Three fires have affected three different homes and left two dead tonight in Catalonia, within a few hours of each other. In Hospitalet de Llobregat, a 77-year-old man died in a fire that broke out last night in his home. Firefighters received the call at 9:55 p.m. The flames completely gutted a room on one of the apartments on the fifth floor of the building, located on Uva Street. It is a six-story building with a ground floor and four apartments per floor. As a result of the fire, eight other people required medical attention from the Emergency Medical System (SEM), and one of them was taken to Bellvitge Hospital in stable condition. Firefighters deployed eight crews—two light coordination and command vehicles, a ladder truck, and three water tankers—to the scene to extinguish the blaze. For its part, the SEM (Emergency Medical Service) activated seven units and a team of psychologists, and the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan Police) also deployed eight patrols. The municipal architect has carried out a structural assessment of the building, and the City Council's social services have taken charge of the care and relocation of those who have been unable to return to their homes. Shortly after 1:00 a.m., another fire gutted a fourth-floor apartment in a building in Constantí, Tarragona. When firefighters arrived, they found flames "fully engulfed" and "several residents trapped in windows and on the roof." The fire had already burned the entire fourth-floor apartment and had spread up the facade to the roof. During the firefighting efforts, firefighters found a 54-year-old man dead inside the damaged building. Firefighters also evacuated two people from the fifth floor and rescued two other residents from the penthouse terrace using a ladder truck. The rest had remained inside their homes. However, the building has not suffered any structural damage. A third fire affected another apartment, this time in Castelldefels. The fire, which started shortly after 3:00 a.m., engulfed the kitchen of a first-floor apartment, while the rest of the apartment was affected by the heat and smoke, which spread through the stairwell and eventually affected a second-floor apartment. The residents of the ground floor and the people on the second floor have been able to return home, while the Local Police and City Council Social Services have arranged for the temporary accommodation of the family from the damaged apartment, who will not be able to return until the cleanup is completed.

Last June, the project was unblocked, and this Thursday the financing agreement was signed, but the undergrounding of the Gran Via in Hospitalet de Llobregat, between the Rambla Marina and the Llobregat River, will not begin until early 2027. This represents a further delay of several months compared to the initial date. In June, it was announced that the works would begin in the second half of 2026. The new timeline was confirmed by the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, during the signing ceremony of the financing agreement. "We have to be prudent when we talk about timelines," he admitted just before explaining that "the undergrounding should physically begin in 2027 and should be completed in 2031." At the event, Illa and the Mayor of L'Hospitalet, David Quirós, signed the agreement that will secure the funding for the project. As agreed last JuneThe Catalan government has committed to advancing the nearly €40 million that corresponds to the L'Hospitalet City Council to undertake the works—in addition to its own €28.4 million contribution—which the council can later repay in the form of plots of land resulting from the undergrounding project. The remainder of the total €130 million cost of the project will be provided by the private property owners affected by the redevelopment, who are members of the Consortium for the Renovation of the Gran Via de Hospitalet. The mayor of L'Hospitalet thanked the Catalan government for its "commitment" to the residents and noted that the agreement to guarantee the funding is "a turning point" because it "provides a legal framework and a timeline for carrying out a project that the city has been waiting for for decades." "The Gran Via has been a boundary for far too long, and the undergrounding project is a unique opportunity to reconnect the neighborhoods and define the metropolitan heart of southern Barcelona," Quirós emphasized. For his part, Illa emphasized that, once the undergrounding works are completed, what he called "the metropolitan pentagon of prosperity" will be finished. This pentagon comprises Barcelona's airport and port, the Zona Franca industrial park, Fira de Barcelona trade fair center, and, finally, the BioCluster for Innovation and Health. The goal of the undergrounding project is to free up more land to develop the Biopol Gran Via Urban Master Plan, a "strategic" project for Catalonia, according to the authorities. This plan aims to connect both sides of this major traffic artery, transforming the area into one of the most important economic, research, and innovation hubs in southern Europe. Thus, covering this road will allow residents to walk to important healthcare centers such as Bellvitge University Hospital, the Catalan Institute of Oncology - Duran i Reynals Hospital, the Idibell research institute, and the University of Barcelona, ​​concentrating a whole ecosystem of companies and research and training centers within a short distance. The government estimates that, once operational, the biocluster, together with the port, airport, Free Trade Zone, and Fira, will create up to 50,000 jobs and generate over €7 billion in revenue.

Aside from those of world champion Argentina, the most iconic jerseys of the 2022 World Cup were those of the Danish national team; not because of the sporting achievements of the Nordic team, which was eliminated in the group stage, but because of the message their kits sought to convey. Hummel, the technical sponsor of the Danes, designed minimalist jerseys with its logo and the national team crest toned down, practically blurred, as a protest against "Qatar and its human rights record".

On Tuesday, a video of two girls running through the Florida neighborhood of Hospitalet de Llobregat sparked a storm of criticism online. In the footage, the young women allegedly recorded themselves doing running through the neighborhood of the Catalan city while discussing their perceptions. "This is the first episode of Running through the dangerous neighborhoods of Barcelona", they say once the exercise is over. Hundreds of internet users have called the video "classist" and "racist."

New joint device of the police forces to catch thieves and repeat offenders in Catalonia. The Mossos d'Esquadra, together with the urban guard, the local police and the Spanish police, They carried out a new Kanpai plan yesterday (this is how they have dubbed this type of operation) that allowed them to identify and arrest up to thirty people in just seven hours, with a total of 226 criminal records, and locate another four people under criminal investigation, with a total of 48 records.

Beyond the struggle with the strike by the minority union workers of Renfe and the operator over the transfer of Cercanías – which yesterday again caused Delays and cancellations of some trains–, Renfe has admitted that it is investigating and has already removed two workers from their responsibilities for alleged sabotage of the service that would have affected hundreds of passengers.

One day in February Rosario Bravo, 97 years old, discovered that she had been evicted by mistake and her flat had been emptied, the lock had been changed and an alarm had been installed. The court in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat that ordered the eviction made a mistake: it got the wrong floor. The neighbours who were meant to be evicted told Rosario, who was not in the flat, of the mistake and asked for her forgiveness. But despite the fact that the grandmother's family immediately contacted Finques Gual, the owner and administrator of the block, they have still not recovered the personal belongings that were taken by a removal company.