"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.

I overhear a conversation between two young women who, like me, are waiting in the garden of La Central del Raval for the start of the presentation of Dame veneno que quiero vivir (Anagrama), by the Barcelona-based writer Leticia Sala (Barcelona, 1989), who previously published Los cisnes de Macy's (Reservoir Books, 2023) and is the author of the successful newsletter Magical thinking. It happens that the two girls who inject themselves do so with a friend of a friend "who knows how to inject". Apparently, the cheaper version of the dose costs 300 euros. They are under 30, for sure.

One year after signing the National Language Pact, the Government has showcased the work done with an event at the Palau de la Generalitat before institutional representatives and entities that signed the agreement. After increasing Catalan learning for adults and promoting municipal language policy, two of the main milestones of this first year, President Salvador Illa has announced that, for the first time, an agreement has been reached with employers' associations and unions of the Social Dialogue Council for "a roadmap to promote Catalan in the workplace". "It is a very important step and a necessary milestone," said Illa, who has shown himself to be "confident, happy, and optimistic" about the future of Catalan. Illa also announced that the investment in language for the second year of the Pact will be 120 million, and specified two initiatives: 21 million to create more reception classrooms and 50 million to achieve greater presence in the digital world.

The same day that the artist and writer Paula Bonet reported on Instagram that her gallery where she works had been destroyed, her stalker also posted on social media a photograph of a giant hammer accompanied by a text in which he assured that "the purpose of the aggression is domination, not destruction". And a few hours later, the man added two more posts. In the first, holding the book El fin del amor by Eva Illouz; in the second, he is seen looking at the camera with the text "Get over it. Move on". The man was released a few days before the attack on the gallery and after having been in preventive detention since July 2025, when he entered Bonet's La Madriguera workshop, breaking down the door, stealing a necklace and leaving a message written on the blackboard.

60% of Girona's residents use Catalan as their usual language in social relationships, alone or combined with Spanish. If we look at the priority use of Catalan in Girona, the figure drops to 48%, still above the national average, which is 42% of usual Catalan use including bilingual uses. If we look at exclusive uses, the gap remains: in Girona, only 39% of the population habitually speaks Catalan, and the Catalan average is 33%.

One of the pillars of graphic humor in our country, Jordi Amorós (Barcelona, 1945), known by the pseudonym Ja, master of satire and pioneer filmmaker, has died at the age of 82. He was one of the great names of the mythical El Papus, with which he faced about eighty lawsuits and even a court-martial, and remained active in magazines such as El Jueves and Mongolia. Publicist, screenwriter, animator, and producer, he directed the State's first animated film for adults, Historias de amor y masacre; the animated series Mofli, el último koala, and the film Despertaferro!It was in the first satirical magazines, such as Mata Ratos, Pacha, Barrabás, El Cuervo and especially El Papus, in which he collaborated in all issues, where he already displayed his irreverent, biting, and anti-system humor, which was fodder for complaints and censorship. Some of his most subversive series and characters were born in this magazine, such as Sor Angustias de la Cruz, an anticlerical nun, and Encuesta Papus. "I became a regular at the courts. A judge would come out who basically dedicated himself to insulting me and threatening me with sanctions, and then, when the reprimand was over, the same judge would ask me for a drawing for his children," he explained to ARA. The attack on Carrero Blanco caught him at the courthouse. In 1975, his book  Humor sexual sano was also censored and withdrawn from the market. In 1977, he was arriving at the editorial office of El Papus, on Tallers street, when the bomb exploded by a right-wing faction against the weekly, killing the building's doorman and injuring seventeen people.

The Naked Maja, by Francisco de Goya, was a groundbreaking painting from the late 18th century, both for the sensual attitude of the model depicted and because the artist dared to paint a female pubis. But behind this apparently naturalistic and brave image also lies a whole cultural and social framework that led Goya to portray a woman of canonical beauty, sufficiently exuberant yet also sufficiently domesticated, with that white, smooth skin, free of misplaced hairs. Ester Conesa, from the feminist collective Peliagudas, has drawn the missing hairs on an almost exact copy that can be seen in the new CCCB exhibition. Through time and multidisciplinary works of art —painting, photography, cinema, installation—, "The Cult of Beauty", which can be visited until November 8, explores precisely all the ugliness hidden in the pursuit of this ideal. Beauty is intangible and mutable depending on the era, morality, status, race, agenda, industry, etcetera, and it undoubtedly provokes as much pleasure, admiration, and desire as, by opposition, shame, pain, and marginalization for those who are left out.

One month after the explosive Sant Jordi day, the Booksellers Guild launches a campaign to warn about various irregular practices in the sector that "put the future of bookstores at risk". Specifically, they denounce practices that break the book chain, meaning they bypass bookstores as intermediaries and expert prescribers protected by the Book Law. The guild insists it is not raising its voice "against anyone," but specifically points to public purchases and direct sales to administrations, libraries, schools, and fairs.

A study by the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) analyzing one hundred international research papers on healthcare with linguistic discordance confirms that "not guaranteeing healthcare in the patients' language can be detrimental to the accuracy of diagnoses, the trust between doctor and patient, and the quality of care." According to scientific evidence, this situation particularly affects migrated individuals who do not know the country's language, but the research places special emphasis on the impact it has on the native population with a minority or minoritized language, such as Catalan, for which there are still no specific scientific studies.

With a t-shirt that reads "Palestinians will be free" and two uppercase tattoos on his forearms that say "SILENCE IS COMPLICITY", the pharmaceutical group Ferrer businessman and patron of the Ferrer Foundations, Sergi Ferrer-Salat, presented this Friday with his kind anti-system vehemence an exceptional project in Barcelona: the only bookstore in the world dedicated to the Palestinian conflict and its ramifications. "The question shouldn't be why we are opening this bookstore, the question is why no one has opened it before —he begins—. The main reason is the lack of awareness of to what extent the cause of the Palestinian people condenses, like no other in terms of virulence, cruelty, cynicism, and dehumanization, the full contemporary validity of the fateful triangle of imperialcolonialism, capitalism, and racism that has led us to today's world, a world eaten away and devastated by an unsustainable and immoral degree of inequality and injustice.

A year has passed since the signing of the National Pact for Language, which was meant to mark a turning point in the language policies undertaken by the Generalitat de Catalunya, with the horizon of 2030. During this time, the main actors who were not present at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans meeting, such as Junts, the CUP, the USTEC, or the ANC, have not joined. However, municipal policy has been decisively activated, and over 200 town councils in the country have joined, taking on their role in revitalizing the language. A line of aid has been created so that they can offer Catalan courses. a line of aid so that they can offer Catalan courses.

A year has passed since the signing of the National Pact for Language, which was meant to mark a turning point in the linguistic policies undertaken by the Generalitat of Catalonia, with the horizon of 2030. In this time, the main agents who were not present at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans meeting, such as Junts, the CUP, USTEC, or the ANC, have not joined, but municipal policy has been decisively activated, and more than 200 town councils in the country have joined, assuming their role in promoting the language. A line of aid has been created so that they can offer Catalan courses.line of aid so that they can offer Catalan courses.

Llucia Ramis (Palma, 1977) arrived in Barcelona to study at university and here she has built her life, relationships, jobs, friendships. For years, until after she turned 40, she lived distressed by the ever-increasing rental contracts (she went from paying 240 to 750 euros) which meant she had to share a flat and move areas. Thirty years and ten moves later, she publishes Un metro cuadrado (non-fiction prize from Libros del Asteroide; in Catalan published by Anagrama), where she analyzes the housing crisis from her experience as a tenant in Barcelona. The essay incorporates journalistic headlines, figures, and expert positions that have addressed the issue in recent years, but also the intimate and emotional impact that the city's transformation has on its inhabitants.