1. Barça will win La Liga. It is only a matter of weeks. Perhaps, days. In fact, they could already be champions next Sunday. All they need is for Flick's team to win on Saturday in Pamplona and for Real Madrid not to win on Sunday at Espanyol's ground, and the twenty-ninth league title will be official. It would be ironic if, without playing, Barça won it because an Espanyol team desperate for points ended up gifting them the title. Everyone looks out for themselves, but in football – as in life – there are amusing paradoxes. Whatever the moment Barça is proclaimed champion, fans must refrain from going to Canaletes. Forbidden. The upper part of La Rambla is under construction, the emblematic fountain is covered, and, around it, temporary fences would be a dangerous trap for the thousands of Barça fans who would want to gather there. Barça and the City Council —“of the city that bears our club’s name”— should inform Barça fans this very Monday that La Rambla is waterlogged and should explain where the title will be massively celebrated when the moment arrives. 

It's 10:30 in the morning, and the sidewalk along Plaça Catalunya, between Carrer de Pelai and Ronda de la Universitat, is beginning to fill with color. Yellow, red, lilac, green, orange... The chromatic ranges are grouped and mingled within vases of different sizes and shapes placed on shelves. It's the first day that the traditional flower vendors of La Rambla have set up shop a few meters further up from their original location. The street is filled with the noise of handcarts going up and down to unload flowers and sacks of seeds, and the scent of the floral arrangements permeates the air. Behind the counters, going in and out, the stallholders bustle about. It's moving day, and that's synonymous with "madness," says José González, a florist on La Rambla for 30 years: "It's all new, and I have to adapt, taking it one day at a time and without missing a beat."

Fewer tables, rearranged to create more pedestrian space. Barcelona City Council wants to take advantage of the construction work planned throughout 2026 on this iconic Barcelona promenade to reorganize the tables of bars and restaurants, creating 33% more space for pedestrians. The council presented a preliminary plan on Tuesday, agreed upon with the Restaurateurs' Guild and the Friends of La Rambla, to free up 1,436 square meters of the current layout, primarily in the central section. Raquel Gil, the City Council's Head of Economic Development, acknowledged that this will involve "the removal of tables" from some terraces, but the exact number is still being negotiated to "minimize the impact on businesses."

"It was a long five months," explains pastry chef Christian Escribà on the very day he raised the shutters of his pastry shop on La Rambla. It's Wednesday, December 3rd, and Escribà is happy because he'll be able to tackle the Christmas season for a few days. When the renovation work began on the main thoroughfare that connects the city to the sea, the pastry chef kept his shop open, but There came a moment when he realized that only "dust and noise" were getting in.So he closed until everything was finished. "And only part of it is finished, because on January 15th I'll have to close again because a new phase of the work will begin, the sidewalk work, which is linked to the water pipes," he says. However, the pastry chef is reopening with joy and with changes to the shop he acquired in 1986, when he was 25 years old.

Pastry chef Christian Escribà will reopen his Escribà pastry shop on La Rambla, formerly known as Antigua Casa Figueras, in the middle of next month to prepare for the Christmas season. Last summer, he decided to close its doors and put up a "Closed for Holidays" sign because, until then, the construction work on La Rambla between the Liceu opera house and the Boqueria market meant there was "nothing but noise and no customers." The closure has, of course, resulted in financial losses and the dismissal of five of his seven employees. However, the pastry chef says that the City Council has kept them informed about the progress of the construction (they have found remains of city walls), given them a new completion date—it should have already been finished, but it will now be next month—and assured them that, once the work is completed, there will be a redesign of the space, which they have discussed with them.

Since 1904. The Italian The door has been open to Carrer del Bonsuccés since 1904. Impressive, isn't it? And even more impressive is what Carla Rivali, the owner and fourth generation of this family-run fresh pasta business, tells us. Almost 100% of its numerous customers are locals, that is, Barcelona residents. In the middle of the tourist hotspot, north of Raval and next to La Rambla. But there are no neighbors here, right? In its immediate area of influence, there are still some, and they are mostly Barcelona residents who work in the neighborhood. They go to La Italiana to buy lunch and choose from the variety of options on its daily menu.

The redevelopment works on La Rambla have exposed almost 50 continuous meters of the 14th-century wall and a pentagonal tower measuring 8 x 4 meters. The wall, in the Santa Mónica sector, measured 2.90 meters wide and the ashlars were lined with lime mortar, a construction reinforcement to avoid the effects of the floods that had already been documented.

She arrives at Pla de l'Os in a wheelchair, gets up and walked with crutches until she can sit on one of the chairs. She is dressed in blue, wearing sunglasses, her hands are shaking and she cannot stop crying. Once she is seated, she is handed a framed photograph. It is her son's, Julian, one of those killed in the August 17, 2017 attack in Barcelona, when he was only seven years old. Her name is Jumaine but everyone calls her Jom. Her legs were left shattered by the attack and it wasn't until three days later that she found out Julian was gone. Hers is the most moving, the most terrible image of the tribute paid today to the victims of that attack. The victims lay flowers. Robert Manrique, a tireless fighter for the rights of victims of all terrorist attacks, has come along with his three grandchildren, Dominic and Andrea, four, and Ramses, two, and they too lay a flower. Jom can't stop crying, and everyone she meets tries to console her. It is impressive to think what must be going on inside those people who step on Miró's mural, right where the van that destroyed their lives stopped. Mental strength, integrity, dignity. I remember that in the memorial held on the first anniversary, in 2018, Xavi Martínez was present. He is the father of Xavi, the three-year-old boy who also died. This year he announced on social media that he would not attend. He does not agree with the political management of the attacks nor with the sentence regarding the involvement of the Ripoll jihadist cell. In fact, there is a large group of people who, on the fringes of the event, make their voices heard: "We want to know the truth!" they shout.

The transformation of Barcelona's Rambla, after years of debate without an allocated budget, will finally begin in 2022. This was announced by the city council in the Urban Planning Commission on Tuesday, which has finally approved the project, and has pledged to include it in the 2022 budget. The reform of the Rambla, whose first plan was approved in 2016, was a source of conflict during budget negotiations between mayor Ada Colau's team and ERC, which set it as an example of the council's failure to keep its word. The council then urged ERC to negotiate the 2022 budget in order to allow the project to go ahead. ERC refused, but ended up supporting the budget anyway in a quid pro quo that gave the Catalan government the necessary support to approve its own budget.