A man was shot dead this Friday afternoon in a tattoo parlor in Badalona, according to sources consulted by ARA. The Mossos d'Esquadra are at the scene and have opened an investigation.

Half a million euros a day, more than 20,000 euros every hour, more than 300 euros every minute. This is the amount of money that cyber scams have taken from Catalans since 2024. It is 490 million euros in two and a half years divided into 80,000 annual reports until August of this year. With these figures, cyber scams are already the second most reported crime in the country, and this is despite the fact that the Mossos d'Esquadra warn that the dark figure – the citizens who suffer these frauds and do not report them to the police – is extremely high. In recent years, cyber scams have affected more than 200,000 people and the victims who lose the most money are the oldest: those over 65 have an average of more than 4,000 euros stolen from them, while in the 18 to 30 age group, the figure does not reach a thousand euros.

Renfe has already begun the tasks to dismantle the train that caught fire on Monday on the high-speed line between Barcelona and Madrid and which has kept this corridor running at half capacity since then. The work to remove this part of the train, the most complicated one, began on the night between Thursday and Friday. Once cleared of scrap metal, it will be necessary to check the condition of the track and the catenary and, if necessary, repair it. Nevertheless, the infrastructure manager, Adif, is maintaining the planned schedule and expects that the line will be able to return to normal next week. Even so, at this time neither Renfe nor Adif can specify which exact day it will be possible to return to circulating on both tracks.

"Control over need, suspicion over trust, and administrative procedure over urgency." This is how the president of the Table of Third Sector Social Organizations of Catalonia, Xavier Trabado, has summarized the current system of social care and economic benefits. According to a new study by this group of 3,000 entities, half of the people in extreme poverty would not be able to access the main benefits even if they requested them. This would be due to the "invisible barriers" that people in vulnerable situations face when trying to access aid: bureaucratic hurdles, lack of information, and the saturation of social services.

Unwanted loneliness has a direct impact on the emotional well-being and physical health of those who suffer from it, especially the most vulnerable, such as migrant people.

Life expectancy in Catalonia is very high: the most updated data (2024) place it at 86.6 years for women and 81.6 for men. But the demographic and social reality is complex. There are more chronic diseases and situations of dependency and frailty, more mental health problems and more socioeconomic inequalities, which is why the years lived in good health drop to 67 for women and 68 for men. In other words: Catalan women live 19 years of their lives with low or poor quality of life, and Catalan men 13. "The challenge now is not to live more years, but with more health, well-being and autonomy. This is the great change we are proposing," stated the Minister of Health, Olga Pané, during the presentation of the tenth Health Plan of Catalonia.

The death of Helena Jubany, murdered in 2001, will go to trial more than two decades later. The judge in Sabadell who is instructing this case has decided to send Santi Laiglesia to trial, a lawsuit that will be heard by a popular jury at the Barcelona Court. This decision cannot be appealed, according to judicial sources, and will lead Laiglesia to sit in the dock. In the document, the judge concludes that there are "rational indications of criminality" against Laiglesia.

New setback for the European Union's climate goals. The continent's economic engines, France and Germany, reached an agreement this Friday to soften the climate requirements for the automotive sector and maintain the manufacturing of combustion vehicles beyond 2035. This was announced by the French government in a statement, in which it details that the pact also includes tools to strengthen production conditions within Europe. This proposal has been a major demand from European manufacturers, who are currently working hastily to electrify in the face of strong Chinese competition.

After many days of calm and weather that is too warm for the time of year, the weather will become complicated this weekend. The anticyclone will move to northern Europe and, at the same time, a storm will form in the Mediterranean. All this will open the doors to the arrival of a pocket of cold air at high altitude coming from central Europe towards the Iberian Peninsula, as well as humid and warm maritime winds towards the Catalan coast. This will clearly increase instability, with the return of rain and a sudden, full autumn atmosphere. The sea water remains warmer than it should be, which can cause the rainfall to be more intense, just as it has been in recent weeks.

One of the most characteristic images of the access to Barcelona from the Diagonal is living on borrowed time. The RACC offices, with their iconic yellow cube at the top, will have to change location. The reason? The land on which the building stands is included in the draft of the Urban Master Plan (PDU) for the future Clínic Campus. For this reason, the Generalitat and the company have been negotiating an agreement for months for the RACC to abandon its privileged spot at the top of the Diagonal.

The need to review teacher training and the way child poverty and rising complexity in classrooms are addressed have centered the debate in the first of the meetings promoted by Pimec on education, which has featured the voices of four former ministers of the sector: Irene Rigau, Anna Simó, Meritxell Ruiz, and Ernest Maragall. In the midst of a social debate and with a national debate underway to redefine the Catalan educational model –dynamited by the error in the PISA tests, but fueled by the protests by teachers and families in the last year–, all four have agreed that it is necessary to "shield education" from different political cycles to guarantee the country's future, since the educational system is a cradle for new generations and, therefore, for facing future economic and social transformations. This, of course, always "guided by the evaluation" of results.

A 47-year-old woman died this Thursday morning while sleeping at the doors of a museum in Santa Coloma de Gramenet. The local police of the municipality received the notice around 8 a.m. after the concierge of the Torre Balldovina Museum warned of the presence of a woman who had spent the night on the porch of the facility and had no vital signs. The museum is located in a quite central area, next to the Can Peixauet bridge, very close to the Besòs river.

Second and final session of the trial of the Montcada cement plant at the Barcelona Court. Former Generalitat official Emili Dragone, accused of granting irregular environmental authorizations to the Lafarge cement plant, based in Vallès Occidental, has denied giving preferential treatment to the company: he asserted that he never issued favorable environmental reports, because it was not his job.

The standoff between Barcelona City Council and the owners of tourist apartments in the city continues to escalate. The Director General of the Association of Tourist Apartments (Apartur), Marian Muro, warned this Thursday that the employers' association will take legal action against the council if the plenary session definitively approves in December the increase of up to 150% in the property tax (IBI) on tourist apartments.

The Papallona block in the Esquerra de l'Eixample neighborhood is taking a step forward in its resistance against the investment fund New Amsterdam Developers (NAD) with an indefinite rent strike. 17 residents from 4 of the 6 inhabited apartments have joined, organized with the Socialist Housing Union of Catalonia, and they hope that the remaining tenants will also end up joining. Their goal is to get the Barcelona City Council to expropriate the building on Llança Street at "zero profit," meaning that the purchase should be made at the price the fund acquired the property for, points out Anna Olesti, a resident of the block and spokesperson for the union in Eixample. The mobilized neighbors are also demanding indefinite contracts and the conversion of the current empty apartments into social housing.

The Ministry of Defense has sent to the Ceuta duty court and the Public Prosecutor's Office the audio recordings published by Eldiario.es in which at least three soldiers deployed in the autonomous city boast amidst laughter about beating up migrants during their surveillance shift. Margarita Robles' department has incorporated the recordings into the documentation previously sent following Amnesty International's report on allegations of beatings and mistreatment. Defense assures that it is doing so "to preserve the good name of the armed forces".

The Mossos d'Esquadra are investigating the discovery of a corpse floating in the sea between Sitges and Castelldefels, near Port Ginesta, which all indications point to being the lifeless body of the minor who went missing in Granollers. Sources consulted by the ARA indicate that the corpse, which is in an advanced state of decomposition, was wearing clothing that would match that of Rami, the twelve-year-old boy with autism who was last seen almost two weeks ago in Granollers during the floods. The President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, confirmed this Thursday morning that it is indeed the missing minor and has sent a message of condolence to the family and friends.

A few minutes after opening the doors, the shop's lobby fills with customers. "They are friends, coming to say goodbye," explains Glòria Vives, manager of Magatzems del Pilar, at number 43 on Carrer de la Boqueria, and representative of the fifth generation at the head of this iconic establishment in the heart of the Gothic Quarter. With 140 years of history, the family-run business selling artisanal textile goods will close its doors for good this Friday.

A sea of thousands of green t-shirts approaches the Puerta del Sol this Wednesday at noon. "Public education for everyone and by everyone," it reads in white printed letters. They are the teachers of non-university public schools in the Community of Madrid, who are starting an indefinite general strike. They advance walking along one of the streets that leads to the kilometer zero of the Spanish capital. Upon arriving, they surround the nearly 2,000 tents that have remained installed in the square for almost twenty days: the first one was placed on the night of September 26th.

The history of Badia del Vallès cannot be explained without asbestos. When in the seventies the Franco regime promoted the construction of this city with thousands of social housing units to accommodate the population arriving from other parts of the State, prefabricated fiber cement parts with asbestos were used in different parts of the buildings, from the roofs to the downspouts and ventilation ducts. The speed and low cost offered by this construction system favored its use, but today the aging of the materials makes it necessary to remove them: it can be toxic to health. Half a century later, Badia del Vallès is beginning to rid itself of this legacy.