Singer Xènia Casado is living this summer in expansion mode: “I’m going to live with my partner and it makes me very happy, it’s the first time I’m going to live with someone I love, the first time my fears of commitment are weaker than my desire to love,” she says. This summer, she assures, “it will be the start of many good things. This summer my musical career will take a turn, and in a few years I will be what Figa Flawas, The Tyets, Julieta or Mushka are now. I will be the new voice of Catalonia, I am already manifesting it”.

Stockard Channing has a long film, television, and theater career, but for most viewers she will always be Rizzo, the rebel from the musical "Grease". Although she has remained professionally active, on a personal level, she decided some time ago to live as isolated a life as possible. As she herself explained in an article recently published in the "Sunday Times", she has a "happily reclusive" existence following the death of her partner, producer Daniel Gilham in 2014. The couple was together for 25 years and now Channing lives a chosen solitude.

Nine years ago, Doctor Marimer Pérez, founder and director of the integral women's health and care center WoMer, went to Cerdanya for the first time. “The landscape surprised me, I had never seen it before," she explains. "For someone from Madrid like me, who comes from inland landscapes, these mountains surrounded by so much vegetation seem magical.” The gynecologist and obstetrician associates Cerdanya with many first times of pleasant experiences, which have since marked her life. That first visit coincided with the beginning of the relationship with his partner, Jorge. Back then, he also met Thor and Quercus, the Pyrenean mountain dogs, who have since passed away, but with whom he took countless walks and discovered many of the places he still visits, now with Coffee, who is of the same breed. “Besides, you can take dogs into most establishments here, which makes everything quite a bit easier,” he comments.They take advantage of the weekends to go there and, if they can, they also take advantage of long weekends, “always provided that the births allow it,” she points out, and recalls that more than once they have had to rush to Barcelona and leave everything as it was at home because there was a birth: “That happens, you can’t go too far, you never know when there might be an emergency. It’s the life of an obstetrician”. The green, the climate with the cool nights or sudden showers, the snow in winter, learning to ski or the fireplace, are some of the things she associates with Cerdanya and likes so much. She is also enchanted by the smell of nature and the silence. She assures that coming from a city like Barcelona, the change is brutal, the pace drops suddenly. "It's a close disconnection, without being a remote place, and very real," she affirms. "Here, Coffee doesn't have to dodge cars or stop at traffic lights, and can walk freely." It is also a place that invites outdoor sports, the paths are conditioned, the routes well indicated and you can choose between various difficulty levels. "I cycle a lot. This not having to lock yourself up in places to follow an exercise routine seems wonderful to me. And with skiing I progress adequately, I have dared with some red slopes," she says satisfied.Now that he has been living in Catalonia for half his life, he is not so surprised, but at first he was struck by the fact that most Barcelonans vacationed in the same places, Cerdanya and Costa Brava. He says that in practice this means he meets a lot of patients at the supermarket in Puigcerdà, and admits that he finds it practical: “We have a very good relationship. We take advantage of these coincidences to meet up, each aisle becomes an improvised meeting space, it's fantastic. At the supermarket we meet to go out for dinner”.

Long Li Xue was clear that for his 25th birthday he wanted to have a big party, which he now remembers as one of the most memorable summer nights of his life. “I was particularly excited to celebrate my birthday because you only turn a quarter of a century once,” he explains. The influencer has his birthday on August 8th, and anyone whose birthday falls in the summer knows that friends are often unavailable or traveling. “In the summer it’s always a bit more difficult to coordinate dates, everyone has things going on, but this time we managed to have 100 people. It was nice to reconnect with friends from high school and university, from Girona and Barcelona, and bring them all together.” For the occasion, last summer, Long hired the Catalan trap group P.A.W.N. Gang to perform a concert at his home. “I even hired a Toi Toi [portable toilet service] to put in the garden. I didn’t know these things were so expensive, 300 euros for one night, wow!”, explains Long, who shared the party expenses with one of his best friends, Santi, who also celebrates his birthday on August 8th and with whom they have been having joint parties for years. The surprise expense of the party came with the freshly turned 25: the police showed up at the house to fine Long for the noise. “It was worth it, I’ve never paid a fine so happily,” he assures.    

A little over two years ago, the artist and illustrator Javi Royo has been living in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona: “I love living here, it is full of gems; it is undoubtedly my favorite place in Catalonia”. He settled in the neighborhood after living for almost twenty years in Gràcia, next to the Verdi cinemas. He recalls that when he told his friends he was moving to Sants, almost no one understood the change. “It’s strange that people from Gràcia, from one side of Diagonal, and from the other side of Ronda de Dalt, think there is a kind of precipice and they might fall into the void,” he says jokingly. He acknowledges that he is a fan of Gràcia, even though it is losing its neighborhood essence, but he is rediscovering Sants: “They are a kind of cousins, here there are also incredible squares, like Plaça d'Osca, with trees and bars around, and classic wineries are preserved, with their barrels and tapas”. For someone who travels as much as he does, the location is privileged, it is a fifteen-minute walk from Sants station and it takes less than half an hour to get to the airport. He also values the markets, both the Sants market and the Hostafrancs market, with excellent produce and very friendly people at the stalls. He advocates for us to consume in the markets and value them. “I am in love with Xevi's cheeses from Llet crua, the Cex charcuterie with Iberian vending machines every day of the year, a classic like Forn Baltà, the Catalan cuisine menus from Mson, the small plates from Tramendu Bar or the vermouth bar Las Locas,” he explains enthusiastically. He has an endless list of recommendations where culture is also very present with CaixaForum, the Zumzeig cinema, the Heartbreak Hotel theater or the Sala Taro multicultural space. The illustrator is particularly excited by what a taxi driver told him, that Plaça de Sants is where the N-340 ends, the longest national road in the country, which originates in Cadiz. He imagines an arm coming out of Barcelona and stretching until it reaches the Andalusian city with his fingertips. And something similar happens to him with Carrer del Consell de Cent, one of the city's green axes with priority for pedestrians: “It’s a delight for those of us who like to walk. It also starts from the Sants neighborhood and reaches Passeig de Sant Joan. This would be a slightly shorter arm than the one to Cadiz, but capable of tickling the city center”. All this he already finds extraordinary and he still finds a couple more advantages, Montjuïc and neighborhood movements: “It is a fairly organized neighborhood, where associativism and cooperativism have a considerable presence. And on top of that we have this magical mountain, which we often forget, but which is a real gift,” he adds.

Beyoncé and Jay Z together reached a peak of popularity that was difficult to surpass with Crazy in love, a 2003 song that on Spotify alone has accumulated almost 2 billion streams, more or less the same as Hey Ya!, by the duo OutKast, also from 2003. Another duo, Gnarls Barkley, spread the magic of Crazy around the world in 2006, and today it has a not insignificant 1.568 billion streams. Gnarls Barkley was an adventure of the New York producer Danger Mouse and the Atlanta singer CeeLo Green, each with their own career. The former had already produced Gorillaz albums and had shown boundless imagination in his own projects. CeeLo Green could boast a quite successful career, first with the hip-hop group Goodie Mob and then as a solo artist. But Crazy was a whole other story.

Finding restaurants where traditional recipes are still cooked is becoming a small odyssey in Mallorca. Just as has happened with other aspects of the island's heritage, mass tourism, globalization, and changes in consumption habits have been marginalizing a way of cooking and eating that for generations had been part of daily life. Today, in many cases, this gastronomy plays an almost testimonial role, both in bars and restaurants and in the homes of residents.

The best summer nights that Ramon Madaula remembers have always been on a porch. "Whenever I think of summer nights, I think of a porch. It's a space that allows you to have dinner, chat, play cards…", says the actor. Of all the porches that have been in his life, one of the ones he remembers most is that of a farmhouse they rented for a couple of summers in Ibiza, twenty years ago. "I remember those nights as some of the most beautiful of my life, with my wife, my daughters, and some of my daughters' friends. A very pleasant breeze passed through the porch of that house, we were almost alone on that side of the island, and at night you could hear the cicadas. The girls were at a very beautiful age, they were about 12 or 13 years old, you could already talk to them, we played cards until late and had many fun times together", Madaula recalls.

Ten and twenty years ago, Jean-Claude Juncker's interventions were commonplace in the European institutional landscape. Juncker, President of the European Commission (2014-2019) and, before that, the first president of the Eurogroup (2005) – Mr. Euro–, today occupies a liminal space: between the guardian of the essences of Europeanism and the alarm bell against internal and external threats to the EU.

Luthea Salom, despite being born in Barcelona, has not lived there since she was eighteen, and from the ages of two to eight, they emigrated to Canada. The singer and children's fashion designer for Lillies Dream, who returns here every year, for Christmas and in the summer, to be with family, admits that she has an emotional connection with the Catalan capital, and surely for this reason it is her favorite place in Catalonia: “It is small and welcoming, nothing like Manhattan, in New York, where I usually live. That place is like a jungle, more dangerous, always on alert, watching who approaches you”. She says that in Barcelona she is more relaxed and has the feeling of being on vacation, which she already is when she comes, but it has more to do with a way of feeling life here.

"A poem should always have birds in it," wrote the North American poet Mary Oliver in 1990. A lover of nature, and especially of birds, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1984 spent decades carefully observing how cardinal eggs break or how chicks chirp demanding food. In her book Devotions she explains how she waited for hours for the arrival of the water thrush. Today, however, birdwatching has become an activity that, far from being practiced only in solitude, is also experienced in community.In Catalonia, more and more women are approaching ornithology through organized groups, collective outings, or small learning networks where, in addition to identifying species, they find a way to share knowledge and build community outdoors."At first, you learn much faster when accompanied, because someone can guide you and make you see details that you would overlook on your own. But it's also important to look at it yourself in the guide, internalize it, and then put it into practice," explains Jaroa López Carrasco, a conservation biologist and technician at Paisatges Vius, where she works to protect endangered species.López, an ornithologist since she was thirteen, became fond of it thanks to a bird guide she had at home and her first outings to the Llobregat Delta with her uncle. But, once immersed in this world, she realized that most of her hobby companions were men. "It continues to be a field in which men predominate, that is evident, but I increasingly see more girls and women interested in this hobby," assures López.A historically masculinized hobby

It's quite curious. All of us, or almost all of us, know the name of Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente. On the other hand, we struggle to remember the names of researchers, scientific illustrators, or conservationists who also dedicated their lives to birds and nature. For a long time, the main obstacle has been invisibility. Precisely to combat this lack of role models, Lechuzas Pajareras was born in 2019, an organization that brings together women dedicated to the study of birds, research, conservation, and the dissemination of nature."In some associations, women make up nearly 60% of members, but this is not always reflected in decision-making spaces. Many times we are more present in administrative or support tasks, while positions of responsibility continue to be occupied mostly by men," explains Uca Díaz, spokesperson for the organization.What began as a group of twelve women is today a network of more than 350 members throughout the State. "Creating community is very important. One of the most beautiful things is to share experiences and hear other women say: «It has happened to me too». This allows us to feel accompanied and to talk without paternalism".

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The most special summer night of Araceli Segarra's life was also one of the most terrifying of her life. She was 20 years old and had three months of summer freedom, which she spent between Ireland and Kenya. In Ireland, she was working at a YMCA, and in Kenya, she went with some friends, with the aim of climbing Mount Kenya, the highest mountain in Africa after Kilimanjaro. The mountaineer remembers that experience as one of the most impactful: “We slept halfway up the wall and had a serious setback: our little stove fell out of our backpack, and then we couldn't melt snow. When we faced the return, we had been a day and a half without water. My companions wanted to go back to where we had slept the night before, which was closer, but there was no water, and I decided to go alone to base camp, where I would find water, even though I would have to walk a few more hours. We separated, and I spent all those hours walking alone at night through Kenya. For me, it was a transformative night, I faced many mental obstacles, and I feel it made me very strong. It was a very tough night, during which I was afraid: of not remembering the way, of someone coming and finding me alone... And at the same time, it was very beautiful. I remember arriving at base camp and throwing myself into the lake as if I were one of those leopards that drink water like crazy, without purifying the water or anything.” 

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"The real estate market is a ticking time bomb, and I want to bet against it." American director Adam McKay dramatized in the film The Big Short the bursting of the 2007 housing bubble around a key figure: Michael Burry, the investor who bet everything against the U.S. credit market and escaped the crisis with unprecedented gains. More than two decades after those warnings, Burry has chosen a new target: artificial intelligence.

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The curator and paradisdesigner Oscar Guayabero discovered Baix Gaià when visiting friends who had a house in the area. After some time, they did the same, first in La Nou de Gaià, where they were renting, and later, when it started to be difficult to find an apartment in Barcelona, they decided to buy La Montornesa, in La Pobla de Montornès, the neighboring town, “an old village house where we live and are restoring”. It is a studio and a workshop where his partner and he undertake projects, and it is also a meeting place to share knowledge and learning. The idea is that, in addition to living there, it will eventually become a space for courses, workshops, and exhibitions. When everyone was stopped by covid, they began the rehabilitation.He explains that he doesn't have the opportunity to miss Barcelona because he doesn't stop living it, he goes there twice a week and his work is very related to the city. What enchants him about Baix Gaià is that it has a Mediterranean flavor with the dry wall, the dry stone, the carob trees, the olive trees and the vineyards. "It's a fantastic place, a kind of Mallorca for the poor. It has its shortcomings and difficulties but it has a very humanized landscape," he states. They are twelve minutes by car from the beach, which they rarely visit in the summer, except for the late afternoon or at dusk when the crowds leave. The rest of the year they enjoy it a lot. For Guayabero, what's special about this area is that the villages are relatively close and if you move away from the coast, everything is immediately very peaceful. There are villages like his that are not excessively typical or photogenic, and there is still real village life: “The neighbor goes out with the tractor, life happens at the bar… There are cuter places, which although they are starting to become 'Empordà-like' with concerts and painting exhibitions, are nothing like this; here the Catalan bourgeoisie doesn't set foot”.  “I consider myself an economic refugee, neo-ruralists who have had the luck to be able to come and live here,” comments Guayabero. With other "pixapins" like him, he says, who have arrived mainly from Barcelona but also from other parts of the country, they have organized themselves to form an energy community, working with the town hall to install solar panels and share energy. In parallel, they have created a consumer cooperative to buy directly from farmers in the area, and for the rest of the products they make joint purchases. They have also set up a chat where they share cars to move around the villages or get to Barcelona, because depending on the train is a drama. “We do a bit of bubbling, especially with the energy and cultural side. We organize parties, snacks, vermouths, where I usually play music. It’s easier to organize things here,” he assures. And he points out that by leaving Barcelona, you realize that many things happen outside the capital, difficult to see or hear them when you live there, because the city generates a lot of noise on its own.

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When Bàrbara Mestanza was a teenager, she was "obsessed with her period". "I was fifteen and still hadn't gotten it. I remember changing and the other girls looking at me strangely, I had no breasts, no pubic hair, nothing. I had been going to the doctor for two years to see if there was any problem, and they always said the same thing, it will come. Meanwhile, I prayed every night to wake up the next day and have grown breasts".

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His departure from active politics was not agreed upon, but rather forced. Alberto Casero (Trujillo, 1978), former PP deputy, left his seat in Congress on March 3, 2023, after being prosecuted for the crimes of prevarication and embezzlement for five contracts awarded in 2017 and 2018 when he was the mayor of the Extremaduran town where he was born. In exchange for not going to trial, he ended up accepting one year and nine months in prison, six years of disqualification, and an indemnity of 70,000 euros. This put an end to a long political career, in which his name will surely be remembered for a mistake: the vote in favor of the labor reform of the then second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, which allowed her to move forward with the rule in 2022. "I was devastated, crushed. I will always be the one who made the vote," he tells ARA.

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The parents of the writer Sílvia Soler were in love with the landscape of La Garrotxa. They lived in Olot for six years and, although Sílvia was born in Figueres, she lived there until she was three years old, in Olot. Since then, she has returned every summer of her life. She spends her summers in the volcanic area, between Olot and Santa Pau, and she is clear that this is her favorite place in Catalonia. He finds the landscape beautiful, but what makes it truly special is the sentimental value it holds: “We are the fourth generation that goes there quite steadily. Some years someone is missing, but the seven or eight families that coincide, who are friends from adolescence, try to maintain continuity”. When the children were little they stayed there for the whole month of vacation, and for a good while now they spend about fifteen days there, which everyone preserves in order to meet up. Families have been passing down that these days in La Garrotxa are sacred: “The rest of the year we see each other, but living together is different. The older children continue to go there, even if they work, they spend a couple of days there”. La Fageda is also special for Sílvia because it reminds her of her mother, who was a poet. When she was little and they walked in the area, she would recite verses by Maragall to them, which they all knew by heart. She remembers her parents loving La Garrotxa, which in difficult times has become a space of peace. When I was little, the volcanic area was a lost corner of the world, Olot was less connected and rural and mountain tourism was not so fashionable: “My friends used to go to the Costa Brava or the Daurada. Now many more people spend their summers in this area, but it is still quite peaceful”. Compared to other coastal destinations, this landscape has not changed much, “it belongs to the natural park, it has been wonderfully preserved”. She appreciates the beauty of the landscape, the Fageda, the Croscat… and acknowledges that even though she doesn't do much hiking or mountain excursions, she has spent all summers in a privileged place for this type of activity. “What I do is family life, being with my nephews, whom I don't see so often during the year, and with friends, and enjoying them all. I also take the opportunity to rest and read,” she explains.Soler considers that there are two types of people, those who always vacation in the same place and those who choose the destination. Although since she organizes her holidays in her own way she always keeps a few days to visit other destinations, she finds that she is privileged for "this feeling that the landscape is very yours and that when you return the time is relativized".

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“Some parents still distrust comics because they consider them just a distraction. They see them as simple entertainment with no cultural value. For them, what their son or daughter should read is a book with only letters. Period. This prejudice must be overcome. In other countries, like France, there is a totally different view and comics are a highly valued and prestigious genre,” argues Júlia Rubau, who won the Carnet Jove de Còmic 2024 award with the adventure album The Mystery of the Pink Geode (Astronave), whose Spanish translation was released this summer. Usually, the opposite happens, because even though a large part of the comic industry is concentrated in Barcelona, the publication of original comics in Catalan remains scarce. “I was very excited that it was published directly in Catalan, but it was thanks to the award. Right now, it's not possible to make a living from comics in Catalan. I believe that, among other things, we need to improve the promotion of works by doing more presentations throughout Catalonia and not just in Barcelona,” proposes the author.

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"When I leave there, my political career has been scorched," comments Manel Prat about his time as director general of the police. From 2011 to 2014, he held this position, at a time he admits was "socially turbulent," but "not as much" as that of his successors with the arrival of the Catalan independence process (Procés). Prat arrived young at the Generalitat, as head of institutional relations for the Department of Health in 2002 and later as chief of staff for Felip Puig, who, when he was Minister of the Interior, trusted him with one of the Government's most delicate portfolios, that of directing the Mossos (Catalan police). "You know where you're putting yourself and you do it with the utmost dignity," he explains.

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Pere Puigdomènech has more than one favorite place: he hesitates between his home in the Sarrià neighborhood of Barcelona or the laboratory at the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG), on the UAB campus. He assures that he likes his job very much. But, in the end, neither one nor the other: he opts for Cerdanya. The first few times the physicist and emeritus professor of the CSIC went there with his family was because some friends invited them. They liked it so much that from then on they went there in the summers: first they rented an apartment and then they settled in what would be their second home: “That was more than forty years ago. The Cadí tunnel didn't exist and it took us almost three hours to get there via a relatively complicated road, but it was so nice there that it was worth it.” He recalls that they used to stop at a spa in Ribes to have lunch and then they would head for the Collada de Toses. Explain that the tunnel was a turning point that radically changed Cerdanya. Since access was made easier, many more people come; you no longer know everyone, nor do you see cows or so many flocks of sheep. Now everything is focused on building residences and meeting the needs of holidaymakers, and young people in the area have difficulty becoming independent: “At times it is saturated. I think there will eventually be a shortage of water and some services. In some places you can no longer go because the road is full, even though you move 200 meters away from the most touristy spots and it remains magnificent”. Of Cerdanya, he likes that it is a wide valley and at the same time a small elevated plain at 1,200 meters, which helps to stay cool, with a changing landscape: “I like the feeling of openness, you see the Cadí, Puigpedrós and Puigmal. You can also walk through truly magnificent surroundings and enjoy the wild flora and fauna, which thanks to hunting regulations is returning”. He says that he is wonderful in his apartment, and that he has a small garden and splendid views. In addition, he now arrives there in less than an hour and a half. He can stay there to work, and his children and grandchildren love it.When he is in Cerdanya, he takes the opportunity to cycle and walk, although less than he would like. "I'm approaching eighty, and the doctor advises me not to do anything silly," he says, laughing. He likes to go there to be with family and friends and to go on excursions. The apartment allows him to read and write, especially in August: "I am finishing a book, a reflection on the place that science occupies in today's society".

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