He passes a few meters from the construction of the new Sants station, but the scene seems more like something from another time. From another city. Sitting in the electric wheelchair he uses to get around, Ramon Bruño is easy to see on many mornings. He might seem like just an elderly man enjoying the fresh air on Riego street, but Ramon is waiting for clients. At 89 years old, he is still at the helm of his small barbershop in Sants. And he is, for sure, the oldest barber in Barcelona.

There is now a popular verdict. The Barcelona City Council made public this Wednesday at noon the results of the citizen votes to choose the future ombudsman of the Catalan capital, in which 2,707 people participated. David Bondia won with 2,064 votes (76%), ahead of Gemma Calvet, who obtained 643 (24%). Regarding entity adhesions, Bondia had the endorsement of 25 (81%) and Calvet that of six (19%).

Rubén and Tamara were two of the thousands of Barcelona residents who, on May 15th last year, were awaiting the draw for the largest public housing promotion to date in the city: that of Illa Glòries. He, from the apartment where they lived in El Carmel, and she, from her job at a school. Both were eagerly following the coming and going of numbers. "Suddenly, we saw it clearly. We had won," Rubén still recalls with a smile. "We thought it would be impossible, that our number wouldn't come up. But we won the lottery," he adds.

For a long time, housing has become one of the country's main challenges. Often, however, the debate is reduced to figures. Those that refer to how many apartments need to be built. Those that tell us about the increase in the price per square meter, whether for purchase or rent. Even those that talk about how many more people can live in a specific place. There is also an approach to the issue from another perspective. What are these homes like? Have they changed much compared to how they were built twenty years ago? What should the buildings of the future be like?

One of the modernist treasures on Passeig de Gràcia will reopen to the public. The Barcelona City Council plenary session gave the green light this Friday to the comprehensive special plan for the development of the uses of Casa Lleó Morera, which will allow this iconic building by Lluís Domènech i Montaner to reopen as a museum. This will put an end to a decade in which the building—owned by Núñez y Navarro—has been closed to the public. The vote went ahead with the support of PSC, Junts, PP, and Vox, and the abstention of Barcelona en Comú and ERC.

In late July 2025, Sigrid received the first notification from the Barcelona City Council. When she read it, she began to tremble and had an anxiety attack. Forty-five years after buying the apartment, the council of the Catalan capital informed her that her home could not be used as a dwelling, as municipal archives state that the building has industrial use. Like her, the sixty or so residents of this building on Rosselló street – in the Eixample Left – have lived in limbo ever since. "My first lawyer told me: 'You could come home and find everything sealed, and not be able to enter. They can kick you out of your home,'" recounts Sigrid. From the City Council, however, they assure that efforts are being made to avoid this extreme.

The Government took an essential step this Tuesday to advance the planned investments in mobility infrastructure for the next decade. The President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, announced that the executive has given the green light to the new investment plan that should allow it to allocate more than 4,300 million euros from now until 2036 to update a network that suffers from the investment deficit of the last decade. To achieve this goal, the Government has approved the update and expansion of the Program for Commissioning of Actions (PEA), a document without which works cannot be put out to tender. "We are making a quantitative and qualitative leap," said the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, this Tuesday during the closing of a congress organized by Forbes in Barcelona.

Gemma Calvet (Barcelona, 1966) has a long career as a lawyer specializing in human rights. For ten years director of the AMB's Transparency office, she also served as a member of Parliament for a time. Now she aims to be the new ombudsman of Barcelona. A race she considers unequal because her adversary, David Bondia, continues to serve as ombudsman in the meantime.

David Bondia (Barcelona, 1969) has been the Ombudsman of Barcelona since 2021. A professor of international law and an expert in human rights, he is now running for re-election for a second term in which he wants to consolidate the work done so far. A race in which he competes with Gemma Calvet.

The Barcelona City Council has reported a firefighter to the Prosecutor's Office for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman, who woke up disoriented at the Zona Franca fire station. In an emergency press conference, the second deputy mayor for Security, Albert Batlle, explained that on Monday, June 8, they became aware of the events and activated all mechanisms, both internal – with the suspension of salary and employment of the member of the corps – and external – with the transfer of the case to the public ministry.

The fourth deputy mayor of Barcelona City Council, Jordi Valls, has cooled down this Wednesday the possibility of the council buying the Centre de la Vila in the short term. After, "as reported by ARA, the State—owner of the center through Mercasa—could not find a buyer for the commercial center of the Vila Olímpica, Valls has not closed the door to the council potentially acquiring the space in the future, but has emphasized the "extraordinary difficulties and risks" that the operation would entail. Firstly, he warned, beyond the purchase cost, updating the facility could have an extra cost for the municipal coffers "of between 25 and 30 million euros".

More than twenty-five years after it was first projected, Barcelona has this Friday set a calendar and resources to move forward with one of the most important pending pieces of the transformation of Plaça de les Glòries. The mayor, Jaume Collboni, and the special delegate of the State to the Consorci de la Zona Franca, Pere Navarro, have signed a protocol that sets a date for the public tower that had been planned next to the Torre Glòries, just on the other side of Diagonal. A tower that will finally not have the 100 meters of height that were initially planned.

"The golden Lamine Yamal costs 100 euros". The phrase is said by a woman sitting on a bench in the ronda de Sant Antoni with files full of stickers around her. Like her, it is easy to distinguish other people equipped with similar folders among the crowd of people who are exchanging stickers in the area this Sunday. Some have even set up a small table. They are illegal sticker sellers, a phenomenon that is on the rise and has exploded in recent weeks due to the fever for World Cup stickers. This situation is exhausting the patience of the merchants at the Sant Antoni Sunday market, who have repeatedly asked the Guardia Urbana to intervene in the face of this unfair competition.

The show had not yet ended and everyone already had it clear that the blessing of the Sagrada Família's Jesus tower would be one of the images of the year. This Thursday, the front pages of the world's press certified it. As in the '92 Olympic Games, Barcelona once again showed itself splendid in a global ceremony. The day after the event, it was easy to overhear conversations everywhere about the impressive effect of the drones recreating the figure of Antoni Gaudí or the beauty of the light show. Comments that, often, oscillated between pride in the image offered and reservations about whether this could lead to an increase in tourism in the Catalan capital.

The future of El Centre de la Vila remains uncertain. The auction of the shopping center in the Vila Olímpica neighborhood, held this Wednesday in Madrid, ended without a bid. As ARA has learned, the State has not found any buyer interested in an asset it has left abandoned for years. A new scenario now opens up in which it remains to be seen whether Barcelona City Council will reopen negotiations with Mercasa – the public company that manages the center – to try to acquire the space for a more economical price.

In Madrid, a political message; in Catalonia, a social accent. After three days in the Spanish capital where messages against polarization and understanding had marked his discourse, Pope Leo XIV took advantage of his first major public event in Barcelona this Tuesday to disseminate messages with strong social content. Before the 40,000 people filling the Olympic Stadium, the pontiff called for confronting the scourge of violence against women and placing mental health at the center of the health system, without forgetting, however, the idea of a diverse and welcoming country.

The dance has begun. The Barcelona City Council and the residents of the Sagrada Família have formally opened negotiations to close one of the city's hottest urban planning fronts: the future of the Glòria staircase. According to various sources who spoke to ARA, the first official meeting was held last Thursday between the municipal government – led by Jordi Valls, the councilor for Eixample – and representatives of the Sagrada Família neighborhood association and the platform of those affected by the construction of the temple.

A person has died after a shooting this Sunday evening in Marina de Port, in the Sants-Montjuïc district, as confirmed by sources consulted by ARA. The events took place on Carrer de la Mineria, in the small squares between the buildings, and the way it happened all points to an execution. The same sources suggest it could be related to a drug conflict between Eastern mafias. Mossos agents tried to revive the victim upon arriving at the scene, but nothing could be done to save their life.

No is expected that the future chapel of Penance – one of the spaces of the Sagrada Família still pending construction – will have any tribute to the neighbors of the temple, but by God that for some of the inhabitants of the neighborhood the coexistence with the basilica has become a sacrifice. Especially in recent years. The visit of Benedict XVI in 2010 – the last by a pope to Barcelona – triggered global interest in the work of Antoni Gaudí. Among the neighbors there is fear that the broadcast worldwide of the blessing of the tower of Jesus that Pope Leo XIV will perform on Wednesday, will cause a similar explosion.

Barcelona presented this Friday a new calendar for the transformation of La Model. Nine years after the last inmates left the Eixample prison, the City Council has announced that it has just put out to tender the contract for the construction of the first facilities in the complex, with the aim that the works can begin in November of this year. To complete the remodeling, however, it will still be necessary to wait at least two terms. The horizon set by the municipal government foresees that the project will not be completely finished until 2035.