History has left little trace of the Ceretans, apart from the toponym of Cerdanya. One of the few clues available was provided by the Greco-Roman historian Cassius Dio, who explains how, in 39 BC, the Ceretans revolted. He mentions them in relation to the setback suffered by the governor of the province of Hispania Citerior, Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus, in the Pyrenees. His men suffered an ambush, fled helter-skelter, and abandoned their lieutenant. Calvinus severely punished the troops by mustering the army and executing one in every ten soldiers by lot. The severity of the punishment was what sparked the interest of historians, as it had not been applied for a long time. Once discipline was restored, Calvinus marched against the Ceretans, definitively subdued them, and confiscated their gold to celebrate his triumph in Rome in 36 BC. Afterwards, the Roman commander played a rather important role in both Emporiae and Tarraco.

The experience of some artists and the repertoires performed have made the difference in the sixteenth edition of the Cruïlla festival. The nostalgia card has won because Suede, Pixies, The Black Crowes and David Byrne have offered good concerts, some even extraordinary, and because the public has responded positively to the proposal. In total, Cruïlla 2026 has gathered 73,000 attendees, 9,000 fewer than last year, when a record of 82,000 was reached. But the decline is not explained by the, let's say, nostalgic days of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but because Wednesday, the day intended for the younger audience, has been less successful: Halsey, the headliner for Wednesday, only attracted 9,000 people, half of the 18,000 that Gracie Abrams had in 2025.

The painting Wounded Militiaman, by Francisco Mateos, preserved at the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC), is in an irrecoverable state. What happened to it? Has its condition worsened over time? Did the painter have anything to do with it? All the answers can be found in the corresponding episode of the series The Science of Art, a production by the museum and Cábala Films, with the associated production of CaixaForum+. The reconstruction of 'Wounded Militiaman' is one of the six episodes that are now available on CaixaForum+. Exceptionally, the making of the documentary led to the painting being exhibited, despite its poor state of conservation, accompanied by a reconstruction made by the artist Pilar Rosado with the help of AI.

Commissioner Jules Maigret's eyes "smile" as he has breakfast, accompanied by his wife, because life is "pleasant". They are both at the house in Meung-sur-Loire that they have been fixing up for years for the day Maigret has to retire. The 55-year-old man has two years and a few months left before leaving the police force, and this is perhaps the only regret he feels amidst the summer calm and the promise of lobster with mayonnaise for lunch. This is how "Maigret's Patience, novel by Georges Simenon (Liège, 1903 - Lausanne, 1989) which has just ceased to be unpublished in Catalan thanks to the small and exquisite Barcelona publishing house Días Contados, launched in 2009 by lawyer Ramon Girbau.

David Byrne has reflected on music with great wisdom. For example, in the book How music works (2012), available in Spanish by Reservoir Books. And the staging of his concerts must necessarily be the result of very deep reflection on how to accompany live music. When he was part of Talking Heads, he already promoted scenic gestures that sought new ways of presenting himself, and in his solo career he has gone further. He already showed it at Cruïlla in 2018, and he returned on Friday with an evolution of the format seen eight years ago: an empty stage, without tool nor fixed instrumental elements; only giant screens that can project images or simply light up with colors, and a dozen musicians-dancers, or rather, choreographed musicians, each moving with their instrument, including the percussionists, the cellist, and the keyboardist. Everyone dressed in blue, like the specialized operators of a secret laboratory, or like the medical staff of a clinic run by a minimalism enthusiast.

The victory of Spanish fascism in the civil war, the consequent Francoist dictatorship, and the continuity that, on identity and linguistic-cultural issues, has been given from so-called democratic institutions to Spanish nationalism with Francoist echoes, make it so that when we read the books and review the figure and life trajectory of Avel·lí Artís Gener “Tísner” or Vicenç Riera Llorca (Barcelona, 1903–Pineda de Mar, 1991) they seem to us of heroic and purest radicalism and coherence. Is it because we have put them on a pedestal or because we have objectively let ourselves be lowered?A staunch Catalanist and socialist of popular extraction and republican convictions, Riera Llorca, who declared himself a Catalan nationalist and therefore (not despite it: therefore) also an internationalist, made his name as a writer in the rich breeding ground of Catalan journalism during the years of the Republic. A polyglot and voracious reader, he dedicated himself to trade unionism and went to fight voluntarily at the front. After the republican defeat and the military occupation of Catalonia, Riera Llorca fled to France, where he was interned twice in concentration camps, from which he escaped both times. From there, he managed to flee to the Dominican Republic, and then to Mexico, where he co-founded and directed the most mythical and fertile exile magazine, Pont blau. He returned to Catalonia in 1969. The country had been deformed, Riera Llorca had not, and he continued to defend the same ideas he had before he had to leave. I have extracted this information from the very interesting study Vicenç Riera Llorca. Exile, memory and the working class, by Albert Ventura (Publicacions Universitat Rovira i Virgili).A chaotic, indolent and precarious world

The best-known title by Riera Llorca, Tots tres surten per l’Ozama, published in Mexico in 1946, now reissued by Club Editor, is a testimonial novel, between historical chronicle, journalistic reportage and expressively frontal and refined narration, about the experience of Catalan exile in the Dominican Republic of dictator Trujillo. Applying tones, perspectives, and technical lessons learned from reading the Americans Hemingway and Dos Passos, then very popular, Riera Llorca offers an exhaustive panorama, full of ellipses and not at all prolix but socio-anthropologically incisive, colorful and insightful, of a world marked by material misery, political corruption, racial prejudice, and passionate sensuality. It is a chaotic, static, indolent and precarious world that suddenly has to manage the arrival of many thousands of immigrants (Catalans, Spaniards, Jews, Italians...) from a Europe at war, and in which the three Catalan protagonists – Ramon, intellectual but worldly; Miquel, steadfast idealist; Lluís, conceited, boastful, soft – barely make a living doing jobs and little jobs, cohabiting with natives and other exiles, and thinking little or not at all about the past and all that they have left behind.Riera Llorca's literary operation, consisting in documenting from fiction – therefore, recreating not from literalness but from imagination – a concrete human experience in a specific historical period and territorial framework, still proves modern and lucid today. This is so because formally the novel has not become outdated and because the gallery of human types that parades through it is vivid and convincing, even in the cases of secondary and schematic characters.With a style that combines naturalist narration and reportage – vividness, drama, and symbolic power, but also detachment, clarity of style, and a desire for objectivity, as if everything were seen through the lens of a camera, although from time to time the narrator lets slip a judgmental adjective–, Tots tres surten per l’Ozama is a valuable work for literary, politico-historical, and human reasons. An important book.

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The devil would have approved of what happened on Friday at Cruïlla. On the Estrella Damm stage, The Black Crowes delivered an hour and a half of rock'n'roll, the devil's music. Thousands of spectators accepted the deal, and past eight in the evening they welcomed the band of brothers Chris and Rich Robinson with the desire to have a good time. The devil, satisfied to see the lineup, was merciful and sent clouds and a breeze to quell the heatwave. It didn't end the sweltering heat, but even the devil has his limits. Since their performance at Sant Jordi Club in 2022, the Atlanta group has released the albums Happiness Bastards (2024) and A Pound of Feathers (2026), but on the tour that brought them to Barcelona, the repertoire focuses mainly on the first two albums: Shake Your Money Maker (1990) and The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (1992). In other words, in line with Thursday's 90s nostalgia with Pixies, Suede, and Garbage. Of course, with fewer people on Friday.

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La Virreina hosts from this Saturday until November 1 a strange couple formed by the playwright and actress Juana Dolores Romero and the artist Frederic Amat. She presents her first exhibition, Declaration of Love to Lenin, and he Eight, an anthology of his collaborations with great authors. The curator of both is Valentín Roma, the director of the center until a few weeks ago he was elected as the new director of Macba. That is why the presentation has been a recital of emotions, with some of Roma's colleagues at La Virreina thanking him for ten fantastic years of work. Frederic Amat has added poetry: he assures that if Roma were an animal, he would be a dog, because he has "eye, nose, and fang." And Juana Dolores has thanked him for allowing her to work under unprecedented conditions. "I am not used to sharing a class with the directors who program me in festivals or theaters and I think it has become very clear here that, when a class is shared, one works from another place, and with another confidence," said Romero. "Insolence is no longer in the popular classes. Fascism is insolent, and perhaps what we have to do is recover the popular use of insolence," Roma asked.

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Newton's first law is the scientific statement of the immobility of an object if there is no force pushing it. It happens with objects and also with our lives and with politics, because if there is no one pushing for real changes, things stay as they are.

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The promissory note for a million pounds sterling, written by Mark Twain in 1893, is more than a humorous narrative about an extraordinary stroke of luck. Under the guise of a light and witty tale, Twain constructs a relentless critique against a society that confuses the value of people with that of the money they claim to possess. With incisive intelligence, he dissects the mechanisms of social prestige, the hypocrisy of the affluent classes, and the fragility of human judgments.The protagonist, an honest but ruined man, receives a miraculous object: an IOU for one million pounds sterling. The paradox is immediate: he has an immense fortune that, in fact, he cannot use. Twain thus reveals that the power of money lies not so much in its utility as in the perception it generates. No one checks if that stranger is really rich; it is enough that he appears to be for the treatment he receives to change radically. When a smile turns into discomfort

Humor becomes a critical weapon of extraordinary effectiveness. The situations often verge on the absurd, but behind each comic scene lies a severe denunciation. The reader laughs at the misunderstandings caused by the famous promissory note, but the smile soon turns to discomfort when they discover how plausible the characters' behavior turns out to be. The novel also offers a lucid reflection on identity. The protagonist does not undergo any essential transformation: he remains the same intelligent, prudent, and honest man. What changes is the gaze of others. This inversion of perspectives highlights that social identity is often a collective construction fueled by prejudices, interests, and conventions. The narrative style reinforces this critical view. The language is clear, lively, and of an apparent simplicity that hides an extraordinary satirical precision. Mark Twain shies away from any moralizing temptation and lets the facts themselves unmask the contradictions of the world he portrays. This expressive economy turns irony into a great engine of the narrative: the reader understands the inconsistency of their attitudes long before the characters do.One of the most remarkable aspects of the work is its relevance. Despite being written in the 19th century, it dialogues with a society in which image, status, and public projection continue to condition personal relationships. Today, as then, reputation is often built on the perception of success, rather than on the real worth of people. The Million Pound Bank Note is a brilliant satire that questions the moral foundations of a society fascinated by money. With elegant and devastating irony, Twain shows that wealth exerts an almost theatrical power: it shapes the perception of others, conditions opportunities, and alters human relationships. More than a century later, this fable continues to challenge us with surprising relevance.

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"Clementina Arderiu Voltas is surely one of the Catalan writers who has had the easiest and most difficult time leaving a work in the history of Catalan literature". With this forceful statement begins the profile that Marta Pessarrodona outlined the poet in the volume Donasses. Protagonists of modern Catalonia (Destination, 2006). Now that the fiftieth anniversary of Arderiu's death is being celebrated, it is worth asking what the reasons are for this contradictory situation – in the light and in the shadow at the same time – and trying to correct the wrong that has been done to his work, on which reductive judgments have weighed, for social and biographical reasons.

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Barcelona's major festivals are children of the nineties of the 20th century. So is Cruïlla, even though its first edition took place in the 21st century. Its director, Jordi Herreruela, lived the most impetuous period of his youth precisely in that era. Therefore, it is not surprising that Cruïlla's programming reserves space for the music of those years, as is the case with Primavera Sound and Sónar. Every generation has the right to build its own nostalgia, but in Barcelona's macro-festivals, the memory of the nineties seems to carry more weight than others. The programming for Cruïlla's second day, with Suede, Pixies, and Garbage on the main stages of the Parc del Fòrum, can be interpreted as a tribute to the generation that has already passed fifty.

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"Any genocide also implies a cultural genocide". With this premise in mind, Madrid will host a summit next week focused on the "cultural reconstruction" of Palestine. Thirty ministerial delegations and organizations such as UNESCO and the Arab League will meet on July 15 and 16 in the Spanish capital to address the consequences of the "attempted destruction" perpetrated by Israel and will seek formulas to contribute to the survival of the heritage, cultural institutions, and Palestinian artists threatened by the conflict. The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, host and promoter of this ministerial conference, along with Palestinian authorities, has emphasized that the objective is to "create an international alliance" that will launch "concrete instruments", both "political" and "financial", "to support Palestinian culture", following the model created for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

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Between May 27 and 30, 1976, the paranimph of the University of Barcelona brought together more than three thousand women who crowded a space where current legislation today indicates a maximum permitted capacity of four hundred people. The success of the First Catalan Women's Days was overwhelming. Women came from a dictatorship that had relegated them and aspired to many changes. Furthermore, they went hand in hand with the most diverse social and political sectors. Fifty years after that milestone, the Filmoteca de Catalunya has not wanted to limit itself to an exercise in historical nostalgia, but rather proposes a dialogue between generations and an inspiration to imagine futures. The exhibition Filmic Feminisms 1976-2026, curated by Alexandra Laudo, with the advice of Anna Solà and Marta Selva and the film editing by Pilar Monsell, demonstrates how the camera can break down walls and inspire new futures. It can be visited until November 29.

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The Barcelona soprano Maria Miró has four dates at the Liceu, where she interprets the role of Nannetta in the opera Falstaff, by Verdi, on July 10, 13, 16 and 19. "I love debuting papers", says Miró, who debuted at the Liceu in 2013 in the cantata Atlantis by Manuel de Falla and Ernesto Halffter. He returned that same year with the role Cinderella, by Massenet, and later to The Two Foscari (2015) and The Troubadour (2017), both by Verdi.

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The powerful voice of Bonnie Tyler, who poured her heart out in Total eclipse of the heart, and the cracked voice that surrendered to heartbreak in It's a heartache, has finally fallen silent. As confirmed by the BBC, the Welsh singer has died at the age of 75 in Portugal, in Faro, where she had settled to live during the seasons she was not performing. Her discography leaves behind a handful of immortal hits, a vocal surgery, an unexpected revival, and a steadfast dedication that has kept her on stage for practically half a century uninterrupted. "I'm never going to retire. What do you want me to do? Stop and die? I love performing too much," she stated in a television interview in the summer of 2024. Tyler continued to tour, filling halls mainly in Germany, France, and Central European countries, much more so than in her native United Kingdom.

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Although Barcelona broke its heat record this Wednesday and the Teatre Grec stage is outdoors, Argentine actor Joaquín Furriel (Lomas de Zamora, 1974) is not afraid of the city's high temperatures. "I premiered my first play when I was 13, on December 20th in Buenos Aires, which is like performing here in July. I'm always happy when I perform in the heat, it's a caress for my soul," the performer highlights. He is the protagonist of The True Story of Richard III, a show directed by Calixto Bieito that will be performed this Friday and Saturday as part of the Grec festival. The play arrives in Barcelona after being staged in Madrid and Bilbao and having a season and national tour in Argentina with a very enviable reception: for two and a half months, the show could be seen from Wednesday to Sunday at the Teatro San Martín, which has a capacity of 950 people. They sold out all tickets.

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After a breakup, the protagonist of Principi, mig, fi (Angle/Feltrinelli; with Catalan translation by Elisabet Ràfols Sagués), goes to Sicily with her teenage daughter and a tile from a mosaic depicting the god Proteus that her grandmother "stole" from a dig site. With a host of mythological and classical references, the mother seeks how to start anew and establish a new bond with her daughter. The writer Valeria Luiselli (Mexico City, 1983) is also the author ofLos niños perdidos (2016), in which she recounts her experience as a translator for migrant children in New York, Los ingrávidos (2011) and Arxiu dels infants perduts (2024).

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As children grow and transform into mysterious teenagers, some mothers and fathers may wonder about the strange being that inhabits their home. What are they thinking? What do they do all day? In his second feature film, the German Frédéric Hambalek turns the tables: here it is not the adults who try to unravel the labyrinth of adolescent existence, but rather they are the ones subjected to relentless surveillance and moral examination. Marielle is thirteen years old, and a slap from a classmate gives her telepathic powers: she can suddenly hear every word spoken by her well-off parents, Julia and Tobias, who see how, in an instant, their comfortable existence based on self-deception, double standards, and appearances (fundamental pillars of all adult life) begins to crumble.

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The concrete used by the Romans two thousand years ago has always fascinated science, as it allowed an architectural revolution with which buildings, bridges, and aqueducts were erected, which still survive. The scientific journal Science Advances from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has prepared a report highlighting the role of the long and progressive carbonation of minerals. The study suggests that for years it has been believed that the resistance of Roman material was caused by the mixture of volcanic ash and lime they used. The opus caementicium did contain this mixture. However, the research published in the North American journal concludes that the differentiating factor is calcium carbonate. This chemical compound, otherwise called calcite, is the predominant binding component in the remains analyzed in the report.

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