Once is a coincidence. Twice, a happenstance. And more than three, a pattern. Such is the case with the series of relationships linking Don Quixote and the Empordà. Far from a sporadic anecdote, the reiteration of examples connecting these two worlds allows for the detection of a rich and interesting bond. This is demonstrated by the Hispanic philologist Joan Manuel Soldevila, based in Figueres, in the book Land of Quixotes (Pòrtic), awarded the 2026 Carles Rahola Essay Prize. The text, written with great erudition but without heavy-handed analysis, unravels the carousel of characters, works, and places of the Empordà plain that, in one way or another, allude to Cervantes' literature. From the most obvious, such as Dalí's admiration for the Knight of the Sad Countenance, to others more surprising, such as the name of a nightclub in Figueres or the first documented photograph in the world of two men dressed as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

On the eve of Saint Narcís, actress Àngels Gonyalons offered an excellent dramatized reading of stories by Caterina Albert at the Teatre de Salt, as part of the Temporada Alta program, in co-production with the Festival Clàssics of Barcelona. Four stories by the writer from L'Escala, known by the pseudonym Víctor Català, truly poignant, with touches of humor but very harsh and striking, of an impressive modernity that denounces, without mincing words, the sexism and violence of the patriarchal society. They are short stories from different collections about the lives of women in small rural towns at the turn of the 20th century, involving forced marriages, rapes, and murders. Poet Blanca Llum Vidal was in charge of choosing the stories and selecting some fragments, and Sergi Belbel signs the direction, intelligently guiding Gonyalons' reading, who was very committed and communicative.

When they make the transition from school to high school, most teenagers start wanting to go out to party. A desire to discover new things, to grow up, to meet people, and to have a good time in a space far from the family's supervision. Many fathers and mothers, however, experience these first festive nights with worry and suffering. They worry that something might happen to their children late at night, they get anxious when they do not answer messages, and they are not calm until they return home safe and sound. Now then, is it possible to find a balance between the young people's eagerness for fun and the adults' anxiety? Between controlling and forbidding? Between giving freedom and crossing the line?

Last Sunday, Brazil extended the polls by two hours due to public transport problems reported by the campaign of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who ended up winning the presidential election. In Israel, this Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party also asked to extend polling hours on a day marked by rain, although the country's electoral committee rejected it (even though it assured that everyone who had arrived at the polling stations before 10 p.m. would be allowed to vote even if the deadline had already passed). Both Netanyahu and Lula were interested in the highest possible turnout, especially from the areas that traditionally support them most.

Toni Comín has set foot in Catalonia again. He did so on Sunday, October 25th, past one in the afternoon, crossing on foot the Col dels Belitres, the administrative border with France, in a very symbolic and emotional act, accompanied by his closest friends and family. The former Minister of Health had already gone on Thursday to Madrid to swear the Constitution to obtain his seat as a Member of the European Parliament and, during the nine-year period of exile in Belgium, he had been to Northern Catalonia on a few occasions, but it was not until this Sunday that he officially entered the Principality, protected by the amnesty, without the risk of being arrested by the Spanish authorities.

The history of the Western world is full of grievances regarding the heritage of colonized territories: looting of great wealth, desecration of ancient tombs, destruction of sacred temples, and oppression of entire civilizations. These are accomplished, inexorable facts, and from the present, there is no physical way to change them. It is a debt to the past that, by definition, cannot be repaid. The only option that remains is reparation and memory. These far-reaching ideas are the starting point for the new exhibition program at Bòlit, Centre d'Art Contemporani in Girona, titled Legacies in Potential, which reflects on the role of museums in transmitting the memory of forgotten and despised peoples.

Pedro Sánchez visited this ThursdayLa revuelta by David Broncano in an interview lasting more than an hour, with a joking and relaxed tone, but also with criticism and pointed questions. One of the hottest topics was housing and, when asked about the socialists' measures on this matter, the president cited the 2023 Housing Law, which gives autonomous communities tools to regulate rent caps. However, the regional governments led by PP and Vox have refused to apply it and, to highlight the alleged grievance with those that have done so, Sánchez said that "in Catalonia the increase in rent prices is clearly lower than that of the Community of Madrid". But is that really the case?

The flabiol is a unique instrument in the world. A short, narrow, and high-pitched flute, heir to medieval wind instruments, with five holes for tuning the notes. Three-holed flutes and piccolos can be found throughout the Peninsula, in Zamora, Aragon, or the Basque Country, but five-holed ones, like the flabiol, only in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. And one of the Catalan municipalities where this instrument is most deeply rooted is Arbúcies, at the foot of the Montseny. Since 1985, the Flabiol Festival has been held there, which this weekend of October 24th and 25th reaches its 42nd edition. The gathering brings together flabiol players from all over the Catalan Countries, roots musicians, and lovers of popular culture with a program that includes concerts, parades, colloquiums, and workshops.

The Sant Narcís Fairs are a date marked on the calendar of the people of Girona, with rituals that are repeated year after year and with traditions that are already part of the collective memory of the city. But the festival also changes and, during the two weeks of celebrations, some activities adapt, new ones appear and others are recovered after years of absence. These are the 9 most attractive novelties of this year's edition.

Every day, more than 2,000 heavy-duty trucks pass through Olot and follow the route along the Les Preses regional road. Most of them are trucks from the meat industry, which make the round trip between Osona and the mega-slaughterhouse of the Garrotxa capital, and they transport live pigs, offal, or fresh goods. The constant passage of trucks through this entire urban section, with houses right next to the road, generates a lot of unrest among neighbors and causes repeated traffic problems. For this reason, for some time now, town councils, companies, and neighborhood platforms have been demanding the construction of a bypass that circles the city and avoids the passage of heavy vehicles. Finally, after years of negotiations, in March 2026 the Generalitat approved the construction project for the new bypass, with a budget of 470 million euros, and the main work is already out for tender. But the new road has environmentalists and farmers against it: they argue that it would seriously affect fertile farmland areas and, above all, the fluvio-volcanic aquifer of La Garrotxa, which supplies water to the entire region.

This weekend, the splendid Cap Roig Gardens, perched above the coves of Palafrugell, have become the luxury setting for the second Cap Roig Encounters, organized by the La Caixa Foundation and the magazine La Maleta de Portbou, united under the initiative of the European School of Humanities. The symposium brings together writers, scientists, philosophers, and artists from diverse disciplines around the theme "The meaning of nature," which invites reflection on the relationship between humans and the natural world.

Following the warm reception of last year's inaugural edition, the Brots de l'Empordà Festival returns: a truly interesting and original proposal that places top-tier artists alongside local producers and restaurateurs in the same program, all tied together with a very conscious and vindicatory discourse about the land and culture. The initiative, organized by Joventuts Musicals de Torroella de Montgrí, was born as a way to artistically channel the cry of the Revolta Pagesa protests. This year's edition is held in a dozen towns in the Baix Empordà, featuring concerts, dance, performance, poetry, and visual arts in churches, squares, fields, and forests, from October 22nd to 25th. The festival brings together names like Tarta Relena, Toti Soler, Alosa, Raül Refree, and Momi Maiga, centered around a theme focused on the preservation, recovery, and reinterpretation of ancestral heritage.

Sarfa is the red, white, and orange bus company that travels through the Baix Empordà and connects the Costa Brava with Barcelona. Its centenary brand, founded in 1921 and based in Begur, is absolutely integrated into the daily lives of many residents of the Girona regions. Since 2009, it has been part of the Sabadell-based Moventis group, and this 2026, with 240 employees and a fleet of 130 vehicles, it expects to reach 3.5 million passengers and exceed 11.5 million kilometers traveled. In addition to regular interurban transport, it manages more than fifty school routes, international services to France with BlaBlaCar, and corporate transport. At the head of the company is Christian Busquets, born in Platja d'Aro, who assumed the management on January 1st of this year after joining in 2023 as operations director.

Martí Gironell returns to bookstores with Malaveïna, a new historical novel published by Columna that aims very high. The author from La Garrotxa leaves behind the adventures of the monks and choirboys of Montserrat from his last book to now immerse himself in the history of the gardens of the majestic Peralada castle, in the Empordà, which counts Antoni and Tomàs de Rocabertí had built in 1877. The novel, maintaining the thread of nature as a common denominator, connects the counts' gardens with the legendary character of the Malaveïna, a healer from the fields of Garriguella, a symbol of atavistic wisdom, who used flowers and plants to cure the sick of the region.

For ten years now, at the beginning of autumn, Cadaqués has become a great exhibition stage for the best photographers in the world. This is possible thanks to the InCadaqués International Photography Festival, which organizes a host of exhibitions throughout galleries, gardens, beaches, and streets of this idyllic town of white houses at the foot of Cap de Creus. This year, in its tenth edition, from October 8 to 25, it will offer 25 exhibitions and workshops by 40 authors from 20 countries.

The worst part of the severe storm this Sunday was borne by the Maresme, the Vallès Oriental and the south of the Costa Brava. The heavy storms that discharged with force in Barcelona and the metropolitan area on Saturday moved up along the Girona coastline from south to north, with records exceeding 150 liters in many parts of the Empordà, and have left two fatalities and a young person missing in Pineda de Mar. Several towns spent the morning with flooded streets, road closures and damage caused by overflowing rivers and streams that cross urbanized areas before flowing into the sea.

The Ludwig Band is a well of creativity. All its members are truly talented, they have a lot of artistic interests and always have some project on the go. Whether it is with the group, where everyone has their say, or also as a solo act. This is the case of Lluc (or Lluki, depending on his stage name) Valverde, saxophonist and keyboardist of the band, born in Espolla (Alt Empordà), who has been releasing some songs on his own for some time and has now just premiered his first album, titled A la catalana (Primavera Labels). There are ten songs, most of them Catalan rumba, filled with anecdotes, desires, and daily adventures in Barcelona, halfway between irony, bitterness, and merrymaking. The album, conceived above all to be performed live, with a very extravagant staging, was previewed at the Mercat de Música Viva de Vic and on November 12th it will arrive at the Sala Upload Barcelona.

A year ago, the mushroom season was very good. In the months of October and November, the craze for finding them filled the forests of Catalonia with cars and enthusiasts with full baskets. This 2026, however, the forecasts are much more pessimistic and the calendar has been delayed. Mushroom hunters, farmers, forest owners and mycologists, who know the terrain closely and know exactly which shady spot to search in depending on how the weather evolves, agree on the diagnosis: everything is very dry and so far very few have come out, even though the heavy rains of the last few days may improve the situation. Mind you, the rainfall needs to remain constant for a few days, the temperature needs to moderate, and the results will begin to be noticed in two or three weeks.

Portbou has the last train station in Catalonia before crossing the administrative border with France through the Belitres tunnel. The station and the entire complex of tracks occupy nearly a third of the surface area of this small municipality on the Costa Brava, linked since the 19th century to the country's railway history. Inside the Portbou facilities there is a workshop, the only one of Renfe in the Girona region, where maintenance and repair tasks for locomotives and freight trains are carried out. Over time, however, this base has been losing weight and personnel, until, finally, Renfe has decided to stop its activity.

The stand-up comedy is in fashion. And not only in Spanish, which at the beginning was the hegemonic language of this comedy genre, but also in Catalan. In Barcelona, more and more venues are choosing to invite stand-up comedians who, standing up and with a microphone, seek to make people laugh with their stories and jokes. Outside the Catalan capital, in Girona, this format has also been on the rise, especially after the pandemic. And one of the agents that has contributed most to this is the El Foment Cultural Foundation, which, from its headquarters in the Old Town, regularly organizes open mics, comedy clubs, and shows by famous comedians, as well as courses and competitions for amateur stand-up comedians. And always exclusively in Catalan. All this has contributed to professionalizing a group of new generations of comedians and has grown the interest in the art of jokes and wit in the city.