of 2024. Tyler continued to tour, filling halls mainly in Germany, France, and Central European countries, much more so than in her native United Kingdom.

Most of the world's languages use the same patterns when naming the things around us. An international study led by Pompeu Fabra University and published in Nature Human Behaviour states that languages tend towards lexical economy and, therefore, try to reuse known words or parts of words, as long as the context allows and does not generate confusion. According to the researcher from the Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Thomas Brochhagen, language economy is "a cognitive bias" that over time shapes all languages, which speakers do not do consciously or plannedly. The brain tends to seek the fastest routes for communication.

The restaurant and cocktail bar Jok, hidden on a mezzanine in Barcelona's Eixample, with its modernist decor and rosé velvet sofas, seems like the perfect setting for the cutest Victorian podcast out there. I'm going to see the "Punkis Decimonòniques" precisely on the day they disband: this will be their last show after five years of delving into the best novels by Victorian female writers, most of which have recently been published in Catalan by Viena, in collections such as Club Victòria and Petits Plaers. Indeed, their editor, Blanca Pujals, along with the then bookseller of La Carbonera, Carlota Freixenet, are the "Victorian ladies of the 21st century".

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.