Before becoming one of the founders of the iconic band Skatalà in 1985, Josep Manel Pugés—who has died at 66 as a result of a "serious illness," as announced by the band—played drums and guitar in various pioneering Barcelona punk bands. Since the late 70s, Pugés was linked to Clinic Humanoyds, Attak, Ruidos Molestos, and Shit S.A.

Although the humility and shyness that have always accompanied him make it difficult for him to express himself with much expansiveness, Maria Barbal (Tremp, 1949) is happy to have, since this September, a literary biography like the one dedicated to her by Carme Arenas (Granollers, 1954), Words for silence (Column). "Carme took an interest in my writing from very early on, and I am grateful to her that it was so. In the end, I ended up becoming one of the sources of documentation for her book —she admits with a minimal smile—. Although at first I resisted the project a little, I must recognize that I have ended up drawing benefits from it. It has helped me to become aware of the trajectory I have had, and also to remember from which people I come".

"Dear Mercè: it has been a long time since we heard from you. What are you doing? Where are you? How are you? [...] As you can see I am [sic] in La Molina where I am taking a rest cure of chilling". This is the postcard that the painter and pedagogue Susina Amat i Juvé (Barcelona, 1912-1983) sent on July 20, 1971, from the Catalan Pyrenees, to Mercè Rodoreda (Barcelona, 1908 - Girona, 1983), whom she had become friends with when they worked at the Propaganda Commissariat of the Generalitat, in the middle of the Civil War. The author, who at that time was finalizing one of her most emblematic novels, Broken mirror (1974), he replied to her from Vienna three weeks later to let her know about the difficult time he was going through: "I have been [sic] in Vienna for about four months, where a person very dear to me is dying little by little after a couple of brain surgeries".

Year after year, the Week of Catalan Books is growing in every sense. In 2025, sales figures climbed to a record 820,000 euros – 15% more than the previous edition – it received more than 100,000 visitors and occupied 8,900 m², with 94 stands, 312 exhibitors, and the presence of 265 publishing houses from all Catalan-speaking territories. This year, the venue on Passeig Lluís Companys in Barcelona — a location the Week reclaimed during the America's Cup year, due to the sporting competition which prevented it from being held at Moll de la Fusta — will expand to 9,000 m², will feature 98 stands, 332 exhibitors, and 282 publishing houses.

The works council of the Barcelona Libraries Consortium made a call this Tuesday, in front of the Sagrada Família, to all staff to massively support the strike, which has been active since the end of May. About fifty workers participated in the rally, but their request had an immediate and notable impact, as only 4 out of 37 libraries opened their doors. "There has been a 60% follow-up from the staff who were supposed to work the morning shift compared to 40% of the staff who are working behind closed doors," explained Ferran Burguillos, manager of the Libraries Consortium.

"Yes: in my second year of ESO I started / speaking Spanish / because the Catalans didn't get it / and because, as Sylvia Plath said, / every woman adores a fascist", writes Maria Sevilla Paris (Badalona, 1990) in one of the poems in Sylvia Plath, / every woman adores a fascist", writes Maria Sevilla Paris (Badalona, 1990) in one of the poems in Ni una o l'oposada flor (Arrebato Libros). On the left pages we read the original poems in Catalan. On the right, the Spanish version, which often becomes a transformative game, by Juan Andrés García Román and the author. Ni una o l'oposada flor explains, in a ductile and precise language, Sevilla's devotion to animals, plants, and all sorts of living organisms –including men–, while at the same time reflecting on her relationship with Catalan, which, although not the language her parents spoke to each other, has become her usual language, a professional tool – she is an associate professor at the University of Barcelona and runs workshops at the Casal dels Infants in Raval – and a vehicle for artistic expression, which has so far resulted in half a dozen books, including Dents de polpa (AdiA edicions, 2015), Plastilina (Fonoll, 2021), and La nit ovípara (Documents Documenta, 2024).

Els Teatres del Farró –made up of La Gleva and La Fàbrica– aim to consolidate the production and co-production of small and medium-format shows with remarkable artistic value. "We are not interested in disposable culture at all –remarked Albert de la Torre, its artistic director, this Monday during the season's presentation–. If we believe a production is extraordinary, it should be possible to see it again. It can't be that we let it die".

Five years after the arrival of Cràter's first book, Cràter's first book, Contes de la becada, by Guy de Maupassant, the publishing project confirms its growing ambition thanks to the boost of a new publishing house, Set Arcs. "I could have started another collection at Cràter or opted for this other path, which in the end seemed the best to me," comments editor Mariona Bosch, who at Set Arcs will team up with the doctor in philosophy, university professor, and politician Jordi Graupera and with filmmaker Ventura Durall, who premiered his latest film last December, who premiered his latest film last December, Supernatural.

"This idea you've had is horrible." "I, if I were you, wouldn't write anything on this topic." "Just let it go, please." Phrases like these were what the Belgian writer Gaea Schoeters (Sint Niklaas, 1976) heard whenever she told someone about the novel project she had in mind and which has ended up being "The trophy. "It's fortunate that I didn't listen to them and ended up writing what I needed," she admits six years after the publication of the book in Flemish. The Catalan translation of the novel, by Maria Rosich and published by Empúries, is the twelfth of the more than twenty that the book already has contracted. In Germany alone, the place where it has had the most successthis story starring a white hunter who accepts a disturbing challenge, more than 150,000 copies have been sold.

This morning the Villena treasure, one of the most valuable Bronze Age sets in Europe, was stolen from the Archaeological Museum of Villena (Alt Vinalopó). "We are absolutely devastated —Fulgencio Cerdán, the mayor of the municipality, has admitted, in tears—. For all of us from Villena, this robbery destroys us. They have taken part of our heritage, our wealth, and our pride. I want to convey all my support to the citizens, who must be going through as bad a time as I am".

Although in The life of M, the new book by Rachel Cusk, Natalie Portman is not mentioned in any passage, many English and American media outlets have made evident, coinciding with the publication of the novel, the numerous commonalities between the protagonist and the actress. According to the British newspaper The Telegraph, Cusk explains "the author's literary murder of her character". The New York TimesAfter offering a radical dissection of the art world in Parade (2024; in Catalan by Les Hores), Cusk now tackles the day-to-day life of a film star through the main character. Actress M, who has befriended a writer in the European city where they both live, agrees to have the latter write her autobiography. The character shares with Portman that she made a very successful debut thanks to a film shot when she was still a child and that initially included sex scenes with the main male character, although they ended up being eliminated thanks to her mother's pressure. The story coincides with what happened with Léon: The Professional, by Luc Besson (1994), which Portman filmed when she was only 12 years old. The Life of M also explains that the protagonist actress is the well-known face of a prestigious brand, as is the case with Portman with Dior, and that she has had great impact playing a tortured ballerina: Portman won an Oscar for the lead role in Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010). Like Cusk and Portman, M lives in a European city, which, although not specified, could be Paris. The friendship between the author and the actress has been known since 2022 when Portman invited Cusk to her Instagram literary club, where they talked about the novel The Other House (2021; in Catalan by Les Hores).

For years, and before László Krasznahorkai received the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Hungarian author who was rumored to be in contention for the prestigious literary award was Péter Nádas. The writer, playwright, and photographer has died at the age of 83 in Gombosszeg, a municipality in western Hungary, as reported by his family. He leaves behind an ambitious, extensive, and prestigious body of work, still unpublished in Catalan, which includes monumental novels such as Emlékiratok könyve [Book of Memory], from 1986 – which Susan Sontag considered the "best European novel written after World War II" – and Párhuzamos történetek [Parallel Stories], from 2005.

Dolly Parton, who died this Tuesday at the age of 80 as a result of cancer, has been one of the most important figures in country music for the last five decades in the United States. A genre whose stylistic coordinates she knew how to adapt to her artistic and political concerns, and always from the perspective of women. The singer's relevance and popularity have prompted numerous expressions of condolence on social networks in recent hours, from Mick Jagger to Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Sabrina Carpenter, and Katy Perry.

The economist and essayist Tim Jackson (United Kingdom, 1957) calmly and meticulously explains the radical shift proposed by his latest book, The Case for a New Economy (Arcàdia, 2026, translated by Anna Llisterri). It deals, in the form of an initiatory journey – which includes personal anecdotes and philosophical, historical, and ecological lessons – with two ideas that clash with prevailing capitalism: the first, that human prosperity has more to do with health than wealth; the second, that the economy should above all be concerned with care, in all its forms, and not with incessant growth, as it currently is. Jackson, of whom Catalan readers had only previously been able to read Postgrowth (Arcàdia, 2022), opens the doors of his English study where he works to ARA to discuss the ideas that have preoccupied him over the last five years.

There are episodes in history that, when they occur, "prove decisive for centuries and centuries," recalls Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) in one of his most emblematic books, The Right Moment: Great Moments in Humanity, which can be read in Catalan thanks to the translation by Maria Pous for Quaderns Crema in 2004. This is the reading that Regina Rodríguez Sirvent (Alp, 1983) recommends for this summer. The author of Popcorn at Dawn, a novel published by La Campana that was the best-selling this Sant Jordi and continues at the top of the lists of best-selling fiction books in Catalan, has chosen the most famous essay by the prolific Austrian author, also known for short novels like Letter from a Unknown Woman (1927) and biographies such as Marie Antoinette (1932). "I like it so much that while I was reading it, I thought I would have liked to have written it," she assures.

"From noon until three in the afternoon a darkness spread over the whole land." With these words theGospel according to Matthew explains the agony of Jesus Christ on the cross. During these hours of darkness, which exaggerate the duration of a solar eclipse, the messiah endures the suffering in silence until, shortly before dying, he lets out a final cry of despair: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

The youth of Roger Bastida (l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, 1990) does not prevent him from enjoying contemporary Catalan classics such as Pep Coll (Pessonada, 1949), the author recommended to read this summer based on one of his emblematic novels.

Gothic literature became popular in the late 18th century and spread nightmares among readers for much of the 19th century, with well-known examples such as Frankenstein (1818), by Mary W. Shelley, Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë, The strange case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), by Robert Louis Stevenson and Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker. Two centuries later, Núria Gómez Gabriel (Barcelona, 1987) and Ingrid Guardiola (Girona, 1980), writers, university lecturers and art curators, have set out to revive Gothic "anachronistically and queer to speak of those feminine emanations of a supernatural, morbid, mysterious, tremendous, and even abject character, which have resisted opprobrium, defamation, or extreme violence". The protagonists of the essay they have written on the subject four-handed, Gothic feminism (H&O Editorial, 2026), are writers like Virginie Despentes, Mariana Enriquez, Dolors Miquel, Mónica Ojeda and Samanta Schweblin, but also filmmakers like Sofia Coppola and Julia Ducornau and artists like Louise Bourgeois, Paula Rego and Remedios Varo.

When we ask Ferran Garcia, which has won one of the latest Llibreter Prize thanks to the novel Sau (Weeds, 2025), a book recommendation for summer reading, takes a while to find the ideal title: "First I thought of telling you Great Expectations, of Charles Dickens, in Carner's translation, because I consider it a perfect book, and the translation, too – he says. Then, the most beautiful book I have ever read, "Peter and Wendy –also known as Peter Pan–, by J.M. Barrie. But, finally, I think I'll tell you one of those I reread the most, a beautiful bramble bush from which, if you enter it, it is absolutely impossible to emerge unharmed".

Kavinsky, one of the most international figures in French electronic music, known primarily for the massive success of his track Nightcall –included in the soundtrack of the film Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)–, has been found dead by the French police at his home in Paris, as reported by the French newspaper Le Parisien. Police are investigating the possibility that the death is a consequence of a stroke, as in preceding days the musician had suffered very intense headaches. Vincent Belorgey, his real name, was one of the stars of the closing ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games, where he performed a version of Nightcall with the French band Phoenix and the Belgian singer Angèle.