“Catalan boys and girls have 30% of the opportunities they would have if they lived elsewhere in the State”. This is the complaint made by UE Olot, as the representative of Catalan non-professional clubs along with Nàstic, at the assembly of the Catalan Football Federation (FCF) and the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF). The team from Garrotxa has raised its voice to denounce the imbalance between the number of Catalan licenses and the places obtained by Catalan clubs in the semi-professional categories (Primera, Segunda, and Tercera Federación).

The journey is one of the foundational myths of literary history. Literally, it represents the adventure of leaving or returning home, and metaphorically, it encapsulates the full meaning of any form of inner experience involving personal movement or evolution.Odyssey from Homer to theUlysses by James Joyce. From Quixote From Cervantes to the adventures of Jules Verne. From Goethe's coming-of-age novels to Mark Twain's picaresque tales. From Moby Dick Melville's journey through the paradises of Aurora Bertrana...

Made from shortcrust pastry, shaped like a crescent moon, and filled with cream. That's the flaona, one of our Garrotxa desserts that, unlike the chicharrones cake or the aniseed roscón, has largely fallen into oblivion in recent decades. But now Lluís Riera, who has been preparing it every Friday at Cacau Pastisseria for the past 18 years, has set out to revive it. And he's doing it in style. "On the first Sunday of March, we will celebrate the first Aplec de la Flaona (Flaona Gathering). We will meet in the Plaça Major of Olot at 9 a.m. wearing barretinas (traditional Catalan caps), sashes, and seven-striped espadrilles. We will climb to the top of the Sant Francesc volcano accompanied by folk and traditional music. And at the top, we will eat flaones and drink a sip of ratafia.

The program for this Wednesday, January 28th, of the 3Cat contest Catch Me If You Can, presented by Llucià FerrerIt's now part of Catalan public television history. Contestant Albert Coromina, popularly known as "the beast," brown "From Olot," has been eliminated after 158 programs. An absolute record number, which has allowed him to accumulate up to 69,500 euros. Thematic, always with a smile from ear to ear and offering a significant dose of theater and sense of humor. Poisoned and, upon his elimination, he received applause from the entire team and a warm hug from Llucià Ferrer, with whom he has maintained a great rapport since the first day. "A very nice farewell, frankly. A stage that closes with emotion," acknowledged Albert Coromina on ARA just before the broadcast of the final program.

Garrochina chef Martina Puigvert is one of the great figures of the Catalan culinary sceneAt just 30 years old, he is already head chef of the highly renowned Les Cols de Olot restaurant, with two Michelin stars, founded by his parents, Manel Puigvert and Fina Puigdevall, in 1990. He has just published his first book, Living nature (NOW Books), in which, besides sharing some of her most treasured recipes, she skillfully conveys a genuine way of understanding life and cooking as two inseparable pillars linked to the land and nature. The book is essentially a guide to ten dishes and preparations, based on tradition but with a modern perspective, which, with an exquisite visual presentation, evokes and paints an authentic sensory journey through the volcanic landscape of La Garrotxa.

130 years ago, the Olot railway in Girona inaugurated the first section of the planned route to connect Girona with the capital of the Garrotxa region. This initial section ran between Salt and Amer. The line to Olot wasn't completed until 1911. The concession had been granted, by order of April 18, 1883, to Domènec Puigoriol Fabregat (Vilagrassa, 1834 - Girona, 1889), a man from Urgell, after a meeting was held on the railway. The concession passed from one promoter to another without the necessary capital being secured to make the project a reality. Puigoriol only appeared at the very beginning, during a bureaucratic process. The concession was transferred, in the same year, 1883, to the Compañía Española de Ferrocarriles Económicos (Spanish Company of Economic Railways), based in Barcelona and represented by Eduard Martínez Suñer.

The Mossos d'Esquadra are investigating a second rape of a minor during the Tura festival in Olot. The fifteen-year-old victim reported that on Saturday, September 6, a man sexually assaulted her as she walked home alone, around 3:00 a.m. Two hours earlier A first rape of another minor also occurred at the Olot festivities., in a secluded area away from the attractions. The first victim lived in a Generalitat (Catalan) Residential Center for Educational Action (CRAE), and the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) arrested a 23-year-old man this Monday as the alleged perpetrator of the rape, precisely the day the report of the second assault was formally filed. In this last case, no one has yet been arrested.

With more than a million followers on social media, half a million of them on Instagram alone, Olot native Aniol Güell (Olot, 1997) has become a great ambassador for Mexican cuisine in just three years. And not just for the Catalan public, but his success has been, in his own words, being "a Spaniard who makes videos of Mexican food for Mexicans." Specifically, his specialty is tacos and he is known by the nickname @tacotios. In 2022, she moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, to study the final year of her degree in physical activity and sports sciences at the Euses de Salt University. It was a way to "escape" and, at the same time, "find herself" after the premature death of her father when she was 18. "Leaving only makes you grow," she reflects. "Since Olot, I always thought that I wanted to be like the people who leave. I needed my purpose in life."

Today's recommendation is for lovers of gastronomy and architecture. It goes without saying that you have to stop by Les Cols at least once in your life. the fantastic Olot restaurant of the Puigvert-Puigdevall familyNow, the experience is the best if you can also afford to stay overnight at Les Cols Pavellons. Let's just say that. RCR Arquitectes is the Olot studio formed by the prodigious trio of Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta. These architects won the Pritzker Prize, the most important in their field. And it turns out that an example of their virtuosity is found in both the restaurant and the Pavilions.

In today's football where everything is bought with money, a unique club survives in La Garrotxa with a very strong policy on and off the pitch, based on sustainability and proximity. "It's a project that creates a sense of pride in belonging to this family, which transforms into a bond, unity, and performance." This is how Pedro del Campo, the first captain, describes what Olot means, a team characterized by having only players from the Catalan Countries. "This generates a much stronger sense of belonging. The new signings quickly get into the swing of things, get to know the club, its positioning, and we form a family. This connection translates into a good rapport on the pitch and into results," the player assures.

Olot is one of the fastest-growing municipalities in Catalonia. Especially after the pandemic, it adds nearly 1,000 people each year, most of them immigrants, representing an annual growth rate of 10% that brings the population close to 40,000. The trend for the next 15 years is one of sustained growth, according to Idescat (Spanish Institute of Statistics and Census), and this sharp increase in population has already set off alarm bells for the Olot City Council. The mayor, Agustí Arbós, of Junts (Junts), has repeatedly stated that he believes it is "unacceptable" to maintain this pace and be able to guarantee the quality of public services in the municipality.

Anna Callís Galceran (Olot, 1993) is one of the four finalists of the thirteenth edition of MasterChef, the popular RTVE cooking competition that has the chef Jordi Cruz, from ABaC in Barcelona, as one of the three members of the jury. The young Garrochina native's flair for the kitchen, combined with a natural gift for leadership and a great ability to adapt to adverse situations, key in a program of this nature, have taken her to the final phase of the competition. Next Monday we will find out if she is the winner.

Unaffected by culinary trends, the rise of creative avant-garde cuisine, the sophistication and foreign influences that have dominated the world of gastronomy in recent decades, the Can Guix restaurant in Olot has always remained faithful to its way of cooking. As if stuck in the past, nothing has changed in the last 45 years at this humble restaurant located in the heart of the capital of La Garrotxa, a few meters from the municipal market, where diners can enjoy a generous plate of capipota for just 4.50 euros, beans with torn butifarra for 4 euros, meatballs, rice in a casserole, or even noodles or stewed lentils for 3.50 euros. These were "previous" prices for a cuisine that, "unfortunately, is no longer found in almost any restaurant today," says Can Guix's owner and cook, Mercè Colomer. "We've never done anything to learn new culinary techniques, to modernize, or to adapt to trends because the people who come here want what we've done since day one: traditional Catalan dishes made the way we've always been, without innovation or sophistication," explains Mercè. "As long as I'm here, we won't do anything to change. If we changed, it wouldn't be Can Guix anymore," she concludes.

When my mother was widowed, she was 42. My brother and I, in a span of just two years, left the nest to go to university and never returned. From having a full life with others, in a short period of time, amidst many unexpected changes, she had to get used to living alone. She found ways to have plans she used to make with her family: traveling, going to the theater... Over time, she's formed a group of friends who share something in common: they're also widows, single or separated. That's why my eyes opened wide when another widow excitedly told me around Christmas about the initiative they'd just launched in Olot and had extended to the whole of La Garrotxa: a group that unites women like those who had found my mother with one clear goal: to never feel alone again.

Maria-Mercè Marçal's verse "another name for love, please" inspires the motto and activities of the new edition of the MOT literary festival, dedicated this time to love in all its forms, beyond inherited clichés and in a "present full of possibilities to love each other". "Who dares not to call new forms of sexual-affective relationships such as polyamory love?" asks the writer, philosopher and specialist in gender studies Montse Barderi, curator of this edition of the MOT, which has the motto "More names for love". "We would like everyone to feel challenged in this edition of the festival. Everyone has or has had love experiences, or lack of love experiences, and that is why this festival speaks to everyone," says Barderi.

The sentence of the trial for the jihadist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils on 17 August 2017, with even harsher sentences than the Prosecutor's Office had requested, will still not allow Catalan society to turn the page on a tragedy that had a profound impact on it, both for the brutality of the murders and their authorship (a group of young Catalans of Maghribi origin, apparently very integrated). The well-documented, precise and exhaustive ruling - it is 1,000 pages long - despite the fact that for the first time it establishes the total number of victims - which rises to more than 300 between the different scenarios (in addition to Barcelona and Cambrils, also Alcanar), describes them as "the great forgotten ones" and compensates some of them, has left many unsatisfied, who have already announced through their legal representatives that they will appeal the court's decision.

It was the night of December 31 when the medical director of the Hospital de Olot, Jaume Heredia, received an urgent call from those responsible for the center. They had detected that two professionals working in the covid unit had tested positive and that there were two non-covid patients with symptoms. "All the alarms went off: in six months we had had virtually no cases of transmission and, suddenly, two workers and two patients had been infected", Heredia recalls, who explains that they followed the protocol and made a screening throughout the hospital. The result: ten patients and three professionals infected, which increased the following days to seventeen patients and eleven workers.