When Laia Palau (Barcelona, 1979) stopped playing basketball in 2022 to start a new stage at Uni Girona, she bought herself a bicycle. For years, contracts had forbidden her from cycling to avoid injuries. She went into Decathlon and came out with “the horse,” as she calls the bicycle that today is an extension of herself and accompanies her everywhere, even to buy bread each morning. "When I start going to Fontajau every day, I think I'm taking a wonderful path – she explains as we cross the bridge over the Ter River. I cross the Devesa, I cross the river, I see the mountains, some amazing sunsets... I thought of all my people from Barcelona and said: 'You guys are losers!' Every day I thought: 'How lucky I am'.

The until now mayoral candidate of ERC in Girona, Marc Puigtió, has renounced this Thursday to be the republicans' candidate for the city. He renounces it one day after the party leadership opened an informational file on him following the leak of some audios in which he was heard projecting the disposal of the local leadership and the current councilors. Puigtió has justified the decision by "dignity and responsibility" and has acknowledged having made "a serious mistake," for which he assumes the consequences. Now, according to consulted sources from the republicans in Girona, the party will have to re-convene primaries to choose its candidate for mayor of the city. So far, however, they have not set a schedule.

Of all the surgical instruments on display at the pharmacy I am visiting today, the one that impacts me most is a saw. Doctors used it to amputate. Since there was no anesthesia (patients were often given a few drops of ether, and that was it!) operations had to be done as quickly as possible. The most prestigious surgeons were the fastest.This collection of surgical instruments – very varied: some curved ones stand out, such as scissors, which are clearly not hairdressing scissors – is one of the elements that most catches the eye in the pharmacy – now a museum – of the old Santa Caterina hospital, in the center of Girona. In baroque style, like the entire building, the pharmacy also preserves mortars, scales, and a large quantity of pots (vases and jars). The jars are empty, of course, but they say what they contained. One says "belladonna", a substance that dilates the pupils. Some high society women used it because they said it made them more beautiful.Walking through the pharmacy takes me on a journey to the 18th century, when epidemics like cholera, plague, smallpox, malaria... were frequent, and to the 19th century, when tuberculosis and respiratory diseases reigned. The pharmacy was also active throughout the 20th century, but the diseases are now more similar – in reality, almost the same – to those we know today, although new ones have appeared, even epidemics, like covid. The one that has never been absent, of course, is gastroenteritis, which those of us outside the medical field call a tummy ache.The pharmacy, formed by two spaces (the sales area and the back room, where the laboratory was), is the great treasure of this hospital. But there is more. For example, the magnolia courtyard, a place of peace that gives access to a good part of the dependencies of the old hospital, including the pharmacy itself. The walls are lined with sgraffiti, which are not from the era when the building was constructed, but later, from 1928. What a delight the courtyards of Girona are! And how beautiful when the Flower Time arrives. A third treasure: the chapel, essential to any hospital. If the doctors didn't arrive, God did the rest, even if it meant taking the patient to the other world. It is certainly a large temple. In this way, both the sick and the entire congregation of the neighborhood or the city could attend mass (the pharmacy also served the population). The chapel, desacralized, is today an auditorium named after Josep Irla, who presided over the Generalitat in exile for many years. It is the seat of the Generalitat of Catalonia in Girona. Given its dimensions, a few years ago one of the largest paintings in Catalonia was installed there: The Great Day of Girona, by Ramon Martí Alsina. It is about 5 meters by 10 meters.

Houses built or renovated with wood, earth, straw, or a wide variety of biological materials are proliferating in the Girona regions thanks to a unique ecosystem in Catalonia that brings together dissemination and training entities, architects, surveyors, and all kinds of sustainable construction professionals. It is a very well-connected network that helps, among many other things, to train self-builders, share experiences, resolve doubts, obtain labor, and find natural materials with a zero (or negative) carbon footprint.

Historically in Catalonia, masovers were peasant families who lived in a farmhouse that did not belong to them in exchange for working the land, feeding the livestock, and guarding the property. However, for some years now, a new form of masoveria adapted to modern times has emerged: masovers are responsible for rehabilitating and renovating a dilapidated farmhouse that is not their property and, in return, can live there for years without paying rent. This formula of mutual exchange allows families who do not have the necessary resources to fulfill their dream of living in the countryside, while at the same time preventing ancestral homes, often inherited, from deteriorating and a valuable architectural heritage from being lost. A true win-win. win-win in every way.

When four years ago I returned to work from Girona, after years covering political information in Madrid, I set out to understand the cycling boom that the city has experienced. One of the first people I spoke to was Anna Gibert Sau (Riudarenes, 1977), a Mossos d'Esquadra officer specialized in gender-based violence and co-founder of Girona Gravel Girls, a community made up exclusively of women that now exceeds 430 members.

Ten days after leaving Girona's municipal government, Junts has made a significant announcement for the upcoming municipal elections in the city. Alongside Gemma Geis, who will repeat as the head of the list, Carles Puigdemont's party has confirmed the incorporation of Carles Ribas as number two. A former member of Convergència and a councilor during Marta Madrenas's term, Ribas ran four years ago with his own brand, ARA Girona, but narrowly missed entering City Hall after obtaining 1,579 votes (4.6%). These were insufficient to surpass the 5% threshold to obtain a councilor but were key to understanding that Junts lost half of its votes in the last municipal elections. Ribas is currently part of the Partit Nacionalista de Catalunya (PNC), founded by Marta Pascual, and will run in the city in coalition with Junts x Girona.

Disney has landed in Girona with a team of 500 people to shoot the live-action version – in English, live action– from the film Tangled, his adaptation of the Rapunzel tale. It is a remake with real action from the original animated film, which will be shot this July in the city and is expected to premiere from 2027.

After Franco's death, social movements moved intensely to the streets. During the first semester of 1976, in Girona, unauthorized strikes and demonstrations were seen, which led to detentions and fines by the governmental authority. Those that, during the month of March, were led by construction workers, and the so-called March of Freedom, organized peacefully in the first week of July to claim basic freedoms and the Statute of Autonomy, were especially repressed.

A bag of salad, some cookies, cat food, or the plastic label from a water bottle. It's hard to find a supermarket without some kind of flexible packaging. They are present, on average, in half of the products, even up to 80%. But behind these wrappers lies an industry practically invisible to the consumer, yet essential for products to be promoted on shelves. From Riudellots de la Selva, in the urban area of Girona, Comexi has been developing the technology for over seventy years that allows for the printing and transformation of this type of packaging, a global market where it competes with some of the world's leading manufacturers.

After 30 years living and working in New York, the artist Lluís Lleó (Barcelona, 1961) has decided to settle in Empordà. In Serra de Daró, between Montgrí Castle and the Iberian settlement of Ullastret, he has his studio, which occupies half of a large, open, and spacious industrial warehouse with a very high ceiling, from where he continues to explore new lines of creation, on the hybrid border between painting, sculpture, and installation. With one foot in the Empordà plain, but always with an open gaze to the world, Lleó boasts a first-class international career. While working with gallerists and curators from Mexico and Venice, this July he has just inaugurated at the AWL gallery in GironaVeure amb les mans (Seeing with hands), an exhibition of very powerful pieces, which are a very vivid reflection of his current moment of maturity.

Ten months before the next municipal elections, the pro-independence tripartite that governed Girona since 2023 has come to an end. After a harsh article published on Sunday, in which the deputy mayor and candidate for re-election for Junts, Gemma Geis, had already anticipated that her "patience" had run out, the party of Carles Puigdemont has made the decision to leave the executive and move to the opposition. Geis announced this Tuesday morning at a press conference, accompanied by the party's six councilors. "Our degree of demand is very high and Girona deserves more," she stated.

He assures that he felt no pain while receiving violent baton blows all over his body, nor when the Civil Guard agents threw him to the ground and dragged him a few meters, nor when they deliberately stepped on him with their boots, nor when, with no strength to get up, he turned pale and suffocated. Josep Maria Nadal, former rector of the University of Girona, professor and catedrático of Catalan philology, explains that he felt the pain just as the Civil Guards were leaving the polling station in Aiguaviva shouting ¡Viva España! ” He still has marks on his body from October 1st, but it is not the physical pain he suffered that hurts him the most, but the moral damage caused by the voices that deny or justify the brutal police charges of that day, such as that of the writer Javier Cercas, former professor at the UdG.

The dampness that seeped through the walls and the darkness that filled the narrow corridors and rooms of the air-raid shelter in the Jardins de la Infància in Girona were forever etched into the memory of the citizens who hid there when planes flew over and bombed the city during the Civil War. On days of inclement heat waves, visiting this basement, reconverted into a Democratic Memory Space of the Girona History Museum, allows one to learn how the people of Girona protected themselves against aerial attacks and, at the same time, enjoy the much-desired climatic comfort on days of suffocating temperatures.

Julia Aceituno first set foot in Girona in 1990. She had grown up in Talanga, a small town of 40,000 inhabitants an hour from the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, and at the time she was 36 years old and had three children. "I came for a holiday during the time of Felipe González," she recalls. At that time in Girona there were only nine of her compatriots: "We all knew each other!". Thirty-six years later, in the urban area of Girona alone, it is estimated that there are about 20,000 people of Honduran origin, and in the entire province, 40,000.

For the second consecutive year, and with the aim of it becoming a tradition, Girona kicks off the summer with a habaneras singing session overlooking the cathedral and Sant Fèlix. While on the Costa Brava the event is marked by the first Saturday of July in Calella de Palafrugell, in the capital of Girona it is brought forward to Thursday. The evening, organized by the cultural foundation El Foment, also includes a wide gastronomic offering of Catalan products and seeks to re-signify the Plaça Catalunya space.

In Girona, near the border between the neighborhoods of Can Gibert del Pla and Santa Eugènia, a very unique apartment block stands out, surrounded by a tree-lined park. It is a building made entirely of wood, with checkered and symmetrical shapes, featuring two forty-meter facades and open galleries on each of its six floors. The block, inaugurated in 2022, is called 6x6 and is the work of the Girona-based studio Bosch Capdeferro, which has received numerous awards for the project's sustainability and energy efficiency values.

Between Girona and Salt, in a half-finished farmhouse, about twenty African boys, originally from countries like Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania, and Mali, are living in hardship. The house has no electricity or water. It also lacks doors and windows in the openings, and inside, there is only the structure of the main walls. The young men have improvised compartments with cardboard and fabrics where they sleep on mattresses, blankets, and camping tents. In the middle of the building, there is a staircase without walls or a railing, with a very dangerous fall into the void, especially at night. They cook in a room with a wood fire on the ground or with gas stoves, shower with jugs from the well, and have no toilets.

In a labor market that has radically changed in the last three decades, there are companies that have not only known how to adapt, but also to anticipate and grow alongside businesses and people. This is the case of Marlex, which in 2026 celebrates its 30th anniversary as one of the major references for talent and human resources in Spain. What began in 1996 as an entrepreneurial project born in Girona is today a group with more than 500 professionals, more than 80 offices, and a turnover of 180 million euros. But, beyond the figures, the Marlex story is that of a company built on proximity, trust, and a firm conviction: that people are the true engine of economic and business growth. Founded by Jaume Sanabras, Marlex was born with the intention of responding to the real needs of the local business fabric, at a time when the labor market was beginning to transform profoundly. That vision initially materialized into two complementary companies: Marlex People, specialized in temporary work, and Eurogrup Consulting, focused on the selection of qualified profiles.

After the boom of Game of Thrones a decade ago, Girona is once again becoming the setting for a major international series. This weekend, the city center hosts the filming of the first season of Tomb Raider, by Amazon MGM Studios, with actress Sophie Turner as the protagonist. It is the live-action adaptation of the famous video game franchise starring the adventurous archaeologist Lara Croft, which had already reached the big screen at the hands of Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander. Now it does so in series format and will premiere next year. In addition to Turner, the cast features prominent names such as Sigourney Weaver and Jason Isaacs, and the production is by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) as creator, screenwriter, and executive producer.