The icon on her mobile today is of a train journey between Geneva and Grenoble, but before that, she had had the image of very different waters: those of an Indonesian beach, where she has been doing fieldwork since 2018. Every year or two she travels there to study an Austronesian language in the process of extinction, totoli. She now captains the project from the University of Barcelona with ministerial funding.

The clown of Circ Cric, Ms. Titat (Montserrat Trias by civil name), this summer has rapidly and peacefully devoured a novel that has been one of the season's phenomena, The bookstore of dead hours (Columna), by Laura Autonell, a revelation author of 63 years. "It is located in my neighborhood, in the Raval of Barcelona, and I have recognized squares and streets that I constantly walked on as a child," she explains.

Oriol Genís read El extravío de los signos, by Mexican anthropologist Natalia Mendoza (Periférica), because it was a recommendation from the company with whom this season they performed Oedipus and Antigone at the Teatre Nacional. The book "talks about the Sonora desert, immigration, deaths, people who disappear and are not found, and this links it with Tiresias and Antigone," explains the actor. "It's a splendid book, an essay that reads very well and is very interesting," he assures.

Half of adults have trouble sleeping. Why? Psychologist and author best-sellerRafael Santandreu assures that "the number 1 factor in insomnia is the hyper-demand that one must sleep perfectly well, always." Therefore, one of the main goals of his latest book, "Sleep when you can't sleep (Wind Rose), is, first and foremost, to lower the pressure: "Sleeping well is important, yes, but not as much as they have sold us. And this exaggeration causes a paradoxical effect: the fear of not sleeping prevents us from sleeping".

"I deleted Tinder and Instagram and downloaded Substack #summer", I read in a post. Substack is a platform that, in fact, demands time. The posts that are uploaded there, and that are also sent as an email newsletter to subscribers, are sheets full of information, references, and data, especially if they are paid. And since it increasingly contains a more extensive and diverse offer, your linked readings and emails multiplyto the inbox. "I'm joining Substack because I missed blogs. It's the network for those looking for a new space, more depth, less noise, less presence of the turbo-fascist companies that have been taking over and conditioning how we interact on X, Instagram, and Facebook," says writer and comedian Maria Rovira.

This summer Circ Cric has recovered its nomadic spirit and has spent a month and a half on the road. Last weekend they finished an adventure that toured six townsin the Priorat region and the Prades mountains. Precisely for this reason, the clown Jaume Mateu (Tortell Poltrona within the tent) recommends Lo mig del món (Club Editor) by philologist and activist Roser Vernet, born in El Masroig. It is a book of memoirs that is also a literary journey – full of poetry and linguistically well-rooted in the place – through the Priorat, its villages, and its people.

"For me, entering La Central is like entering a candy store. I go there to look for sweets!", confesses the actress Muntsa Alcañiz. It was during one of these excursions that, "patapam!", she stumbled upon the first two volumes of the tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, which Comanegra has published in Catalan with translation by Ramon Monton. "They stick to my fingers", assures Alcañiz, who is a great reading enthusiast. Only the study of her theatrical roles can take her away from books, such as this summer's at Heartbreak Hotel, Factory, but once she has memorized them, she returns to her daily reading. "When a book grips me, I like to get up very early and, as soon as it gets light, I'm already on the rooftop reading. I really enjoy listening to the birds and reading", she explains.

My mother-in-law returns enthusiastic from a concert by Los Sírex that filled the Atlàntida in Vic and it's clear we need to know the secret of Antoni Miquel Cerveró, Leslie, who at 82 years old continues at the helm of one of the longest-lived rock'n'roll bands in the world: 65 years active, ahead of the Rolling Stones. "Los Sírex, Los Gatos Negros, Los Mustang, Los Salvajes, Los Cheyenes... We are the ones who opened the doors of fresh air to this country," he says. Just hearing him, it's evident that he has a lot to say and an overwhelming charisma. "I have a blast on stage, I release all the adrenaline. I've never been interested in learning to sing, it's come to me superfluously, but I've spent money to learn to communicate with the audience. At concerts I feel loved and respected; it's my diet, being close to people," he explains.

Actress Francesca Piñón was an introverted child. "Reading and cinema saved me. My childhood was spent reading and watching films," she says. As a child, she took refuge in reading, and it has accompanied her all her life. "At twelve, my grandfather made me read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky..., and I got used to that literature. It wasn't until adolescence that I discovered contemporary authors on my own. And now, with age, I've gone back," she explains. She defines herself as a "nineteenth-century" reader: her literary century is the 19th.

Pep Parés was a popular face of the first Televisió de Catalunya thanks to two iconic characters: the adventurer Oliana Molls (1985-1987) and our first ecological consciousness, Captain Lettuce (1994). At that time, he was also the face of a sport as little known until then as mushing, and he directed the Pirena sled dog race for 22 editions (1990-2012). Furthermore, Parés continued to work as an actor (the last professional play was "The Jewish Woman, by Bertold Brecht, in 2003-2004) and chaired Amnesty International in Catalonia (2007-2011). He also mobilized for the National Pact for the Referendum.

Every day, actor and activist Pep Parés goes to bed an hour before he wants to fall asleep to have enough time to read. He likes novels and essays, especially those that revolve around thinking about contemporary life, such as the Manual of Civility, by Victoria Camps and Salvador Giner, and The Art of the Mind, by Francesc Bofill, "a former student of Montserrat, with whom I coincided in the La Claca company, who had an extraordinary culture and wrote proverbs, quotes, and aphorisms from all over the world". "It's one of the books that has marked me the most," he assures. Together they created the mythical show Mori el Merma, a free adaptation of Ubu the King with puppets by Joan Miró, "the first profane work that entered the Liceu in 1977," says the actor.

The theater director Àlex Rigola does not conceive of summer readings as light readings. "Light literature just doesn't get to me. Books like The Girl on the Train seem unbearable to me, very hard to read, because there are only actions," he explains. What seduces him is more the "how it is told" than the "what." That is, the style, the voice, in short, high-flying literature. "I look for art in the narrative of writing more than in cinema. Sometimes emotional cinema takes me away, and on the other hand, in literature, I need the text itself to have quality," says the director of the Heartbreak Hotel theater.

I wonder who picks up a book in a beach library or pool library (and which book) and I dedicate myself to finding out by visiting the service that every summer, since 1992, opens on Castelldefels beach. I don't want to be mysterious, spoiler alert: nobody. I didn't see any book loans this Thursday afternoon. However, all the other things that also happen in libraries and are often invisible and as appreciated as this sea breeze happen here: knowledge, community, and Catalan. The three Cs that matter to us.

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.