Josep Gonzàlez Catalán (Tarragona, 1962) has spent his whole life between the workshop and the counter. His father, Josep Gonzàlez Vidal, founded the Pastisseria Conde in the center of Tarragona in 1966, and in the eighties, he promoted the creation of the Guild of Artisan Pastry Chefs of the Tarragona Regions. Now the son is at the head of the historic pastry shop and the guild. He feels very much from Tarragona and has invented sweets linked to the city, such as the Sant Magí Cane, the Santa Tecla Joy, and another one for the celebration of the 200 years of the Siege of the Peninsular War. We talk to him about the trade and the situation of the sector.

From October 30th to November 1st, Aiguamúrcia will celebrate the sixth edition of VITIS, a proposal that combines wine, gastronomy, culture, and heritage in a privileged setting: the Plaça de Sant Bernat, next to the Royal Monastery of Santes Creus. The event will bring together eleven wineries and six catering and agri-food establishments linked to the municipality, which will offer visitors the opportunity to discover and taste local products at the Tasting Fair.

The other day I went into a shopping mall and I was stunned to see the price of a lipstick. Almost fifteen euros! At what point did we normalize it costing so much? I immediately remembered the first time I went to a supermarket that everyone knows today and that, more than twenty years ago, burst onto the scene with force. I left with two carts filled to the top and a bill of 16,000 pesetas, about 96 euros. Two carts! Today, with 100 euros, you barely fill half of one.

There was a time when you didn't have to book an appointment when you went to the hairdresser's. You would walk in, ask who was last, and wait patiently for your turn. It was the late eighties and I was a boy leafing through El Mundo Deportivo –the alternatives were a motoring magazine and Interviú, the communicative menu of the era in male establishments in the sector– while listening to the conversations between the regulars and the hairdresser, who was getting on with his work. Work that, according to one of the customers waiting for his turn, was going slowly, while the owner, working the scissors, maintained it was not. “You won't start cutting my hair at that time.” “Yes, I will!” The solution: betting a dinner... at Sol Ric.

Intense rains and weather alerts have become an uncomfortable reminder of a climate that no longer responds to the patterns we once knew. Tourism, an economic engine for much of the Camp de Tarragona, often depends on a landscape associated with sun and good weather, but it will also have to face the effects of this new reality. Perhaps the challenge is not only to continue attracting visitors, but also to rethink a territorial model capable of adapting to increasingly extreme weather phenomena.

On both sides of the Algars River, in a landscape of majestic geography, between the Terra Alta and the Matarranya, the winemaker Pol Sannicolàs Grima is recovering old vineyards in Arnes and making wine from them. “I feel responsible; everything you do in a rural environment has a greater impact and relevance than in the city. You are aware that you are part of the landscape and you also realize that you are insignificant. I don’t make wine so that someone remembers me, but to protect a territory and a culture,” he reflects out loud. He has a very close bond with the landscape and especially with those who inhabit it: “We are the only region that continues to lose population in the Terres de l’Ebre, and we want to reverse that statistic. I am from Cornellà de Llobregat, but some time ago I decided to return to my roots. My great-grandmother was born here.”

The urban growth of the Camp de Tarragona region clashes with the restrictions imposed by its proximity to the chemical industry and, for the first time, the mayors and representatives of eight of the most important municipalities in the territory have raised their voices. In an unprecedented act, the mayors of Vila-seca, Tarragona, Constantí, la Canonja, la Pobla de Mafumet, el Morell, Vilallonga del Camp, and the first deputy mayor of Salou appeared on October 5th to present the Manifesto for risk management compatible with the future of the Camp de Tarragona. The document acknowledges that "the protection of people must always be the priority" but they demand that it must be compatible "with the daily lives of the residents, the development of the municipalities, and the continuity of a strategic industrial activity".

In Tortosa, everything looks towards the river: the cathedral, the episcopal palace, some houses, the bridges... Well, everything except the slaughterhouse. The building, designed by Pau Monguió –still quite unknown and undervalued today– has its facade and main entrance facing the current Felip Pedrell promenade, with the Suda castle in front. As if, in a city built facing the Ebro, the slaughterhouse had decided to look the other way.

While current events are marked by the housing crisis, an auction platform has brought a historic three-story building in the old town of Valls to the market with a starting price of 1 euro. For less than what a loaf of bread or a latte costs, Escrapalia is offering a 368-square-meter property with a garage and attic in the capital of the Alt Camp region. However, to live in it, a comprehensive renovation is required.

I am interviewing the owner of the Vinyes Domènech winery (DO Montsant), Joan Ignasi Domènech (el Masnou, 1951), on a harvest day in the early morning hours. In addition to being immersed in work, these are also the September days in which he has organized the first Garnatxa Week, which has led him to contact nearly two hundred restaurants and wine shops throughout the country so that customers who drink a glass of garnatxa wine can participate in a contest whose prize is to visit the winery, enjoy tastings, and take part in contemplative activities. It is an activity that the Domènech family has invented, and they want it to last every year around September 18th. The winery produces a volume of 70,000 to 110,000 bottles depending on the vintage, and they export 20% to 30% of them to about fourteen countries. In 2024, Vinyes Domènech celebrated the twenty years of its first wine.

In October 2015, agents from the Civil Guard's economic crimes unit entered Tarragona City Hall to seize the hiring files of the Municipal Institute of Social Services during the years 2011 and 2012. The Civil Guard, which conducted searches in various municipal offices that day, was acting on orders from the Tarragona Court of Instruction number 1, which was investigating possible irregularities following a complaint filed by the CUP in 2013. Thirteen years after that complaint, the trial is arriving, which involves a heavyweight of the PSC: the then-socialist mayor Josep Fèlix Ballesteros. The Public Prosecutor's Office is requesting five years and eight months in prison for him. The PSC is accused of being a civilly liable party for profit and has already had to pay a bail of 276,157 euros. In total, there are nine people accused in this case of the crimes of prevarication, embezzlement of public funds, fraud, and document forgery, among others. And also five other people accused of being civilly liable parties for profit, in addition to the PSC. Ballesteros' lawyer, David Rocamora, explains to ARA that they are eager for the trial to be held in order to be able to prove the former mayor's innocence.

The history of spas is closely linked to the use of medicinal waters and the evolution of ancient bathing spaces into new centers for health, rest, and summer holidays. They were also a new economic activity and a true industry, which knew how to turn the properties of the waters into a business linked both to the stay of the bathers and to the commercialization of their products. Some establishments even went as far as bottling their waters to market them. A part of these establishments had their origin in springs known for centuries, while others were born as a result of the expansion of the spa culture that, during the second half of the 19th century, spread throughout Europe.

Born in Tarragona in 1969, Enric Aguilar Anfrons has been linked to the Rovira i Virgili University since its creation. He is a climatologist by profession and has held a doctorate since 2000, with a thesis that studied climate change in Antarctica. A large part of his career has been linked to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a United Nations agency for weather, water, and climate. Aguilar is the director of the University Institute for Research on Sustainability, Climate Change and Energy Transition (IU-RESCAT).

The last article we published in the Ara Descobrim of the Camp de Tarragona supplement was dedicated to closing a series on the markets with the most tradition in the Camp and Terres de l’Ebre regions. With this September’s rentrée, I want to change things. We will go back to the origins!

Salou grew with tourism and, for decades, the train was one of its main gateways. Now, the old railway corridor is giving way to the TramCamp, in a territory that demands a public transport network on par with the growth of the Costa Daurada. A necessary commitment to mobility that, at the same time, makes a part of the railway landscape that for decades accompanied the transformation of the Camp de Tarragona coast disappear.

Last Tuesday afternoon, in Baix Penedès, as in other regions, we received two ES-Alert warnings advising that torrential rain was expected on Wednesday. But the warning did not come alone: it also arrived with restrictions. Educational and university activities, outdoor sports activities, and some services were suspended; it was recommended to avoid travel and to apply teleworking whenever possible.

“I tried to awaken the conscience of the attendees in the face of the delicate moment the wine world is experiencing by insisting on its cultural and social work, which is very great”. Andreu Ortiz is the second generation of Celler Nin Ortiz, in Porrera. He has been recognized as one of the hundred young talents of gastronomy 2026 by the Basque Culinary Center, alongside sommeliers like Cyril Vermeulen and Paula Cuenda and the chefs and cousins Martí and Marc Roca (El Celler de Can Roca). “I don't receive it as a burden, it motivates me, it makes me excited. I left the event with a great desire to work even better and to overcome challenges”, he reveals. He studied international relations, which have served him in the wine world to foresee and prepare scenarios, to negotiate and to learn from opposing opinions. He has memories as a child in the field: pruning, carrying stones, on the tractor. As a teenager, he needed to distance himself from it.

There are brands that vibrate in silence so strongly that they don't even need to speak. And there are others that shout and unfold neon signs and go unnoticed. The difference is not the message. It is the frequency they emit.

Reducing emissions, generating energy, and obtaining fertilizers, and above all, continuing to research. These are the three functions of the new biogas plant that the Director General of Agriculture and Livestock, Rosa Altisent, presented this Monday at the facilities of the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA) in Constantí (Tarragonès), Mas Bové. It is the first biogas plant in the entire State at a public research center, and this characteristic should foster knowledge about this energy generation system, which, although it has been used for a long time, has gained more interest in recent years, partly due to the price hikes caused by the war in the Middle East, one of the areas where the most fertilizers in the whole world are produced.

If it is true that he who has most needs least, Montserrat Domingo surpasses us all. One could say that with prayer, she has enough. She lives in an old stable of about 40 square meters, distributed over two floors. The dining table is full of cardstock and small pots of paint that she uses to reproduce the flowers and plants that surround her. She makes bookmarks with them and gives them away to visitors. The walls are covered with calendars from past years and books, especially on religion and icons, but also on artificial intelligence and nature. In one of them, dedicated to foxes, she even appears, where the authors explain that a lame fox used to approach the hermitage of Sant Joan del Codolar so that the hermit woman would give it food. "It was coming for a long time and it would stretch out right here. It was lame, but when someone came, it would run away. It's dead now," she recalls. She also has dozens of copies of Serra d'Or, the magazine published by the Abbey of Montserrat. The animals of the forest, the plants, the ancient trees, and prayer, especially prayer, are her life. "Prayer is what sustains me," she says.