The disappearance of the Opium nightclub on Barcelona's seafront will not be as quick as announced this July, when the City Council presented an agreement sealed with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) to make it possible for the premises to be used to expand the facilities of the Mediterranean Centre for Marine and Environmental Research (CMIMA) in the city. Although the plan was to immediately hand over the provisional use of the space while the project and the tender for the works progressed, they will now not be able to start before September next year. The State government, which is the owner of these premises on the seafront, has extended Opium's lease for another year, as confirmed by the owners of the nightclub, who had already announced that they planned to challenge the agreement in court. They considered that the decision was "unilateral" and "purely ideological" to "punish" nightlife venues in the area. They now know the business will be allowed to continue at least for another year.

"The main hypothesis is that it was intentional". This is the conclusion of the investigation forest rangers have carried out into the fire that devastated 1.743 hectares and about sixty houses in Bages, between Sunday and Monday. The head of the Central Catalonia brigade, Jaume Torralba, explained it was "hard" to find where it would have started, but finally they have found the location. "It originated next to a road, in the stream of Santa Creu, in a very tough place. Because there is a lot of forest and the terrain is steep, this made it develop very quickly," he stressed.

The number of people in Barcelona who live with dogs has not stopped growing in recent years, to the point that, according to the City Council, there are already over 180,000 dogs living in the city (174,316 of them identified with a chip, according to data from the College of Veterinarians), which is considerably more than, for example, the 171,863 children under 12 years of age who are registered on the census. But, despite the growth, the city has not yet resolved an important aspect for the coexistence with pets in squares and streets: defining where they can and cannot be let off the leash. This issue has been dragging on since 2014, when the Council modified the ordinance for the protection and keeping of animals to allow police to fine dog-owners whose pets were off the lead. At that time it was already agreed that the measure, which was to involve fines of at least €100, could not be enforced immediately because the city at that time was not ready: it was necessary to ensure that there were sufficient spaces for the recreation of dogs before prohibiting them to go off the lead.

A man sits by his shopping cart and tries on shoes. Others gossip, wandering around between the sheets – and the tablecloth – lying on the floor. There are about fifteen of them, one next to the other, and on display are used shoes, toys (some with their boxes and others old), keyboards, some jewellery, second or third hand clothes... It is a fleamarket known as the market of misery, which offers a wide range of objects, usually recovered from the rubbish and which, since February, was cleared from the Ronda Sant Antoni. Instead, it is now set up every afternoon in the streets of the Raval. It is usually in the small Plaça del Dubte, on Riera Alta street, next to the Ronda Sant Antoni, but it also sometimes expands in neighbouring alleys such as Cendra or Requesens. Some times there are ten vendors and at others about thirty or even more, and now in summer they are usually there from the early afternoon until after eleven o'clock at night. If they see the police, they leave for a while and come back later.

First a reassuring message: the City Council does not foresee that this will be a particularly tough summer for coexistence due to road and rail works. Yet works there will be, perhaps not as many as last year (62), but of greater impact on citizens' lives, especially in the Eixample. There work is expected to begin simultaneously on the 36 stretches of street that are to become the first axes of the superilla and on the tramway along Diagonal, which will be accelerated to take advantage of the August slowdown. In total, there will be 56 new different interventions totalling €23.5m of municipal investment, among which the advancement of the reforms of the Via Laietana and Pi i Margall stand out. These are two of the City Council's star projects for this final stretch of its term in office. These works bring the total number of works underway in the city to 183.

"The solution? That all outdoor seating be closed at ten o'clock at night and then we'll sleep for sure". This is Isabel and Marta's verdict, sitting on a bench in the Jardins de la Mediterrània, large square in Marina neighbourhood of Barcelona, but which does not close at night and is home to bars, most with outdoor seating and one which opens till late. "There is always activity here... and, of course, noise", these neighbours sum up. In total, nine outdoor seating areas with about thirty tables. Arguments and fights often break out, and chairs are thrown. Sporadically objects are also thrown from windows towards the customers, some restaurateurs report.

With a little delay compared to the first announcements, Barcelona has already activated the countdown to start works on the first four pedestrian-first streets in Eixample's superilla: Consell de Cent, Rocafort, Borrell and Girona, and the squares that will appear where two of these streets cross. The preliminary work, which is to move bicycle hire statiosn and loading and unloading areas for delivery lorries, will be launched during the second half of July. The works as such will start in the second half of August, with an expected duration of eight and a half months, which should allow the City Council to complete them before the next local elections.

Barcelona is preparing for a Sant Joan festival which will be reminiscent of 2019. It is focussing on two points: the first is crowds on the beaches, where around 60,000 people are expected to gather; the other is wooded areas, due to the high risk of fire throughout Catalonia. "We are in a critical moment and any carelessness can cause a fire," warned Security councillor Albert Batlle, who recalled the ban on the use of fire within 500 meters of wooded areas, and remarked that the Guardia Urbana will pay special attention to the parts of the city that are closer to the mountains. The city adds one more recommendation: avoiding as far as possible launching fireworks and sky lanterns, as they pose a fire risk. The head of the Civil Protection, Fire Prevention and Rescue Service, Sebastià Massagué, has asked for "extreme caution" and avoiding this kind of pyrotechnics.

The Catalan Countries Student Union (SEPC) and Alerta Solidària have informed this morning that they have expelled a young man from various pro-independence taskforces and online groups, as well as housing rights campaigns, after verifying that he was an infiltrated Spanish police officer. The case, which was broken this morning the biweekly Directa, was explained this morning at a press conference in front of the University of Barcelona's historic building. Spokespeople of both organisations have explained that, after weeks of investigations, they had been able to verify that the man had been using a false identity for two years to infiltrate these circles and obtain "valuable" information. They denounce that this is a new case of "ideological political persecution", another "consequence of the State's repression".

When Barcelona City Council announced it would allow most of the extra outdoor seating bars and restaurants were allowed to set up during covid to remain, it also warned that there would be exceptions. Streets considered "saturated" would have to remove any extra tables and chairs. At that time, the example of Enric Granados was given, where before covid there were already 76 bars with outdoor seating (a total of 331 tables). During covid 38 bars set up new outdoor seating or expanded existing areas (to a total of 87 extra tables), to the point that it became a street with as many outside bar areas as blocks of flats. Until now, Enric Granados was the only street named where tables and chairs would have to come off the streets, but this Friday Eixample councillor Pau Gonzàlez named six areas which would be affected in this district, where 30% of the city's restaurants are situated. Extra tables will also have to come off Parlament street, the lower part of Muntaner street (below Aragó), almost all of Aribau (it is included within the scope of restriction on Enric Granados, as well as a stretch of Provença and Mallorca), Rambla Catalunya, Passeig de Sant Joan and in Avinguda Gaudí.

In the midst of a recovery in visitor numbers, these days the political debate in Barcelona has centred around the kind of tourism the city wants. Mayoress Ada Colau called for a limits on cruise ships and measures against overcrowding in the centre. However, the city's tourism councillor, the socialist Xavier Marcé spoken along different lines: he advocates attracting "quality" tourists, and as a key step along this path proposes that city hotels raise their rates. The president of the Gremi de Hotels, Jordi Clos, has applauded this proposal, claiming that during the two years under pandemic restrictions, when hotels attempted to seduce domestic tourists, rates tended to go down and this has meant the arrival of "lower level" visitors, in the councillor's words. He added that now that the situation is returning to normal and prices are going back up, tourists which are not the city's target are "disappearing".

That the 1992 Games opened Barcelona to the sea is a Barcelona urban planning cliché. But the opening was made mainly in the central part of the city and the sides for later. Then came mega projects such as the Forum to bring together parts of the areas which had been left behind. And now the city council claims that it is beginning the transformation of the last stretch of the city's coastline: the one that goes from Mar Bella beach to the Forum and, therefore, connects Barcelona with Sant Adrià de Besòs. Deputy mayor for Urbanism, Janet Sanz, considers it a "historic debt", and says that the Council seeks to put an end to the car park that was in front of the beaches – already closed down during the pandemic – and have a new "park-promenade".

A little more than a year ago, Barcelona City Council presented an agreement sealed with the owners of the plot where the old Mercedes-Benz factory used to be in Bon Pastor, Conren Tramway, to convert this space –in disuse since 2007– into a new estate with up to 1,450 homes (3,500 residents), universities (some 2,000 students and 500 professors) and economic activity to attract over 4,000 workers. This is what the promoters of the project claim will be the city's first eco-district, because they want plenty of green spaces and no traffic, becoming an urban link between Sant Andreu de Palomar and Bon Pastor. But once the project's specifics have become known and, above all, the developer has revealed its first simulations, neighbourhood tensions have arisen over to overcrowding concerns. The City Council insists, in the face of criticism, that nothing is definitive yet.

Up to 11,977,277 tourists and nearly 33 million overnight stays in hotels and tourist apartments. This is the record figure with which Barcelona ended 2019 (counting only official accommodation), when covid had not yet reared its head and forecasts pointed to the fact that these numbers could be repeated and even surpassed in 2020. The city's tourism councillor, socialist Xavier Marcé, defended then, as he repeats now, that the city has to work to expand the perimeter that welcomes these visitors – that is, to send them also to the periphery – and to spread their stays throughout the year, rather than concentrating on the tourist season. The pandemic made any analysis of the evolution impossible: 2020 was disastrous in all areas, including, of course, tourism, and in 2021, when restrictions were slightly eased, a total of 4.5 million tourists visited the city.

Barcelona's City Council has finally made public the reports that opposition groups have been demanding for months on the impact of the new plan for pedestrian-first areas in the Eixample (known as superilla) on traffic. All measures to make streets more pedestrian friendly have a flipside, which is that other streets become alternative routes and absorb more traffic. In the case of the first street where measures will be taken, Consell de Cent street, the nearby Mallorca street will expect to take the brunt, especially between Muntaner and Sicília streets. Although it is currently not an especially busy street, it is expected to exceeded 90% saturation at rush hour by 2023, with a similar phenomenon occurring on Valencia street between Urgell and Rambla Catalunya.

"It's all destroyed, it's a great pity". Iliana Garcimarrero lives in the building most affected by the fire which broke out yesterday in Barcelona's Eixample. This morning, accompanied by firefighters, she was able to return home to collect a few belongings. "Above all what we need most: ID, credit cards and computers to work with. We left with nothing, running away from the fire," she says. She has also found that some of the memories she could not take with her remained intact: photographs of her daughters, the books her father wrote.... Everything that was made of wood, however, is gone.

At 3.50 am, the neighbours living in the block of buildings between València, Avinguda de Roma, Calàbria and Rocafort streets in Barcelona were awakened by a loud explosion. The deflagration started in a bar, but has generated fireballs that have spread up the building's façade and inner courtyard, which have also caused small fires in apartments in nearby properties. In total the fire has affected eight buildings. "We heard a clap of thunder thunderclap and I saw that a window had fallen out of its frame. With the explosion everything shook and I thought it was an earthquake", explains Laia Cardona, a neighbour who lives in the building where the fire started. Four people have been hospitalised, three in Vall d'Hebron hospital –one of them in serious condition– and one in Sagrat Cor. The seriously injured person is the owner of the bar, who the firefighters found in the street and who is in police custody suspected of starting the fire. The events are currently under investigation.

There are as many as 25 premises with their shutters down, seven of them sporting to-let signs, in a stretch of just over 300 metres between the Rambla and Plaça Sant Jaume in Barcelona. Some are boarded up and full of graffiti after staying closed for months. Carrer Ferran is a prime example of the devastation the pandemic has wrought on the Barcelona's Barri Gòtic. The situation, despite not representing the neighbourhood as a whole – where around 75% of shops have reopened, according data collected by Barnacentre – is better than the one described by this newspaper last spring, when almost twice as many shops were closed. But neighbours and shopkeepers in the area complain that the pandemic has finished off long-standing bars and shops, and brought in even more shops selling souvenirs (three on Carrer Ferran alone) or mobile phone cases (one taking the spot where last year a hardware store had opened).

Nine children and two teachers. Thus began the first bike bus in Catalonia, in February 2020 in Vic. And since then the practice of cycling together to school in large groups through the middle of the road has been spreading to other towns and cities and is now experiencing a real boom this 2022. Canvis en Cadena, an initiative inspired by that first project in Vic to share information with everyone who wants to promote bike buses, now estimates that there are 17 municipalities and a total of about 700 children (and many accompanying family members) who take part. The lines are multiplying week after week at a rate that means that each new line no longer makes the news.

Today was the first of the five days of industrial action called by education unions in this month of March. Unions called for mass participation to protest against the Education Department's policies and to demand improvements to the sector. At the moment, union USTEC claims that participation has been massive and exceeded expectations. The unions estimate that around 60% of school teachers have taken part in the strike, whereas Aspepc, a secondary school teachers' union, believes it is 75%. The Education Department, however, says that only 31.3% of state school teachers struck, according to data reported by 87.5% of school. At chartered schools, only 8.7% of teachers went on strike, according to data reported by 69.7% of schools. The unions claim more workers would have gone on strike had it not been for "abusive" minimum services requirements, but even so they claim the demonstration is "historical" and the strike "very massive".