The spark from an angle grinder that was used improperly at the side of the GI-660 road is the main hypothesis for the origin of a vegetation fire that began this Friday at midday in La Bisbal d'Empordà and spread rapidly. Driven by the strong Tramuntana wind, the fire entered the protected Gavarres massif and is advancing uncontrollably. At present, the flames have already burned approximately 1,280 hectares, according to Agents Rurals. Although the investigation of the facts is still in a very early stage, the Mossos d'Esquadra have already arrested a man presumably linked to the fire. According to the Government, he would be a worker who was repositioning a road sign.

Every year, after Saint John's Day, at the beginning of summer, a group of about twenty adolescents between 12 and 16 years old spend a week in the mountains, in Alta Garrotxa, accompanied by a team of monitors specialized in adventure sports. They go to the Ribelles camps, near the Sant Aniol river, about a three-hour walk from the Sadernes parking lot. During all these days, they do a lot of outdoor activities and live completely isolated, disconnected from their mobile phones, in tents, eating under a tent and without showers or toilets. This 2026, the camps celebrate their 40th anniversary and on July 4th they will organize a big party with a popular rice dish and live music for over 70 guests.

This Friday, July 3rd, arrives in theaters Magellan, the new film by Filipino Lav Diaz, one of the most radical directors of contemporary auteur cinema. The film, starring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, narrates, from the perspective of the colonized peoples, the adventures of the Spanish expedition to the East that the Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães led in 1519. It is an international co-production, winner of the Seminci of Valladolid in 2025, which has the participation of the producer by Albert Serra, Andergraun Films.

A year ago, the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Ministry of Transport, the City Council of Figueres and Adif seal the agreement to move the Figueres train station from the center, currently the commuter and medium-distance services arrive at the high-speed train station site, next to Vilafant. The plan, with a total investment exceeding 150 million euros, foresees the construction of a railway bypass and the unification of all train services on the outskirts, to the northwest of the city, in a single intermodal station. This will allow the dismantling of the tracks that cross the urban center at ground level, which cause mobility problems due to level crossings and disturbances to nearby houses. The project's drafting has already been awarded and work is progressing according to the planned schedule.

In Girona, near the border between the neighborhoods of Can Gibert del Pla and Santa Eugènia, a very unique apartment block stands out, surrounded by a tree-lined park. It is a building made entirely of wood, with checkered and symmetrical shapes, featuring two forty-meter facades and open galleries on each of its six floors. The block, inaugurated in 2022, is called 6x6 and is the work of the Girona-based studio Bosch Capdeferro, which has received numerous awards for the project's sustainability and energy efficiency values.

At the gates of the summer season, bars and restaurants in Port de la Selva (Alt Empordà) are returning to normal. Last August, the season ended abruptly with the suicide of a local business couple who had been managing a dozen establishments for decades through an investment group. The businesses, which were struggling with financial problems, closed overnight, leaving a hundred workers jobless. They represented 20% of the town's hospitality businesses, and the offerings along the entire promenade were severely affected.

The Ministry for Ecological Transition has issued a favorable environmental impact statement for the floating offshore wind test platform that the Generalitat is promoting in the Gulf of Roses, named Plemcat. The resolution, which will be published in the BOE in the coming hours, represents the main administrative step pending for the initiative to continue its processing and move towards the tendering phase.

On Tuesday, June 23, the eve of Sant Joan, Cadaqués will wake up early to a very unique and evocative artistic experience. At five in the morning, before sunrise, the spectacular rock of Cucurucuc, located at the tip of the bay, beyond s'Arnella beach, will become the floating stage for a

Claron McFadden is one of the most prestigious sopranos on the contemporary classical music scene. Recognized for her ability to move naturally between opera, improvisation, and performanceunique. The North American soprano Claron McFadden will perform The performance as Cucurucuc is part of an initiative promoted by the Venetian festival Microclima (Cinema Galleggiante Venezia), in collaboration with Cosmogram and the Arxipèlag cycle. The proposal is complemented, on Monday, June 22, by the screening at the Art i Joia Theater of three experimental cinema pieces: Devenir, by Eugènia Balcells; Aqueronte, by Manuel Muñoz Rivas, and The very eye of the night, by Maya Deren.

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For a few weeks now, Banyoles has had one of the most relevant artistic facilities in the Girona region. It is the new Art Center, located in Plaça Major, which has opened its doors with a selection of 76 works by some of the great names in art history, especially Catalan and Spanish, such as Antoni Tàpies, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Eduardo Chillida, Antonio Saura, Marià Fortuny, Josep Llimona and Miquel Barceló. The project has been possible thanks to the generosity of the 93-year-old Banyoles collector Jordi Gimferrer, who in 2023 he formalized the donation of his private collection, among the most valuable and interesting in all of Catalonia, to the Banyoles Town Hall so that it could be exhibited publicly and permanently.

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A week ago, Adam and his friends took a guided jet ski tour from Roses beach.However, for reasons still under investigation, as the sun set, the sixteen-year-old did not return to shore with the rest of the group. Seven days later, he remains missing. Only his jet ski was found, off the coast of Pals, about 25 kilometers south of the departure point, with a strong impact.

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For years, in Girona, on the Onyar river, there have been some small animals that arouse great curiosity among residents and visitors. They are coypus, large rodents, over two spans long, that swim among the carp and forage along the water's edge. They are not only present in the Girona river, but also in the Sils ponds, the Empordà wetlands, and along the entire bank of the Baix Ter. They arrived in the Girona regions from France, as a result of human activity linked to the fur industry, and have spread throughout the province to areas in the south like La Selva. Despite their cute and harmless appearance, with very large orange front teeth, these animals pose a problem for the natural ecosystem, as they are an invasive species, one of the most harmful in all of Europe, which damages flora and alters the habitats of native mammals. They are herbivores and feed on large quantities of vegetation, so they also cause damage to crops, especially wheat and rice in wetlands.  

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Between Girona and Salt, in a half-finished farmhouse, about twenty African boys, originally from countries like Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania, and Mali, are living in hardship. The house has no electricity or water. It also lacks doors and windows in the openings, and inside, there is only the structure of the main walls. The young men have improvised compartments with cardboard and fabrics where they sleep on mattresses, blankets, and camping tents. In the middle of the building, there is a staircase without walls or a railing, with a very dangerous fall into the void, especially at night. They cook in a room with a wood fire on the ground or with gas stoves, shower with jugs from the well, and have no toilets.

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After the boom of Game of Thrones a decade ago, Girona is once again becoming the setting for a major international series. This weekend, the city center hosts the filming of the first season of Tomb Raider, by Amazon MGM Studios, with actress Sophie Turner as the protagonist. It is the live-action adaptation of the famous video game franchise starring the adventurous archaeologist Lara Croft, which had already reached the big screen at the hands of Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander. Now it does so in series format and will premiere next year. In addition to Turner, the cast features prominent names such as Sigourney Weaver and Jason Isaacs, and the production is by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) as creator, screenwriter, and executive producer. 

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A Catalan clarinettist and a Syrian oud player creating music together. This is the story of Oriol Marès and Talal Fayad, two young musicians who blur the lines between genres and cultures, moving between influences from jazz improvisation, Latin rhythms, and Middle Eastern resonances. With their quartet, in 2025 they released their first album, Estuarium, and are already working on their second, titled Uncivilized, which they will present in October at the Fira Mediterrània in Manresa, after touring China and South Korea.

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In Bescanó, a small town of just over 5,000 inhabitants located west of Girona, on the banks of the Ter river, dozens of residents gather every fortnight at the municipal theatre to enjoy an auteur cinema screening in its original version. They are organized by the Cineclub de Bescanó, an associative project founded 5 years ago, which now has 280 members and has held over 100 sessions. During this time, it has screened Hollywood classics, the best releases from independent European cinema, or the latest hits from Catalan cinema, featuring prominent names such as Marcel Barrena with El 47,Isaki Lacuesta with Segundo premio, Judith Colell with Frontera or Sergi López with Sirat. And always with a very good reception from the audience. The weekend of June 6 and 7, Bescanó will also host the XXI meeting of cineclubs from all over the Catalan Countries.

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On June 17, 2023, the political reality of Ripoll changed completely. Silvia Orriols, under the banner of Aliança Catalana, became the first far-right pro-independence mayor in Catalonia, after Junts, ERC, the PSC, and the CUP failed to agree on forming an alternative government. The town of Ripoll, with about 11,000 inhabitants, deeply marked by the trauma of the 2017 Rambla attacks, became a key point in Catalan political geography and had a direct impact on the decisions of the national leaderships of the parties. The latest media case: that of the two socialist councilors who were sidelined amid reproaches for voting in favor of Orriols' budgets.

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After the Harry storm in January, which flooded the riverbeds and streams of the Baix Empordà, the Palamós EDAR wastewater treatment plant became completely unusable. Electrical installations, pumps, motors, and laboratories, submerged under two meters of water and mud, were completely damaged. 187 l/m² fell. The Aubi stream, next to the plant, overflowed, and workers had to swim out. Total disaster. Since then, the Consorci d'Aigües Costa Brava Girona, belonging to the Diputació, which is responsible for the infrastructure, has been working against the clock to repair the damage and bring the machinery back into operation. The objective is clear: to have everything ready to face the summer campaign with guarantees. The priority is maximum, as it is a key infrastructure for cleaning the wastewater from the coastal towns of the Baix Empordà. An area that, from Sant Joan onwards, significantly increases the number of visitors and residents.

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This weekend, coinciding with the final stretch of Temps de Flors, Montjuïc Castle in Girona received a floral offering. It was brought by the residents of this neighborhood, situated on a hill at the northern entrance of the city, far from the hustle and bustle of the center. They were not, however, to decorate and make it look nice, but rather an act of protest due to the poor condition of the fortress, as, although it is considered a cultural asset of national interest (BCIN), it is in a ruinous state: the stones are crumbling, weeds are growing, it is full of graffiti and dirt. Residents barely step foot there and it has become a meeting point for anti-social individuals.

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The Girona Auditorium Palau de Congressos celebrates twenty years of history, fully consolidated as one of the major cultural engines of Catalonia. In these two decades, almost 1.9 million people have passed through its halls to enjoy nearly 2,400 concerts and more than 1,200 conferences and events. Coinciding with the anniversary, the Girona venue is organizing, from May 22 to 24, a celebration weekend with high-profile musicians such as Miguel Poveda, the soprano Lise Davidsen and a participatory concert with invited artists, as well as conferences linked to the sector. To review it and discuss present and future challenges, we speak with the director, David Ibáñez.

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A 33-year-old Honduran woman was murdered on Tuesday, in broad daylight, in a square in Figueres (Alt Empordà). Allegedly, the stabbed his ex-partner to deathThe atrocious murder has generated deep indignation in Figueres and has drawn criticism to the administration for the lack of protection for the victim and the functioning of protocols and risk prevention in gender violence. Patrícia Melgar, principal investigator of the gender research group at the University of Girona (UdG), is blunt: "A feminicide is the culmination of a process of violence and whenever it occurs it means that everything prior to reaching that point has failed. But the case of Figueres is especially flagrant because it was preceded by assaults within the framework of a violated restraining order," she explains.

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