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.

The hearty breakfasts are all the rage in Catalonia. Traditional Catalan dishes and slow-cooked meals first thing in the morning, in a lifelong establishment, accompanied by bread and wine, are gaining more and more followers. They are often carnivorous meals, such as capipota, fricandó, braised pork cheek, or sausage with beans. However, some coastal bars and restaurants, specialized in working with the fresh fish of the day, also serve seafood-style hearty breakfasts. And the experience is truly worth it. Enjoying a good seafood platter by the sea after an early morning coffee is an unbeatable plan.

The Girona-Costa Brava airport continues to grow. Looking ahead to 2027, it adds to its flight offerings a new first-rate company that will operate on the Girona runways. It is the British EasyJet, one of the most important low-cost airlines in the world, with 370 aircraft and nearly 100 million passengers annually. It will operate two new routes to the United Kingdom, the country with which Girona airport has the most connections.

The Núria valley is one of the most iconic mountain destinations in Catalonia. A tourist complex around a basilica from the early 20th century, flanked by the Puigmal and the Capçaleres del Ter i del Freser Natural Park, at an altitude of 2,000 meters, which can only be reached by walking or by the rack railway. The station, managed by Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC), is a pioneer in sustainability thanks to the Ecovall project. During the first half of 2026, the station generated more than 908,000 kWh of geothermal energy thanks to the implementation of 126 wells 100 meters deep that heat the water for all the facilities. This new system has saved more than 100,000 liters of diesel and prevented the emission of 309 tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Furthermore, the Núria station is the first FGC station in Catalonia open 365 days a year: it does not rely solely on the snow season, which is increasingly unpredictable due to climate change, but has reinvented itself by organizing all kinds of nature and hiking activities to attract the public throughout the year.

Marc Verdaguer is one of the regular names within Albert Serra's particular creative universe. A musician and member of the Banyoles-based group Molforts, he has worked on all of the filmmaker's soundtracks, from the embryonic Crespià (2003) to his latest work, Out of this world, still in the final editing phase. He has also signed the music for films by other directors, such as Alain Guiraudie, produced by Andergraun Films, and has collaborated on experimental and performative audiovisual proposals by artists such as Jordi Mitjà and Vagina Dentata. He has just premiered the film Seize moments de ma vie,at the Locarno Festival, an extravagant concert with the legendary actress Ingrid Caven and Molforts, recorded in Paris by Serra himself and which will be seen in Barcelona at the In-Edit Festival.

Ayahuasca is a beverage made from Amazonian plants, with very potent psychoactive and hallucinogenic effects. In the Western world, it is often associated with the consumption of psychedelic drugs, as it causes intense visions, alterations of consciousness, and all kinds of physical reactions, often adverse and dangerous. Its origin, however, has been linked for thousands of years to indigenous Amazonian peoples, who use it as traditional medicine in shamanic rituals, spiritual ceremonies, and processes of purging and healing. For these peoples, ayahuasca is not just a mere substance, but also represents the neuralgic center from which they articulate their entire relationship with life and nature. This ancestral aspect, linked to anthropology and biocultural sustainability, is what the World Ayahuasca Forum aims to reclaim, which, for the first time, is taking place at the Girona Congress Palace Auditorium from September 11th to 13th.

For the third consecutive year, Girona has been the setting for one of the decentralized demonstrations of September 11th and, once again, the event has brought together thousands of people. 15,000, according to the Assembly, and 11,000, according to the municipal police. More or less the same as last year. The march began at 5:14 PM at Plaça Catalunya, packed to the rafters, and slowly headed towards the La Copa esplanade, where speeches and musical performances took place and a giant screen connected with Barcelona. The entire day unfolded in a festive atmosphere, with families, retirees, and also a great many young people who came from all over the region. An essentially citizen-led mobilization, from civil society, without partisan proclamations, symbols of political parties, or media figures hogging the spotlight.The spirit (although less crowded) recalled that of the first years of the Procés demonstrations, before the most tense and convulsive moments. Shouts of "independence", the singing of Els Segadors, proclamations of "the streets will be ours" and "we want, we want independence". Also human towers (castellers), brass bands and songs by Lluís Llach, Txarango and l’Elèctrica Dharma. A kind of happy déjà-vu and a feeling of national celebration. Neither reproaches to politicians nor tension.There has also been no trace of the tensions with the pro-independence far-right of Aliança Catalana, which did mark the Diada in the capital. There was only a brief moment of tension when a group of teenagers leading the demonstration, wearing football shirts, with estelada flags on their backs and painted cheeks, began to shout "Sílvia Orriols is the solution". They did so timidly and quickly gave up, but the chant caused a citizen passing by, outside the demonstration, to confront them and, then, an adult from the demonstration wanted to retaliate. The situation, however, did not escalate: they were separated and the rest of the young people there responded with anti-fascist slogans.Without the prominence of politicians or well-known faces

The festive and civic tone of the demonstration continued on the Copa stage. In fact, the speeches were delivered by anonymous people: two pro-independence activists, a veteran, and a young woman, in line with the "present and future" slogan of the rally. "Catalonia is experiencing a moment of unrest. Strained public services, healthcare with unacceptable waiting lists, education without resources, trains that leave us stranded, and impossible housing prices, neglected farmers, and precarious working conditions. These are not isolated problems; they are part of the same reality, a Catalonia that does not have all the resources or all the decision-making capacity to govern itself," they said.The day ended with the concert by Akoblats, a group performing lively covers of Catalan songs, a drinks bar, and food stalls. The younger audience stayed until the end and had a great time.

]]>

From mid-August to the end of September is the optimal season for figs, one of the most delicious fruits in the Mediterranean. On its own, the fig is excellent: tasty, sweet, creamy and with the soft crunch of the tiny seeds inside. But, in the kitchen, combined with other ingredients, it yields great results and has a lot of recipe possibilities. For this reason, this month of September, from Monday the 7th to Sunday the 20th, fifteen restaurants in Figueres and the Alt Empordà are offering on their menu all kinds of dishes with this seasonal product as the protagonist. It is the gastronomic campaign Enfiga't, organized by the Figueres City Council, La Cuina del Vent and the local commerce association, which is repeated every year around these dates with the aim of promoting the fig, typical of the area, which gives the Alt Empordà capital its name since the time of the Romans.

]]>

A little over a year ago, Joan Carles and Roser moved into their new, newly built house, on the edge of Sant Gregori heading towards the forests of the Llémena valley. Around the same time, the home, designed by architects Josep Camps and Olga Felip, received a special mention at the Girona Region Architecture Awards from the College of Architects of Catalonia (COAC). The house, named 012, is truly spectacular. From the street, the four-sided facade catches the eye, made of off-white metal sheets with oblique finishes, creating a very clean and contemporary image.

]]>

After the summer lull, the cultural season begins in the Girona regions with a brand new edition of the Temporada Alta festival, the 35th, which will be held from October 3 to December 8. The theatrical autumn in Girona and Salt will feature 91 shows, 131 performances, 21 co-productions, and 22 premieres, four of which will be firsts world. The opening ceremony will be Has been, on the subject of growing up in the performing arts world. It is a premiere in the State that will bring together for the first time the languages of the choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and of circus and movement artist Martin Zimmermann.

]]>

This summer, on the counters of Catalan fishmongers, one of the most prized fish of this time of year is missing. It is the sonso, a very small fish, about 10 centimeters long, which is fished from the end of winter until autumn. This year, however, the 26 boats of Catalan sonso fishermen have barely found any catches and, in the last week of June, they already declared the season over. They have moored the boats because it was not profitable to set sail every morning and they hope to resume activity next year, expecting the situation to improve.

]]>

In early June, when the heat arrives, shepherd Víctor Rojas Orcalla undertakes a long walking route from Cap de Creus to Alta Garrotxa, guiding a flock of nearly 700 sheep along the traditional transhumance paths. He takes them to the green meadows below Comanegra, the peak of Les Bruixes, and the Sant Marc pass, where they stay all summer, sheltered from the high temperatures. The shepherd cares for them in the mountains for three or four months, in the company of nine dogs, and spends most nights in a small, well-equipped modular hut at the base of the summit. Further down, in the village of Rocabruna, Rojas also has a room at the Bocabartella farmhouse where the caretakers welcome him whenever he needs it.

]]>