We are on the eve of a long May Day weekend that is shaping up to be typically spring-like, with instability and a lot of variability. Therefore, the saying will hold true: in May, every day a thunderclap. The influence of a small pool of cold air will facilitate the growth of powerful clouds that will bring irregular storms and showers to various regions, especially in the northern half of the country. Where they fall, some local flooding may occur, occasionally accompanied by hail or sleet. In fact, this Wednesday we have already had the first scattered showers or mud drizzles, with a variable or cloudy sky due to the passage of cloud bands and the presence of suspended dust. Temperatures have remained and will remain high for the dates, although they will tend to drop over the weekend.

The mayors Jaume Collboni and Sadiq Khan have shortened the kilometers –or miles– that separate the cities of Barcelona and London this Tuesday. In a meeting between the two in Madrid –where the plenary session of the Bloomberg CityLab 2026 was held–, both mayors exchanged praise for the transformation of their respective cities, and have agreed to share each other's experiences in aspects such as housing or the fight against climate change.

Line 4 of the metro will once again suffer a summer with works. The director of projects for the Department of Territory, Encarna Ramos, explained this Tuesday during the neighborhood council of the Dreta de l'Eixample that the Verdaguer station on the yellow line will be out of service for two months. As she detailed, it will not be possible to access the platform of this line from July 6th and for eight weeks. The works, however, will not force the interruption of the train service, which will run through the station, but without stopping.

A few days before the end of the month, this April has been exceptionally warm, and we will see if it has left us any heat records. But the weather will undergo changes in the coming days. Today the sky will be variable or overcast, with a risk of some drizzles or light rain accompanied by mud. In the morning they will be more likely, especially in parts of the coast and pre-coast, and in the afternoon more towards the southern face of the Pyrenees and western Pre-Pyrenees. From Thursday and throughout the long May Day weekend, we will be under the effects of a small pocket of cold air that will increase instability. Showers and thunderstorms will gain ground and strength, and will affect more regions, especially in the northern half.

We leave behind a weekend of typically spring weather, with mornings of generalized sunshine and afternoons of showers and thunderstorms in the northern half. A situation that will repeat in the coming days, but with some nuances. Today we wake up with a few drops in the interior that will move away, and from mid-morning the first showers will appear in the north of the country, which will intensify and affect various regions of the Pyrenees, Pre-Pyrenees, and the northern interior until dusk. On Tuesday, thin clouds will increase and afternoon showers will be less widespread. On Wednesday, the cloudiness will be even denser and the downpours could reach other regions. Temperatures will remain stable, with high maximums for the season that will approach 30 °C in Poniente and in the interior of the Ebro valley.

The weekend has begun with very pleasant weather in general, a situation that will continue in the coming days, with no significant changes in sight. Even so, the spring-like dynamic will be maintained, with sunny mornings and light clouds, and afternoons with cloudiness and storms in the northern half, which in some cases will move out of this area and affect more regions. Temperatures will rise and the atmosphere will be warmer, especially on Sunday and during the next week, with maximums that will again exceed 30 °C in Ponent and in the interior of the Ebro valley.

Just over a year remains until the next municipal elections, and in most municipalities, parties are already pulling strings to nominate their candidates and configure their lists. In the four Catalan capitals, a good portion of the candidates have already announced if they will run again, and new names entering the municipal dispute have also been revealed, but there are still unresolved unknowns.

It is said that a monument will be erected to Ildefons Cerdà, in Plaça Universitat, which is the place where the monument to Doctor Robert would be most fitting to return (because it is where it was located before the dictatorships). Cerdà would live better in Plaça Tetuan, with an absurd name but perfect confluence amidst his grids. Or in Plaça de les Glòries, his failed new Barcelona centrality, where they have now made a “park” that, as is customary in this “green” conscious city, only has 30% grass. And marking centralities cannot be done from planning artificiality, nor can well-being be imposed by decree, and therefore, Cerdà's genius always ends up failing somewhere. This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of his death, but also the centenary of Gaudí's, and in fact this coincidence coincides with my growing conviction that it would have been reckless to leave Cerdà alone.His contribution to the city is more than remarkable: hygiene, the foresight of the automobile and the train, the 45-degree cut of the chamfers, the scalability of the grid. And yet, I perfectly understand that the Barcelona council (which had to comply with Madrid's decision) would have wanted to opt for other proposals: that large expanse of uniform squares, between the demolished walls and the surrounding villages, ignored the layout of paths and rivers pre-existing for centuries and, when it did, it gave them the robotic name of Diagonal, Paral·lel or Meridiana. If we had left Barcelona in Cerdà's hands, we would basically be a correct and orderly city. More rational and rationalist than modern or modernist, indeed eliminating inequalities and exceptions, but at the evident price of foregoing exceptionalities. Everyone with their little garden inside, which in the end we haven't ended up having either: New York, like Cerdà, also names (so to speak) its streets with numbers and letters, but they, at least, have skyscrapers and a large central park. We, at most, have superblock concrete and large extensions of dog parks.

A weekend that will be marked by completely spring-like ingredients begins. Mornings will be calm overall, but in the afternoons, cloudiness will increase, bringing irregular showers and storms to the Pyrenees, Pre-Pyrenees, and nearby areas. In fact, these drizzles will gain extent and strength, and especially on Sunday, they may reach more areas in the northeast and north of Central Catalonia. Locally, there will be some downpours accompanied by hail or sleet, so caution will be necessary if we are in these areas on the weekend, especially if we have planned activities in high mountains. Temperatures will rise and the atmosphere will be warmer, especially on Sunday. All this after a Friday that has already given us many highs of 21 to 26 ºC and some minor drizzles in the Pyrenees.

The redundancy plan (ERE) proposed by the technology consultancy Capgemini in Spain could affect up to 130 employees in Barcelona, CCOO sources inform el ARA. As reported by ACN, the measure will affect around 8% of the workforce at the company's Barcelona office, which employs 1,603 people.

The geographer Oriol Nel·lo (Barcelona, 1957) has just made, along with the Madrid architect Agustín Hernández and with essential infographics by fellow geographer Joan López, one of the most relevant contributions in recent years to the eternal debate between Madrid and Barcelona. The book Barcelona/Madrid, per un diàleg crític –which for now can only be found in Italian, but which will soon be published in Catalan by the publisher Tirant lo Blanch– was presented a few days ago at a conference of the Metropolitan Strategic Plan (PEMB) and is a commission from the Federico II University of Naples.

Sant Jordi has once again overflowed Catalonia with the magic formula that never fails: books for all tastes —from the exquisite Nobel laureate Han Kang to young authors in love with success, such as Gil Pratsobrerroca, David Uclés and Inma Rubiales—, roses at prices ranging from 4 to 25 euros, and the contagious enthusiasm of millions of citizens who have taken to the streets ready to have a good time.

Temperatures have clearly dropped this Sant Jordi, with a markedly less warm atmosphere and most highs between 20 and 25 °C, far from the more than 30 °C reached in Ponent and the Ebro in recent days. A decrease that has been caused by the strengthening of cooler maritime wind from the east and north-east, which has been strongly felt on the coast, with gusts that have locally exceeded 50 km/h and waves between 1 and 2.5 meters high in some cases. The sun has dominated in most regions, but some afternoon showers have also repeated in the Pyrenees, in the Alt Maresme and the Montseny area, although less significant and extensive than in previous days. These spring showers will repeat on Friday and the weekend in mountainous areas, while in most of the country, sun and calm will continue to dominate. The atmosphere will become warmer again in the coming midday hours.

A hundred tourists arrived in Barcelona last Tuesday night on a date as significant as Sant Jordi. They went to the hotel they had booked, the Standbyme, next to La Boqueria Market, through the Booking platform. But the reservation did not appear anywhere. One of the receptionists at this central hotel in the Catalan capital, Josefina, explained in statements to Efe that on Tuesday, around 8 p.m., they lost access to their Booking profile, coinciding with the massive arrival of people supposedly with reservations to stay in their rooms. The affected parties speak of a digital scam.

After a week marked by afternoon downpours and storms with hail and sleet in some regions, this Sant Jordi the weather will not be clear. It will be a pleasant and quite sunny day in most of the country to enjoy the book and rose stalls outdoors, but there will be exceptions. In the morning, some drizzles may occur in the northeast and in the Ebro, and in the afternoon some irregular downpours and storms will be repeated in the Pyrenees and Pre-Pyrenees. All this with a clear drop in temperatures due to the entry of cooler northwesterly winds. A decrease that will be particularly noticeable in the interior and will make the heat much more contained in the middle of the day. All this after storms were repeated this Wednesday, especially in the Pyrenees and Pre-Pyrenees, in the northeast and in the Ebro, while a warm peak was experienced, with maximums of up to 31 or 32 °C in the west and in the interior of the Ebro, highlighting the 32.2 ºC reached in Vinebre (Ribera d'Ebre).

Afternoon storms have lost extent this Tuesday and have concentrated mainly in parts of the Pyrenees and Pre-Pyrenees, where some downpours with hail or sleet have recurred. The heavy hailstorm in Ribes de Freser (Ripollès) stands out, where the accumulated ice thickness has been significant, hindering mobility in the municipality and leaving a completely white landscape. Locally, 20 or 30 l/m² have been exceeded, with the more than 30 that fell in Gisclareny (Berguedà) being noteworthy, and showers will still fall in the north of the country until early evening. All this after the heavy downpours on Monday left an exceptional hailstorm for this time of year in Osona, with stones between 2 and 3 cm in diameter in some cases. Although not a size record, it is the earliest hailstorm with the largest amount of large stones recorded in Catalonia (you will find more details at the end of this information). This is not at all normal outside the usual hailstorm season, which runs from June to September.

Direct citizen service workers at Barcelona City Council have taken to the streets in another day of strike, which has caused basic social services, direct violence care, and libraries to operate at half capacity this Tuesday. The protesters' main grievance is the refusal to accept the new labor agreement that the council has signed with the CCOO, UGT, and CSIF unions, as they consider it to be a "loss of rights for the professionals" in this sector and, in turn, impacts "the quality of services and the rights of citizens." The council has downplayed the impact of the strike and indicated that at 10 a.m., only 3.8% of the 13,000 workers had joined the call.

The man that the Mossos d'Esquadra were looking for as the alleged perpetrator of the fatal stabbing of a man in the Sant Genís dels Agudells neighborhood, in the Horta-Guinardó district, has turned himself in to the police, as ARA has been able to learn. The crime took place on Saturday night, as part of a neighborhood party that ended with a fight between some of the attendees. One of them, according to the police's reconstruction of events and testimonies, went to his home and returned with a baseball bat and a bladed weapon.

Saying a simple "Hello" or "Goodbye" when you meet one of your neighbors in the stairwell or share an elevator. It may seem like a widespread custom, a majority gesture of cordiality, but now there is data to quantify it: in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, 63.8% of people greet each other frequently. Those who cross the greeting border and have a brief conversation frequently – at least ask "How are you?" – are 42.6% of neighbors. Lending oil, salt, and any other kind of favor is only done regularly by 16.1% of neighbors. And when we raise the level of trust, the number of neighbors who share personal problems (8.4%) or who visit each other (only 4.3%) decreases.

We have started the week with new showers and afternoon storms that have gained strength and extent. Yesterday they affected quite a few regions, especially in the Pyrenees, the Pre-Pyrenees, the northeast, other areas of the northern half and the Terres de l'Ebre. Some downpours were strong and left between 15 and 30 l/m² or more in the north of the country in a short time, with some hail and sleet. A typically spring situation with calm mornings and afternoon showers in some areas that will continue in the coming days, although the precipitation will clearly lose extent and will be concentrated more towards the Pyrenees and Pre-Pyrenees.