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.

L’Hospitalet de l’Infant will become from May 29 to 31 the epicenter of jazz in Catalonia with the celebration of the first edition of Hospi Jazz, a new festival promoted by the Department of Culture of the Vandellòs and l’Hospitalet de l’Infant City Council, which is born with the aim of consolidating itself as a reference cultural event on the Costa Daurada. For three days, this town will host concerts and activities mainly dedicated to classic jazz and dixieland, with the participation of prominent bands from the Catalan and Spanish jazz scene.

Tomorrow marks the start of the fifth edition of the Toca’m festival in Tortosa, which maintains its commitment to placing twelve pianos in the streets, distributed across different parts of the city. There will be a total of 28 venues, including new locations such as the Episcopal Palace, the Puríssima convent, the courtyard of the Despuig palace, and the Sant Joan advance posts. The festival will run until next Sunday. Toca’m also reinforces its territorial focus with activities in Flix on April 25th and in Cases d’Alcanar on July 4th.

In the last supplement of ARA Camp de Tarragona, last April, we published an interview with the harpist from Espluga de Francolí, Anna Amigó Vilalta, just two days before she participated in the semifinal of the World Harp Competition, in the Dutch town of Utrecht. Her proposal, very different from the rest of her thirteen competitors, convinced the jury and she became one of the three finalists. The next day she achieved second place in what is considered the world championship of the harp.

El Camp de Mart will be the venue on the last weekend of May for the 5th edition of the Teta Festival with the objective of reaffirming itself as much more than a festival: it is a city project, a space that has managed to grow, evolve and attract complicity through feminism, culture and celebration.

Once again, the Camp de Mart Festival arrives, with around twenty shows for all tastes and ages: musical proposals of large and small format, circus and dance in various locations in Tarragona, from June 26 to August 14. Luz Casal, Rodrigo Cuevas, Lila Downs, Yerai Cortés, Maika Makovski, or the company Mal Pelo, among others, are some of the highlighted names in a program made up of an opera, 14 concerts, 4 circus shows, and one dance show.

Music could not be missed, and even less so the piano that accompanied him for so many days to bid farewell to Dragomir Atanazov, a man who managed to escape the ugliness and sadness of living on the street and transformed himself when he played the black and white keys. Atanazov, elDrago, was born in 1972 in Bulgaria and died prematurely this April in Barcelona, no longer as a homeless person but in the home of a foster family. In an emotional ceremony at the workshop-store La Troballa, which Arrels Fundació has on Ample street in the Catalan capital, where he had spent so many hours working, six pianists wanted to pay tribute to the street pianist who played at the Hospital Clínic and Sant Pau and left more than one speechless.

Ramon Mirabet (Sant Feliu de Llobregat, 1984) is a musician, singer and producer. He presents Per sempre més (Columna), an autobiographical and musical book that transforms grief into a celebration of life.

Ramon comes from a family of artists. “My maternal grandfather went from town to town with a friend and recited poems. And it was like that for years until he arrived in Tarragona and in the audience he saw a girl (my grandmother) and they fell in love. They followed their passion, which was circus and variety theatre. She sang rancheras and did a number with puppies, and he was the presenter and imitated Cantinflas”.

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"Culture is alive to the extent that it is conflictive," wrote Manuel de Pedrolo in his diary. This idea is the starting point for the fifth edition of Perifèria Cultural, the cycle of music, land, and gastronomy that since 2021 has been traveling through the Catalan Countries, bringing artistic proposals outside the big commercial circuits to equally peripheral spaces: towns and corners of the country that are left out of tourist and cultural radars. For six months, from May 23 to November 15, the cycle will feature over 100 shows in forty-five municipalities.

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