1. Life goes on and we normalize everything, with trained resignation. Waiting lists, the difficulty of having decent housing, inflation that threatens to skyrocket, or the resistance of Catalan are the worries of a day-to-day life that we face stoically and, perhaps, with excessive understanding. For others – beyond the traffic jams on the AP-7 for the outgoing or return operation – the big concern seems to be Raphinha's umpteenth muscle injury. They talk about it on the radio as much or more than about Trump and Iran. To escape our accepted miseries, wars, destruction, and death, in Ukraine or East Asia, people need to laugh. I notice it at the Condal Theatre. They are performing A Brilliant Idea, the most awarded comedy in France. The adaptation to Catalan by Susanna Garachana is accurate, rigorous, and extremely fine-tuned. The protagonist, Lluís Villanueva, can already make space to collect all the acting awards for a production that forces him into exhausting meticulousness. An hour and a half of laughter. People leave it better than they entered.

The works on the L8 of the Generalitat Railways are preparing for a new phase: the arrival of the Tunnel boring machine that will drill through Barcelona from Plaza Espanya to the Gràcia neighborhood, next year. To introduce this large cutting machine underground, it is obviously necessary to make a hole through which the pieces will be lowered into the subsoil, the machine will be assembled, and drilling will begin. This attack shaft will be located on Gran Via, next to Plaça Espanya, between Llança and Vilamarí streets. It will run 20 meters underground but will nevertheless be very visible to residents because the hole doesn't reach it alone.

A few days ago, the BBC published a report on the worrying consequences that urban noise can have on health, and Barcelona was a central theme. It must be said: the concept of "noise pollution" is too convoluted or sophisticated to colloquially refer to or denounce noise, the high-voltage clamor, the acoustic madness that emanates from the streets, public places, houses facing public roads, the crunch of popcorn at the most sublime moment of a movie, from many balconies where people are talking loudly on their cell phones until the early hours of the morning. These unnecessary public disturbances also occur on public transportation: buses, subways, and commuter trains. I could extend the list of these noises ad infinitum in Barcelona (I should also include the thunderous noises of airplanes flying over the towns near El Prat Airport). While I'm at it, lately it's very difficult to find a public place where noisy noise isn't the norm. And what is accepted, almost welcomed, judging by the ecstatic faces of the occasional listeners of the latest reggaeton trend, served for a few willing cents at full speed on the subway or in public. In restaurants, the murmur has given way to noise, also to the unbearable noise that the waiters allow to set up the tables and chairs they move from one place to another; to the shrieks of children whose parents do nothing to make them speak quietly, as often happens in any restaurant in France, where parents, with envious persuasive skill, convey to their offspring the obligation to never exceed the barrier of ideal sound (because such a sound exists). We are also beginning to see on the streets of Barcelona people, most of them food delivery drivers, with tiny stereos with piercing speakers attached to their bicycles.

For ten years, the Fabra i Coats complex has had a nursery, two schools and a high school, with a total of 1,300 students who have had to deal with the noise of the construction work that is still going on. I worked there for four years. I also lived as a child opposite a high school and I know that it can be nerve-racking. But nothing compares to the flat I am in now: three dogs, a TV playing at full speed until late at night, a newborn baby and fans of experimental music. On some summer nights I have been tempted to go and beg them to turn down the music. And I could do it. What I cannot ask them is to change the record. Coexistence is about this, about time slots. Not about tastes. Because who says that what they hear is noise?

Spanish National Police officers received three works of art in Rome that had been stolen in Spain and located in Italy. One is a sculpture by the artist Javier Martín stolen in 2022 from an art gallery in Barcelona. The other two, a painting by Joaquim Sorolla and another by Hermen Anglada Camarasa, were stolen in 2021 during an art exhibition in a hotel in Madrid.

Spanish National Police officers received three works of art in Rome that had been stolen in Spain and located in Italy. One is a sculpture by the artist Javier Martín stolen in 2022 from an art gallery in Barcelona. The other two, a painting by Joaquim Sorolla and another by Hermen Anglada Camarasa, were stolen in 2021 during an art exhibition in a hotel in Madrid.

"Hi. Excuse me, what time do you close?" It's half past ten at night. "Twelve o'clock, but I sell alcohol until eleven." It's a Thursday in August in Poblenou, in the area between Meridiana and the streets Tànger, Llacuna, Pallars, Badajoz, Pujades and Marina, where several entertainment venues are located. The party has not yet started and there are few people around. This is the first Thursday in which the new measures against noise are in force. "In a couple of hours you will see the atmosphere," says a shopkeeper in the area. The area is now a ZATHN (acoustically stressed area at night), and hence subject to Barcelona City Council's new measures announced in July to reverse noise pollution and ensure "quality sleep" for residents. Among the measures approved is the closure of food shops at ten o'clock at night.

Barcelona is a noisy city. Too noisy. This is undoubtedly, along with pollution and dirtiness, one of its most obvious weaknesses. It is so because of the density, the still very intense traffic and the lack of green areas and public spaces. The policies to make more areas pedestrian friendly seek to correct this problem, which is particularly marked in central neighbourhoods, especially in the Eixample, but not only. The reduction in traffic is therefore essential. We must continue to move towards minimising the use of private cars, promoting alternative silent transport and improving public transport (which on the surface should be increasingly electric). The Eixample project which is now being rolled out follows these lines.

"The solution? That all outdoor seating be closed at ten o'clock at night and then we'll sleep for sure". This is Isabel and Marta's verdict, sitting on a bench in the Jardins de la Mediterrània, large square in Marina neighbourhood of Barcelona, but which does not close at night and is home to bars, most with outdoor seating and one which opens till late. "There is always activity here... and, of course, noise", these neighbours sum up. In total, nine outdoor seating areas with about thirty tables. Arguments and fights often break out, and chairs are thrown. Sporadically objects are also thrown from windows towards the customers, some restaurateurs report.

Over 210,000 Barcelona residents suffer intensely from noise pollution in the city (with severe psychological, emotional and social effects) and over 60,000 have serious sleep disorders due to exposure to traffic. Noise is, in fact, the second environmental factor that has the greatest impact on the population's health after air pollution, according to data from the Barcelona Public Health Agency, which also warns that traffic is responsible for around 300 new cases of ischemic heart disease and 3% of deaths: about thirty each year in Barcelona.