The Dutch filmmaker Frank Scheffer (1956) is one of the leading names in contemporary music documentary, with a career spanning over four decades dedicated to exploring the relationship between music, the arts, and audiovisual creation. In his more than sixty works, he has portrayed figures such as Frank Zappa, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian Eno, and Pierre Boulez, always from an introspective and experimental perspective that moves away from the explanatory forms of traditional documentary. This August, the music and film programming of In-Edit Empordà, within the Festival of Torroella de Montgrí, dedicates a retrospective to him which closes on Wednesday the 12th with Half moon, a work that addresses war, exile, and friendship through the music of Syrian clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh. The screening will be preceded by a concert by Azmeh himself and followed by a discussion with the director.

The last weekend of the 40th edition of the Peralada Festival offered a high-level opera and zarzuela recital, starring American tenor Michael Spyres and Catalan soprano Sara Blanch, accompanied on piano by Giulio Zappa.

The panoramic view of the Castellfollit de la Roca cliff is one of the most beautiful and iconic postcards of Catalonia. A whole village suspended over a basalt rock, with a church and a row of houses perched on the edge of a fifty-meter precipice that drops sheerly to the Fluvià river. On the ledge of this cliff, formed naturally by several lava flows over 350,000 years ago, live approximately 350 residents, more than a third of the inhabitants of this small municipality in La Garrotxa.

The until now mayoral candidate of ERC in Girona, Marc Puigtió, has renounced this Thursday to be the republicans' candidate for the city. He renounces it one day after the party leadership opened an informational file on him following the leak of some audios in which he was heard projecting the disposal of the local leadership and the current councilors. Puigtió has justified the decision by "dignity and responsibility" and has acknowledged having made "a serious mistake," for which he assumes the consequences. Now, according to consulted sources from the republicans in Girona, the party will have to re-convene primaries to choose its candidate for mayor of the city. So far, however, they have not set a schedule.

"My intention was to kick them all out and keep Esquerra. And then, to be able to use their electoral resources". This is one of the phrases that Marc Puigtió, ERC candidate for mayor in Girona, utters in a conversation with a young man linked to Vox, responsible for the Instagram profile Girona Perduda, which spreads disinformation and messages of insecurity in the city. The young man secretly recorded the conversation and has made it public on social media in recent hours. Following this leak, the party has opened an informational file to gather all the information and make a decision. Specifically, the ERC ethics committee met this Tuesday afternoon to open the file and "determine, if applicable, the corresponding responsibilities", they point out from the party, adding that they will not make any further statements on the case until the file is closed.

For more than 15 days, cinema floods the facilities and theaters of the Cerdanya Pyrenees towns, thanks to the 17th Cerdanya Film Festival, which kicked off on July 29 and for the first time extends until the end of August. With 250 screenings and activities spread across Puigcerdà, Prullans, Montellà i Martinet, Alp, and Bolvir, the festival reinforces its role as a major cross-border meeting point for the audiovisual sector and consolidates a formula that combines highly interesting screenings, open to the public, with workshops and meetings for professionals.

On the national road that divides the town of Bàscara (Alt Empordà) in half, coming from Girona, on the right-hand side stands a majestic three-story house, with a large facade of blue and ochre tones, presided over by a very unique sundial. It is Can Gustà, the residence and studio of the Girona artist Ignasi Esteve, who in recent years has turned his home into a true total work of art.

Modest Cuixart, a founding member of the legendary Dau al Set group, is one of the key figures of the Catalan avant-garde of the second half of the 20th century. Often overshadowed by names like Joan Brossa or Antoni Tàpies, his contribution is equally decisive in the renewal of post-war plastic language. Born in Barcelona in 1925, but settled in Palafrugell since 1970, he developed a large part of his creative career surrounded and inspired by the landscapes of Empordà. This summer, coinciding with the centenary of his birth, the Espai Carmen Thyssen in the monastery of Sant Feliu de Guíxols dedicates the exhibition "Links, organized in collaboration with the Cuixart Foundation, which can be visited until October 18.

Historically in Catalonia, masovers were peasant families who lived in a farmhouse that did not belong to them in exchange for working the land, feeding the livestock, and guarding the property. However, for some years now, a new form of masoveria adapted to modern times has emerged: masovers are responsible for rehabilitating and renovating a dilapidated farmhouse that is not their property and, in return, can live there for years without paying rent. This formula of mutual exchange allows families who do not have the necessary resources to fulfill their dream of living in the countryside, while at the same time preventing ancestral homes, often inherited, from deteriorating and a valuable architectural heritage from being lost. A true win-win. win-win in every way.

Ten days after leaving Girona's municipal government, Junts has made a significant announcement for the upcoming municipal elections in the city. Alongside Gemma Geis, who will repeat as the head of the list, Carles Puigdemont's party has confirmed the incorporation of Carles Ribas as number two. A former member of Convergència and a councilor during Marta Madrenas's term, Ribas ran four years ago with his own brand, ARA Girona, but narrowly missed entering City Hall after obtaining 1,579 votes (4.6%). These were insufficient to surpass the 5% threshold to obtain a councilor but were key to understanding that Junts lost half of its votes in the last municipal elections. Ribas is currently part of the Partit Nacionalista de Catalunya (PNC), founded by Marta Pascual, and will run in the city in coalition with Junts x Girona.

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey lasts 2 hours and 53 minutes. Almost three hours of epic footage to narrate Ulysses' adventures for ten years, from when he leaves the shores of Troy until he finally returns to Ithaca. The film covers practically all the essential episodes and themes of Homer's poem, the foundational work of the journey myth, created from oral tradition about 2,800 years ago. But, like any adaptation (or reinterpretation), it is by no means exact: the filmmaker alters the order of some passages, summarizes others, and eliminates important scenes that, in the original text, add nuances and help to understand the protagonist's psychological depth. These are the most significant.

The Lloret de Mar forest fire of 1979 is the deadliest in the history of the State. 21 people died there. Residents of the Los Pinares urbanization, frightened by the flames, fled their homes and, like the victims of the deadly fire in Almeria this July, they put themselves in the wolf's throat without being able to escape the fire.

First great opera night of the summer in Empordà. The Festival Peralada has inaugurated its 40th anniversary edition with an excellent recital, starring two great stars of the international lyrical scene: soprano Ermonela Jaho and tenor Benjamin Bernheim, who, accompanied by pianist Marco Madrigal, offered a brilliant journey through arias and songs by Italian and French composers of the late 19th century Romanticism and Verismo.

After 30 years living and working in New York, the artist Lluís Lleó (Barcelona, 1961) has decided to settle in Empordà. In Serra de Daró, between Montgrí Castle and the Iberian settlement of Ullastret, he has his studio, which occupies half of a large, open, and spacious industrial warehouse with a very high ceiling, from where he continues to explore new lines of creation, on the hybrid border between painting, sculpture, and installation. With one foot in the Empordà plain, but always with an open gaze to the world, Lleó boasts a first-class international career. While working with gallerists and curators from Mexico and Venice, this July he has just inaugurated at the AWL gallery in GironaVeure amb les mans (Seeing with hands), an exhibition of very powerful pieces, which are a very vivid reflection of his current moment of maturity.

Like every summer, for a month, from the end of July to the end of August, Torroella de Montgrí once again becomes the musical capital of Baix Empordà. During the tourist season of major festivals on the Costa Brava, filled with media names and magnificent stars, the Torroella event, at the foot of the Montgrí massif, keeps its identity alive with 16 classical music concerts, from Baroque to contemporary proposals, very interesting and of a high level. Of the entire program of this 46th edition, which is presented under the slogan Love also leaves a trace, ARA recommends, with the help of renowned personalities from the world of culture, six unmissable concerts for summer nights.

Ten months before the next municipal elections, the pro-independence tripartite that governed Girona since 2023 has come to an end. After a harsh article published on Sunday, in which the deputy mayor and candidate for re-election for Junts, Gemma Geis, had already anticipated that her "patience" had run out, the party of Carles Puigdemont has made the decision to leave the executive and move to the opposition. Geis announced this Tuesday morning at a press conference, accompanied by the party's six councilors. "Our degree of demand is very high and Girona deserves more," she stated.

Jordi Savall (Igualada, 1941) has spent decades exploring the history of music from a deeply humanistic, rigorous, and open perspective, building bridges between peoples and traditions through centuries of shared musical heritage. On July 10th, he will present at the Occident Porta Ferrada FestivalThe Silk Road, a proposal that, coinciding with the seventh centenary of Marco Polo's death, musically retraces the Venetian merchant's journey between 1271 and 1295. Led by the historicist ensemble Hespèrion XXI and a cast of soloists from around the world, Savall proposes a musical itinerary that crosses the Eastern Mediterranean, Armenia, Persia, China, Sri Lanka, and the Tatar steppes.

The most critical point of the Les Gavarres fire is the right flank, as, if it breaks loose over Puig d'Arques, it could cover thousands of hectares of forest land all the way to Girona. Where the most tense moments have been experienced, however, has been on the left flank, close to the urban areas of Calonge and Santa Cristina d'Aro. On Friday afternoon and night, the flames, pushed by the sea breeze, descended to the edge of the houses and the residents spent hours in authentic terror. In the urbanizations of Cabanyes and Mas Toi, residents fled in their cars, spent the night in the open, and the fire burned a house, gateways, gardens, and fences.

Despite the express instructions from Civil Protection to avoid any unnecessary travel to avoid worsening the uncontrolled fire still burning in the Gavarres, Cap Roig maintained its inaugural concert with Bryan Adams on its billboard. The surrounding towns, which did have a confinement order, canceled their schedules following the authorities' recommendations, but the prestigious festival of the la Caixa Foundation was held with absolute normality, full of tourists and vacationers, oblivious to the magnitude of the tragedy that is increasingly affecting the wooded area of the forest massif inland. The smoke and flames were certainly far from the idyllic gardens of Calella de Palafrugell, but, at dusk, a gray and reddish veil blurred the horizon before the first notes of the Canadian singer, who had the courtesy to ask for a round of applause in recognition of the firefighters' work.  

The fire in the Gavarres massif, in Empordà, is stabilized after burning more than 2,300 hectares, mostly forest mass. The Generalitat Firefighters, as President Salvador Illa has announced, have finished stabilizing the fire this Saturday night, around 10 p.m. The right flank of the flames, which was the one that worried the Firefighters the most because it was 30,000 potential hectares in the direction of Girona, had already been completely stabilized in the evening, while the left flank was "two-thirds" stabilized. A few minutes past 10 p.m., the Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, gave the expected news: the entire fire was stabilized, on both flanks. Therefore, a less "complicated" night is expected than the last one, when many neighbors lived in fear of the possibility that the flames would burn their homes.