The night of Sant Joan has filled the streets with bonfires, music, and fireworks, leaving typical scenes from this traditional festival of the Catalan Countries. In the police report in Barcelona, the celebration went by "intensely, but relatively calmly," in the words of the third deputy mayor, Albert Batlle, who, accompanied by Mayor Jaume Collboni, went to the Bogatell breakwaters to explain the night's incidents and check that the city's beaches were clean and ready to welcome the earliest bathers.

Summer arrives and works proliferate (even more) in Barcelona. The City Council and the Generalitat have made the now-classic announcement of mobility disruptions for this summer and have specified that they plan to carry out some forty actions in the Catalan capital. These are 24 works and 18 paving operations that will directly affect the city's mobility. As every year, the administration tries to accumulate many of these tasks in the summer, specifically in August, precisely because it is the period of the year with fewer vehicles and, consequently, with fewer disturbances for residents and less impact.

Catalonia's railway network was briefly paralyzed on Tuesday on two occasions. While at midday trains in the Barcelona area were suspended for half an hour due to an incident at the Traffic Control Center (CCT) at Estació de França, Adif reported that traffic was interrupted again three hours later, at 3:30 PM, this time affecting all of Catalonia. The stoppages would be attributed to the IT management of the CCT by the company Siemens. Although both incidents were brief and technical teams were able to restore service a few minutes after publicly reporting the general breakdown, delays are expected to persist throughout the day. In response to these errors, both Adif and Rodalies have announced that they will initiate "legal action against Siemens".

L'Eixample and Ciutat Vella will be the two districts most affected by the visit of Pope Leo XIV this week in Barcelona. The pontiff will land this Tuesday at El Prat airport and an extraordinary security operation will begin, with up to 7,000 police officers. The Pope's passage will also involve closures that will last for days in some parts of the city and various impacts on transport.

I am writing these lines from a cafe, in Barcelona, the kind that has wifi and where they don't judge you if you write for a while (and they also don't want to serve you toast with alvoexpat). There's a driver who has left his car in a no-parking zone to quickly go buy something at L'Ametller. He didn't realize that by leaving it on that corner, he's blocking the bus, which is stuck in the middle of the road. The chaos is phenomenal. And lulled by the sound of horns, I hear, on El matí de Catalunya Ràdio, the mayor of Barcelona. He says he will eliminate the service of I am therefore calling on all users, especially tourists, who use them. There is very, very little time left and the rate of fines cannot be reduced! The service must continue to be a disaster until 2027. You must rent bikes and park them wherever you feel like it (or wherever your ramen is), as you have been doing. You must rent bikes and abandon them in the middle of the sidewalk, because you're too lazy to park them where they belong and you prefer to get a fine that you won't pay. You must hurry across pedestrian crossings, trying to run over any grandmother crossing with her walker. You must ring your bell, with pleased hysteria, in the Francesc Macià lane, when someone crosses your path with the noble and extravagant intention of catching a taxi from the stand and hasn't brought – to avoid stepping on your sacred path – Doraemon's gorrocòpter

"Oh, it's difficult to say when the works will begin. It's a complex, very important and strategic line for the country. The urban planning part has been done since 2010 and now we will have to start with studies and projects. It won't be tomorrow; these infrastructures cost". These are statements by the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, to Catalunya Ràdio about the macro-project that has been decisive to unblock the approval of the budgets: the orbital railway line. ERC wants to reactivate a plan that has been in a drawer for twenty years to give its "yes" to the accounts. In fact, the Republicans present it as a future bet for a network that this year has experienced an unprecedented crisis and is still trying to recover some semblance of normality.

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.

Fewer (polluting) cars and more bicycles. The Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) council has approved this Tuesday the new Metropolitan Urban Mobility Plan (PMMU) 2025-2030, which foresees restricting the passage of vehicles with a yellow sticker through low-emission zones (ZBE) within two years, in 2028. It is the second attempt to deploy this protection belt for air quality, after the pandemic frustrated the initial plan to extend the ban to the yellow sticker as early as 2022. The AMB's proposal is based on the Generalitat's current regulatory framework, which obliges cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants to limit this type of vehicle, first for cars and motorcycles and, later (in 2030), for heavy vehicles. However, the same entity admits that it does not have the capacity to force municipalities to apply the restrictions, nor to make use of the sanctioning regime.

"Public transport should be considered an essential service, just like education or healthcare." This is one of the maxims of Joan Carles Salmerón, the director of the Centre d'Estudis del Transport Tèrminus and one of the experts in mobility in Catalonia. This week he has presented the book The bus and coach in Catalonia, the first publication that collects the entire history of the sector. All of this, at a time when buses have taken over from Rodalies, which is still struggling to recover from the crisis opened in January, after the fatal accident in Gelida.

Change of direction in the process to modernize the more than 800 intercity bus lines in Catalonia. As ARA has learned, the Government is reportedly working to extend the concessions again with the same operators and thus maintain a system that has been running for more than two decades with expired contracts. The fact is that the current licenses – already extended in 2003 for another 25 years – expire very soon, in 2028, and everything indicates that the Department of Territory is now studying a new extension, which could last for another decade. Industry sources consider the technical agreement a done deal and point out that only political approval is needed, expected in the coming weeks.

This Sunday's gale caused 1,098 calls to the 112 emergency telephone number and 721 alerts to the Generalitat Firefighters between Saturday and Sunday evening. Most were concentrated in the Girona demarcation – the area most affected by the wind is Baix Empordà – but there were also some incidents in other locations. Eight people were also injured, none seriously, as a result of the wind.

Concluding a week of nationwide strikes, Teachers have blocked the Ronda de Dalt ring road at several points this morningShortly before 7:00 a.m., approximately 400 people blocked traffic in both directions in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, just before the La Trinitat interchange. Later, about 100 protesters blocked the same road near Vall d'Hebron Hospital, followed by another blockade on the B-20 highway near Finestrelles, in Esplu. This action is a response to the agreement the government reached two weeks ago with the CCOO and UGT unions, presented as a "national pact," but which did not receive the support of Ustec, the largest union in the education sector, or the Secondary School Teachers' Union, the largest union in secondary schools.

The Zurich Barcelona Marathon 2026 The race will take place on Sunday, March 15th, starting at 8:30 a.m. on Passeig de Gràcia, and will pass through several iconic locations in the city center. Now in its 47th edition, the event is expected to attract more than 30,000 runners and will cause significant disruptions to traffic and public transport, especially on Sunday morning.

Every day, three electric scooter riders are involved in an accident. According to data from the Catalan Traffic Service, accessed by ARA, of the 1,283 riders involved in accidents in 2025, 72 suffered serious injuries. The vast majority of accidents occur on urban roads, unlike on interurban roads, where they are rare. However, although Three drivers involved in accidents every day may seem like a very high number.In the last year, this figure has decreased significantly.

"Based on the above and as of the current date, this possibility cannot be definitively ruled out, pending the completion of the remaining information to be gathered." This is one of the most repeated phrases in the Civil Guard's initial report on the cause of the accident. from Adamuz, which on January 18 caused the death of 46 people and left more than 150 injuredThe document, to which ARA has had access, presents up to eight hypotheses that could have caused the tragic accident, and, for the moment, the police force explains that they do not have enough information to rule any of them out.

The Catalan government wants to move away from the model that has been used to build and manage large public infrastructure projects over the last 14 years. This model is characterized by two elements: the payment for road use by the administration, popularly known as shadow tolling, and the possibility for private companies to buy back part or all of the completed infrastructure from the administration. This "Copernican" shift, according to sources in the Department of Territory, Housing, and Ecological Transition, seeks to resolve the problems of underinvestment in infrastructure maintenance by linking investment, replacement, and maintenance. Therefore, as the head of the department, Silvia Paneque, announced on February 6, the Catalan government has launched a preliminary market consultation (CPM) to explore public works concessions with availability-based payments, meaning payment is based on the condition of the infrastructure rather than its usage. This will be done in three major areas of mobility: roads, electric vehicle charging, and Metro Line L9. All of this with a planned investment exceeding €1.2 billion. The expectation is to begin bidding this year.

Goods at the port of Barcelona have been blocked for fifteen days now. They won't start leaving for northern Europe until tomorrow., the day on which the famous Rubí tunnel is expected to open, although not for all hours of the day.

We have goods trapped—captive—in the swarm of blockages on the rail network. For those still being transported by road, there's no option to switch to rail, because there's neither the necessary capacity nor adequate service. And when they do decide to move by road, they encounter a major disruption on the country's main highway, the AP7 southbound, forcing them to scramble to find alternative routes where no one dares to confirm anything—not when, how, or where they'll arrive. Every day, drivers, planners, logistics managers, and operators must search for impossible solutions to deal with the mess they've found themselves in.

"Those of us on the bus that left Barcelona at 4:30 p.m. have just arrived in Gelida." The message arrives at 7:00 p.m.—two and a half hours later—in the WhatsApp group that was created years ago for Gelida residents to let each other know the route of the direct bus between Barcelona and Gelida. However, for the last ten days, the messages have completely changed, and the vast majority are tips and tricks to try to prevent a journey that normally takes about 40 minutes from stretching to nearly three hours.

Two train accidents with 46 deaths and rail chaos in Catalonia. These were the two issues that Transport Minister Óscar Puente was forced to address before the Senate on Thursday, at the urging of the People's Party. His appearance followed the expected script—the minister defended his handling of the situation—but gradually became increasingly heated. According to Puente, neither the Adamuz accident, which claimed 45 lives, nor the Gelida accident, which resulted in the death of a train driver, was related to the maintenance of the rail network carried out by Adif and his ministry. However, regarding the recent chaos on Catalan trains, the Transport Minister offered some self-criticism. "The commuter rail service is terrible, but we are working to correct it," the minister acknowledged in response to Junts senator Eduard Pujol, with whom he had a tense exchange after Pujol repeatedly called for his resignation. "I'm not deaf, you don't need to tell me to resign again," the minister retorted.