A new front is opening up for the Catalan education sector. Municipal music schools, with more than 50,000 students throughout Catalonia (15,000 more than 15 years ago) and under the management of city councils (in a system similar to nursery schools), are making yet another cry for help. With a new demand addressed to all parliamentary groups, the Catalan Association of Music Schools (ACEM) is calling on the Generalitat to substantially increase its budgetary allocation "for proper funding".

Summer is the season for concerts and festivals, and your mobile phone has become the tool that accompanies the entire process: before, during, and after each performance. It's not just about taking photos or recording vertical videos for social media of questionable quality. There's an ecosystem of applications specifically designed for music lovers that allow you to prepare for a concert, identify an unknown song, or keep a record of what you've seen and heard. Most are available as web applications and facilitate blocking the tracking codes included in apps for Android and iOS.

A song by Charles Aznavour plays, in a karaoke version, and a dozen passers-by stop at a corner of Gaudí Avenue, in Barcelona, to observe a scene of strange magnetism. Joan Quintanilla, 82 years old, lanky and with a soft voice, performs the song with a perfect balance between emotion and serenity, with measured gestures and reciting each verse in impeccable French and with the classic elegance of singers from other eras. A few steps away, absorbed and with a lost gaze, Conxi Ventura, 75 years old, dances alone to the rhythm of the music. When the song ends – her favorite, she says, from a repertoire she knows by heart – Conxi is the first to applaud. “I am her number one fan,” she proclaims.

The arrival of August is synonymous with major festivals, popular culture, and music throughout Catalonia. From Ascó to Roses, passing through Granollers, Alcarràs, or La Seu d’Urgell, the town councils are rolling out their musical posters these days before events like La Mercè or Santa Tecla will put the finishing touches in September to a summer full of festivals, cycles, and concerts that, in many cases, will extend into the autumn.

In 2005, four friends who shared an apartment in Barcelona decided to found an association named Freedonia to promote activities related to theater, music, art, and culture in general. Some time later, in 2009, they opened their own venue on Lleialtat street in El Raval, very close to the editorial office of l’ARA, which has become one of the music venues underground more active and resistant in the city, along with others such as the Meteoro hall, Diobar, or Heliogàbal in Gràcia. One of the founders was Coque Sánchez: “At that time, some venues we liked had to close and we wanted to create a space to share culture beyond the commercial logic of bars or nightclubs”. Currently, Coque manages this non-profit entity “with almost 10,000 active members” that schedules live music every weekend with a capacity for a hundred people. An increasingly exceptional project in the city, as obtaining a live music license is quite complicated: “Venues are closing and new ones are not opening. 30 years ago, there were about 400 live music licenses in the metropolitan area, and now we have 160. Barcelona wants to boast of being a culturally active city, but with the conveniences of a dormitory city; we must mediate to defend the rest of the neighbors, but also to promote nightlife culture, which is also a service to citizens and serves, among other things, to prevent young people from all ending up with depression”.

Saturday evening. The tenth anniversary of Mobofest is drawing to a close. Around 11:30 p.m., practically everyone was heading towards the main stage to accompany "the band of our lives," they said, the band "that changed everything for music in Mallorca and in Catalan," it was commented. Yesterday, more than ever, the audience couldn't miss it.

Years ago, Rubén Blades warned that the day would come when he would hang up his microphone and leave international stages. He had repeated it in interviews and concerts, without it altering his display of salsa mastery in the slightest. Until this Thursday, the promise became a reality. The Panamanian singer-songwriter offered his last dance before the Catalan public at Barcelona's Poble Espanyol, on a stage he knows well and from which he bid farewell forever. He does so at 78 years old, after more than half a century of career, with a surprisingly intact voice and a final demonstration of musical vigor at the Barts festival.

We want to recommend a range of activities for the coming days, such as the community life that is reviving in the Barcelona neighborhood of Vallcarca, summer activities at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) or discovering the interior of the monument to Columbus, among others.

The Dansàneu reaches its 35th edition, reaffirming itself as much more than a performing arts festival. From July 24 to August 2, the Valls d’Àneu will once again become a stage where music, dance, theater, literature, and thought dialogue with the monumental and natural heritage of the Pyrenees. True to over three decades of history, the festival champions a culture rooted in the territory but fully contemporary, capable of reinterpreting tradition and turning it into a driving force for creation, reflection, and cohesion.

This chronicler always hated that Sabina song that pretended to be based on real events, Pacto entre caballeros, in which the singer explained in the first person that one night some very young thugs robbed him. “Subvenciónanos un pico”, they told him, so they were heroin addicts, and they stole –it was still counted in pesetas, the year the song premiered– “diez quinientas” and “a fancy Omega watch”. It was a "good" brand, but I don't know what Shakira would think of it. The fact is that the guys recognized him: “You look like that Sabina guy who sings”. Then, they took him to a brothel for a party, got high with him, and returned his belongings at the end of the night.

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.

Manuel Arjona, one of the four founders of the dance, glam and electronic pop music groupLocomía, has died suddenly in Viladecans, the city where he had lived for a long time, at the age of 58. "Today Manuel's light has risen to heaven, but his memory lives on with us," assured Luis Font, a group mate, on Instagram, along with Xavier Font – his brother – and Gard Passchier.

Her real name is Eva Espejo Fajardo (Lleida, 1988), but she is building a brand with her artistic ingenuity. She calls herself Hippiiaa, a symbiosis of the hippie universe with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for her cultural dissemination goals on social networks (she has nearly 50,000 followers on Instagram and 30,000 more on TikTok). But, she also makes herself known as La Catalana Indígena, because she also wants to assert herself as a defender of two heritages, that of Catalan and that of nature simultaneously. An amalgamation of proposals that betray her multifaceted character.

The (Z)ona Ponts festival consolidates this summer its commitment to turning Ponts' heritage into a vibrant cultural stage with a second edition that, until September 4th, offers five music and performing arts proposals in emblematic spaces of the municipality. After the good reception of the first edition, launched following the millennium of Sant Pere, the festival reaffirms a small-format model that seeks to create artistic experiences linked to each place.

Usual presence at Catalan music festivals, Rufus Wainwright (Rhinebeck, New York, 1972) will perform on Sunday, June 28 at Blaumarí Music, the concert series born this year and taking place on a stage over the water at Port Vell in Barcelona. With a musical career ranging from pop to folk, through classical music and opera, the American musician will offer a concert with some of his best-known songs. All this after a few weeks ago he reprised his show at the Royal Albert Hall in London in tribute to Judy Garland, one of the great milestones of his career and which celebrated twenty years this year.

Cabró Rock, Canet Rock, Empordà Music Fest, Festiuet, Castanyada Rock. Beyond sharing scarce semantic creativity when it comes to naming, they are festivals with several points in common. Essentially two: they are the most crowded in the country in the Catalan language, some with audiences exceeding 40,000 spectators, and they coincide in having practically identical lineups. Most of the participating groups in these gatherings are the same. In fact, names as well-known as La Fúmiga, Buhos, Figa Flawas, and The Tyets, for example, in this 2026 will play in all of them, as if it were an itinerant tour that jumps from summer to summer. The fact is that Catalonia can finally boast of having its own mass scene, consolidated in the country's language. This implies, for example, having several bands that accumulate millions of online streams, also a collection of crowded meeting points, and a part of the industry that monopolizes the lucrative business of music in Catalan for all audiences. But as it could not be otherwise, whenever an official, harmless, and domesticated movement consolidates, a truly rich and exciting one comes along behind it.

Lydia Rodríguez has put an end to her time at Presuntos Implicadosafter 17 years as the group's vocalist. The singer, who joined the band in 2008 after Sole Giménez's departure, has announced through a statement on social media that she is leaving the music group due to "extreme control" over her physique, "mistreatment" to which she considers her bandmates complicit. In the statement, Rodríguez assures that what was projected on stage had nothing to do with what was lived behind the scenes.

Jep Morales Albert (Girona, 1972) has built a dream of reeds, tarpaulins and recycled materials that concentrates everything that makes him enjoy: cooking, music, art and contact with nature and people. La Carreta del Ter has been stopping for six years now behind the Bordils pavilion, in a "magical space in constant transformation" that, in the middle of the fields, offers tapas, burritos, paellas, good live music and extraordinary sunsets. "Here you find people of all ages and conditions, it's like Noah's ark (animals included) where everyone is welcome," explains Jep Morales.

From time to time, rain claims a spot as a headliner at Primavera Sound. It happened a couple of years ago during PJ Harvey's memorable concert and it happened again this Thursday evening, when the Fòrum venue was already full of a crowd ready to spread out among the different stages. The combination of rain and wind, with gusts of up to 80 km/h, conditioned the first day, and "for safety reasons" performances on the two main stages on the marine platform (where four concerts were cancelled) were temporarily suspended, and later on other stages. It was the decision taken diligently by the festival's management, and communicated in Catalan, Spanish, and English throughout the venue. The festival will announce on Monday the protocol for the return of Thursday tickets.

The Arbeca-based punk-folk band Pork Chop Boys has launched a crowdfunding campaign to bring a crowdfunding campaign to life, Trans(in)humància, a 190-kilometer itinerant cultural project. The band members will undertake this journey on foot in the fall, from their hometown to the Shepherds' School in Enviny (Pallars Sobirà), following ancient transhumance routes and performing concerts at each stage of the journey. For ten days, the group will walk accompanied by three horses and a donkey that will carry the necessary equipment for the route.