When I speak with Laura Ponts, digital content creator, gastronomic stylist, and cook, she is eating an ice cream by the pool in her village, in Ponts, where she says there are barely four other people and it's wonderful. She admits that if she had to name a beautiful place she has been to two or three times, she would choose Monells: “I love it! It's beautiful, day and night, to walk through those alleys, the cobblestones, the medieval center, the arcades… Taüll, despite being very different and being in the mountains, is also ideal, but my favorite place is Ponts”. In this town in La Noguera, which has around 2,000 inhabitants, you can walk along the banks of the river Segre, visit the castle of Sant Pere and enjoy the gastronomic offer. It has about thirty restaurants, it is a usual stop for gastronomic tourism on the Barcelona-Andorra route. “Although on winter afternoons everything is empty, for breakfast or lunch there is movement, especially at the roundabout where there are four restaurants. As they say, Ponts, a place to stop and eat”, she comments.When I lived in Ponts, when I couldn't afford to enjoy the town, friendships, and family, I didn't value it as much. I was used to always working – morning, afternoon, and weekends – at Cansaladeria Vilalta, the family business for four generations. It was many hours of hard work, making our own cured meats and cooking countless prepared dishes: “I didn't have much time. Instead, now I can have breakfast at the bar, sit on the terrace, talk with the neighbors and people passing by, those of us who have known each other all our lives.” The days I am in town, I take the opportunity to disconnect from the city, be in relax mode, with a quiet life: “I am aware that having free time is a luxury. Used to being almost 24 hours connected, I appreciate this rest, being able to stop, and having nothing specific to do.” Many friends from her group have moved to other cities, but she always looks for something to do, she likes each day to be different and to find new challenges. In the evenings, she takes the opportunity to do some sport, walk by the river, or go out for a drink. It is also the occasion to spend time with her mother, who from time to time asks her to visit her: “Yesterday we went to the market, to a friends' garden, where we cooked a ratatouille with the vegetables we had harvested, and then we had lunch together.” She says she loves the city, but she feels fortunate to be able to return to Ponts whenever she wants. “It’s only an hour and a half from Barcelona, and among many other things, I can be in a pool where there is almost total silence. Now I do like Ponts,” she admits.

Roger Casamajor finds it hard to choose the best summer night –“many can’t be explained”–, but there’s one from years ago that he’ll always remember very fondly. “Next year my band, Hysteriofunk, will be 30 years old. When we were 22 or 23 years old, the band's bassist decided he would get married in a hippy style in Ibiza, so we all went to the island from Andorra. When we arrived in Ibiza, it turned out that nothing had been set up at all, so we had to find a way to get everything we needed to have a good rave. We spent all our money on sound equipment, so we ended up sleeping in an abandoned house that was falling apart. The day after the wedding, we all woke up covered in fleas.”

The figure of Rodrigo Rato is the icon of a political and economic era. Rato's story is that of a meteoric rise to the pinnacle of political and economic power, from where he staged a long and agonizing fall that led him to the cells of Soto del Real prison. What has become of the man who in 2011 euphorically rang the bell for Bankia's stock market debut?

There was a time when Barça women's team competed in the Second Division or fought to stay in the First. Years when the great women's football team in Catalonia wore white and blue – Espanyol – and when the stars were not from Barça. Maribel Domínguez, known as Marigol, was Barça's first major international signing. The footballer, born in Mexico City in 1978, arrived in mid-2004-05 season as one of the best players in the world.

Heir to one of the most iconic pastry shops in her hometown, Anna Callís (Olot, 1994) – known on social media as Caliui – doesn't exactly have a low profile. Finalist of MasterChef, a journalist by training and a content creator by trade, acknowledges that the word that best defines her professional work for the past two years is influencer, although it "feels a bit like showoff and of cringe". In conversation with ARA, the first distinction he makes is between microinfluencers –“between 30 and 50,000 followers”, the space in which it moves since its first videos went viral– and macroinfluencers, like Maria Pombo, to give a reference example, who create “more general content, which is easier for everyone to like, but won't be loved very much by anyone,” she explains. “Theinfluencers we complement the word-of-mouth of a lifetime. We are the equivalent of your friend who recommends things to you – he adds –. Brands are increasingly betting on micro-influencersbecause, even though we have fewer followers, our target is quite more specific and faithful”.

Blanca Pujals became an editor through a brave decision. She had tired of her job as a lawyer and enrolled in a master's degree in editing, which was what she had always wanted to do as a child: live surrounded by books. From her master's final project, a project emerged that she presented to Viena publishing house, thus was born Petits Plaers, a collection of novellas, short books of high literary quality. One of the most special summer nights of her life was, precisely, sharing the reading of one of the collection's most emblematic books –Good morning, sadness, by Françoise Sagan– on board a boat in L'Escala. 

Gisela Pulido, world champion of kitesurfing, is very clear that the beaches of Sant Pere Pescador are her favorite place in Catalonia: “It's where I learned to do kitesurfing. Besides, I have many memories of being on vacation with my parents”. They used to go on weekends, long weekends, for Easter and in the summer, taking advantage of the fact that the tramuntana in winter, and the garbí and migjorn in summer were perfect for windsurfing, the sport her father practiced. “Used to the beach of Premià de Mar, which is where I'm from and where we lived, Sant Pere had nothing to do with it, it was another world”. Besides the wind, Premià has a more urban beach, with coarser sand, parked cars are visible, and to get there you had to cross the road first and then the train tracks. On the other hand, Sant Pere is an immense beach, the longest in the Gulf of Roses, it is wild, the sand is fine, there are dunes and the easternmost part is part of the Natural Park of the Aiguamolls de l'Empordà. Surely for this reason, even though more than 20 years have passed, it is practically the same as when Gisela was little.  They also went to other beaches like Pals and Empuriabrava, but Sant Pere marked it for what happened on June 24, 2003, her father's saint's day. Until then, Gisela had done windsurfing, surfing and bodyboarding, but kitesurfing was forbidden to her, it was too dangerous for a girl who weighed 30 kilos: “The more they told me no, the more I wanted to try it,” admits the athlete. She remembers that, taking advantage of the fact that the wind was barely blowing, she asked if she could take the equipment to try it in the water. It was the perfect excuse for Joan to say yes. Since then, she hasn't stopped until now, when she is a professional in this sport. She has been told that with only three attempts she managed to get out. A Rip Curl representative who was teaching a class also saw it, and became her first sponsor: “He gave us the card and said we could count on them for any equipment we needed.” Besides kitesurfing, Sant Pere Pescador is a special place for the memories he has with his family. They stayed at the Ballena Alegre campsite with a converted camper van. He loved not having a super-structured plan for what would happen each day and it was always perfect for the children to enjoy: he was with friends, in the pool, playing, eating ice cream and also on the beach where he spent endless hours in the water, diving with goggles, dedicated to looking for 1,000 stones and round pieces of glass, to expand his collection. He also keeps a special memory of breakfasts: “I used to eat toast with oil and salt, and milk with cocoa. I remember the taste of that bread as if I had tasted it a couple of days ago”.

There is a summer night that Aliou Diallo never misses: the last night of Salt's main festival. “After a whole day of concerts, at 4 in the morning, the correfoc arrives, led by the Diables d’en Pere Botero, and often some other invited group. The correfoc winds through the town and ends at the church, in the old quarter, with a hot chocolate and a foam party that coincides with sunrise. It is a magical night that we look forward to all year, a night that makes you want to bring people to discover its magic. On this night, the essence of Salt is very much alive,” explains Diallo, who participated in the Salt main festival for the first time when he was 15 years old, as an active member of the scout group, after arriving in Catalonia from the Republic of Guinea at the age of 13.

Anouk Hoffmann-Morin (Berlin, 1996) describes herself like this, laughing. “I’m an architect without a degree and an illustrator without training, but I do both things,” she explains. Hoffmann-Morin has completed a degree in Architecture at the University of Montreal and Philosophy at the University of Quebec. And, even though she doesn’t have the qualifying architect’s degree or formal training in the art world, this hasn’t stopped her from creating a comic book about architecture.

Josep Manel Busqueta (Sant Andreu de Llavaneres, 1972) was one of the CUP deputies who most opposed the investiture of Artur Mas in 2015, and the CUP's refusal to invest him led him to leave Parliament in compliance with the agreement with Junts pel Sí for the investiture. The other resigning deputy was Julià de Jòdar, who leaned towards voting in favor of Mas. The two departures sought to balance the different sectors of the CUP, amidst great internal tension.

For a few months in 2015, Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis and his comrade Alexis Tsipras challenged all the economic and political powers in Europe – the feared troika: the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank – when they resisted the austerity plan that Berlin and Brussels wanted to impose on Greece. As Greece's Finance Minister, Varoufakis leaked the content of the Eurogroup discussions and stood up to the men in black who landed in the Athens offices with the aim of brutally dismantling public healthcare and education and applying the austerity recipe, until the people in Greece said enough.

The Ebre Delta is the place where the artist and musician Yung Rajola has spent his summers his whole life. Since he was little, his parents have spent one or two weeks in the area, and in recent years they rented the same apartment in l'Ampolla that they ended up buying: “It inspires a lot of calm in me and I like that Lleida and the Terres de l'Ebre have in common that we are the great forgotten ones of Catalonia, we share a fight against centralism, we feel united”. For the artist, it is a special place for memories, he associates it with holidays, and for the tranquility it transmits to him: “The Delta is quality time and all that it entails, eating well, being there for you and the people you love, reading, doing sports, which I do practically every day, but there it is in another way, better”. He also likes that all kinds of people go there.  He has been living in Barcelona for ten years and lives with the duality of Lleida - Barcelona, two very different cities. “In Lleida I disconnect, but the place that really makes a difference, where I sleep wonderfully and have a total disconnection is the Delta,” he assures. He goes at least once a month, not always with his parents, sometimes with friends, and he goes all year round. What he has never had is a group, it hasn't been a summer destination where he used to meet up with friends again, nor has he stayed there for a long time. “And now when I go there I'm almost a guest,” he says, smiling. He is surprised that such a special place is still quite unknown, “it is very wild and free, you can go to the beaches with your dog, the food is spectacular, especially the rice dishes, and nowhere have I seen sunsets like the ones here”. In addition, it has the advantage that if you go by car you can reach all the beaches in the area quite well. In the Delta, which is where he composed many of the songs on his latest album, El món no està fet per als romàntics (Halley Records, 2026), he is resting and finding inspiration. Being calm and having free time allows him to focus on music and helps him compose songs. In Barcelona, he has many distractions and finds it harder: “I take advantage of the fact that I can't meet up with friends from Lleida or Barcelona who are writing to me to make plans.” It's also an opportunity to disconnect from screens, which, as a content creator, he finds complicated. Besides making music, he takes the opportunity to exercise, goes running with his mother and cycling with his father, walks along the cliffs, goes to the beach even if it's not swimming season, or goes bird watching: “I'm not an ornithology expert, but it's quite a spectacle when a flock of flamingos suddenly appears in front of you.”

One of the most special summer nights Pepa Plana remembers is the night before her first show as a clown. “Thirty years have passed and I still remember all the excitement of premiering a first adventure that we didn't know where it would lead us,” she says. That first show, De Pe a Pa, she premiered at the Fira de Tàrrega at the hands of Joan Busquets, a clown and theatre director who died of cancer in 2010 and whom Plana misses terribly. “He was a very good clown, and he was always very generous with me. He took me by the hand and made me walk as a clown. Oh, how I like to bring him down and have him appear in a conversation,” she exclaims. 

“Deep down I am Empordà, silent and calm,” assures business consultant Txell Costa. L’Empordanet is her vital landscape and her favorite place in Catalonia: “I remember the first time I heard of its existence, Antoni Bassas was interviewing Pasqual Maragall, who had a house around here.” Although it is a label, it is not an official county, it does not exist administratively, but it includes Rupià, Pals, Peratallada, Palau-sator, Monells, Ullastret, Púbol... It is the border between Gironès and Empordà, “the more inland Baix Empordà, small villages, made of stone, and a more relaxed way of life”. He has increasingly sought a quieter life. “What I need is this rhythm and these landscapes, the sunsets and the skies that are only found here,” he comments. Surely that's why it wasn't difficult for him at all to move there, and he believes it will take him quite a while to move to another area, if he ever leaves at all. Perhaps the most complicated change was moving from Barcelona to Girona, even though he felt very comfortable with a city so human-sized, where you can walk everywhere. He says this is the charm of the Empordanet, that Girona is still nearby, and it's easier for him to separate work from the rest. He loves the landscapes, the lifestyle, the connection with nature, that there are few cars and children can ride their bikes peacefully, or that when the village bar closes they stay for dinner together because they are friends. They live a village life and try to make the children put down roots there too. “Living here I have discovered that l’Empordanet is very much alive. The civic centres don't stop offering activities, and there are also many initiatives driven by the people who live there,” she explains. She loves that they haven't lost their essence nor are they blurred by the trends that globalize everything: “Here don't ask for a matcha or a flat white. You don't find avocados on all menus, there's no posing, it's wonderful, an oasis”. They have little treasures, like the quality of the food, which steal the hearts of everyone who visits. Perhaps in winter everything is a little quieter, since shops and restaurants have shorter opening hours or work fewer days. The seasons are also noticeable in the landscape, the colors change. They have gone from sunflowers to the time of the yellow flower, the course of the river is altered according to the irrigation of the fields... And in winter she has to leave earlier to remove the ice from the car window. Costa continues to go to the city to feed herself with ideas, and she can speed up without problems, but she states that her rhythm is that of the Empordanet. "It balances me, what I like most is the peace it gives me," she says, satisfied.

If there's one thing we have plenty of in Catalonia, it's rumba legends. Peret, El Pescaílla, Los Amaya, Rumba Tres... the list is extensive and of the highest quality. Time and persistence have proven right those who claim Catalan rumba as our musical and popular genre par excellence. Although today its most classic version may not be experiencing a period of particular momentum, there are a good handful of bands that have modernized it and brought it into their own territory, as is the case with Habla de Mí en Presente or Maruja Limón. It is clear that its footprint in our local iconography not only has a past, but also a present and a future. The singers, the palmeros, Spanish guitars, the fan (the name given to the characteristic guitar technique of rumba), concerts, gypsies, and the revelry: all of this is rumba. But, what about dancing? Well yes, rumba is also danced, and a lot. “You could say it's the most carefree, most festive flamenco style. It's what is danced at major festivals, weddings, and communions,” explains Ariadna Rojano, a professor of this discipline at the Bailongu school, in the Sagrada Família neighborhood of Barcelona.

One of the most special nights in the life of the writer Joan-Lluís Lluís –“senña comptar les més íntimes, esclar”–, was the summer of 1985 in Sardinia. “It was a totally unforeseen trip that ended in a slightly alcoholic night of fraternity,” he advances. Before going into explaining the story and understanding the state of his spirit, we must go back a few days before the trip, to the night of July 6th. “More than 100,000 people filled the Camp Nou for Lluís Llach’s concert. It is the biggest concert of song in Catalan, I think at that time it was a world record for a solo singer. There were spectators from all the Catalan Countries, I went from Perpignan by bus. It was a concert of colossal dimensions,” explains the writer, who adds: “To put it briefly, I entered the concert and I was a young Catalanist and when I left I was a young independentist”.

Is there a fever for becoming a civil servant? What drives private sector workers to seek employment in public administration? Esther Martín is a professor at the Adams academy, where she has been preparing candidates for public administration exams for 19 years. Recently, she has seen an increase in the number of people wanting to take these exams, driven mainly by a job market with low wages. "The current moment is ideal for taking the exams," says Martín, and she gives two reasons: on the one hand, "a generational change is expected due to retirements," as almost half of the people working in public administration are over 55 years old. On the other hand, the large number of positions offered by the Generalitat: "This year there is a public offer of 8,474 positions. That's a lot. And we anticipate a similar public offer for 2027".

In 1992, Eli Maragall scored the goal that gave the Spanish men's field hockey team the gold medal at the Barcelona Olympic Games. Thirty-four years later, her life has little to do with that moment of glory. "I am a totally normal person," she explains to ARA. She works at a travel agency that she founded herself in 2001 and which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. She designs trips and takes clients all over the world. And on the street, almost no one recognizes her.

The muralist Lily Brick has her heart divided between the power of the Montserrat mountain, her lands in Lleida, and the inspiration she found in Priorat. She explains that she had the privilege of painting an eight-meter-wide mural at the entrance of the Montserrat Art Museum. It was the first time she had been to the magical mountain: “I felt something very strong, the power of this mountain is indescribable. Now I understand why people from all over the world come, they feel attracted to it and return.” This spirituality and the sensation that time stood still accompanied her during the twenty days she was working there. Accustomed to painting outdoors and having the weather end up consuming everything, here she painted indoors reproductions of some of the most significant works in the collection. “They were days of great peace, I understood many things,” she assures. Another of the Lleida muralist's predilections are the regions of Lleida. After having painted in all of them, she has discovered that it is a territory with many contrasts. She likes the extreme yellows it has, and also when it is green, which looks like an infinite sea of fields with the fog rising first thing in the morning. She argues that just as through food you can discover the culture you visit, the land tastes of what happens there, and the landscape also explains who lives there: “The people of Lleida are plain like their orography. It has a lot of immensity, it is a soft land where you can walk, and the people from Lleida are like that, easy-going, cheerful, tempered”. She assures that fortunately the small towns still preserve their authenticity, and that every day she feels more in love, especially with Les Garrigues. He acknowledges that he increasingly likes the relationship between people and landscapes: “As time goes by, I feel more connected to the countryside and seek rooted people, who understand the land and come from it”. Surely this is why he fell so much in love with Priorat. After spending three months painting there, he was surprised to find them familiar, like a kind of cousins of the people from Lleida, “I had the feeling I had known them all my life,” he recalls. He explains that they are as they are, without artifice or layers, with hands dirty from working the land and the vineyard. Seeing and experiencing how wine is made made him love that area. Also special was the ritual he performed first and last thing in the day, going to the very top of La Figuera, the highest part of the region, known as the sentinel of Priorat: “There, under the pine trees, I saw that in a straight line, beyond the mountains and the windmills, you could see La Granadella, which is Lleida, where the Museum and Centre for the Culture of Oil of Catalonia is located”.

Summer is here, it's hot and the beaches are filling up, and what for many people may seem like an easy association of ideas – I'm hot, I'm going to the beach – isn't always so for everyone. “When you're a trans woman and you haven't had surgery, going to the beach can be difficult,” explains Tina Recio, the founder of Ivaginarium, an organization that for ten years has been accompanying trans women who want to undergo a vaginoplasty process free of charge. “Before the operation, many of us use items to hide the genitals we were born with, such as a skirt or a sarong, but it's still an exposure that can be very unbearable for us; you feel exposed in a place surrounded by naked or semi-naked people. Many trans women don't go to the beach until they've had surgery or completed their transition. While you're transitioning, it's also complicated: you might still be wearing a wig, hairpieces, or makeup, and all of that, at the beach, becomes uncomfortable,” says Recio.