The result of an equation involving snow and mountains doesn't always have to be skiing. We can also enjoy it on snowshoes, a system that, although its origins are difficult to pinpoint, historians believe was invented in Central Asia more than 5,000 years ago. The oldest known snowshoe was made from a birch branch shaped into a circle and straps to secure it to the foot. Since then, the device has evolved radically, and after many years when the usual materials were wood and rope, today we find lightweight and resistant technical materials that make them more efficient and safer.

Long before Christian Christmas absorbed pagan festivities, our ancestors climbed the mountains to light bonfires, burn logs, and bring down tiles. They did so not to commemorate any divine birth, but for sheer survival: it was necessary to awaken the Sun, to give it strength so that it could be reborn, and to ensure that light would return to fertilize the earth. Symbolically, humans brought to the earth the light that was missing from the sky to help the Sun gather energy to work again and begin the cycle of eternal return. Fire destroys to purify, and the vegetation—pine, fir, beech—offers itself as a sacrifice and releases the solar energy it has stored up during the summer to return it to the community in the heart of winter.

You stroll along the cobblestone streets of a small town, where the sound of your footsteps is the only soundtrack. The cold bites at your cheeks, but the scent of burning wood wafting from a chimney is comforting. Soft lights dance from the windows, shimmering with the shadows of dormant geraniums. As dusk falls, an old man wraps himself in a coat, placing sprigs of mistletoe on his doorstep, while children, their cheeks flushed with cold, decorate a nativity scene in the middle of the square. As you gaze at it, you suddenly feel as if you're walking through a life-size nativity scene. Every detail, every balcony draped in garlands, every chimney billowing smoke, draws you into the spirit of Christmas. You feel a perfect balance between the silence of the ancient stones and the warmth of the life within them. Walking is like rediscovering a memory, a tranquility that makes you want to stay. Here, time seems to stand still, chimneys radiate warmth, and every detail seems designed to capture the Christmas spirit.

The traditional Christmas markets that spring up in many cities across central and northern Europe are increasingly becoming a major draw for travel during this time of year. This year, the renowned travel guide Lonely Planet sought to discover its readers' favorite Christmas market in Spain, conducting a survey of 44,000 travelers to determine which they considered the best. The winner was Colmar, in France, very close to the German border, which beat out 32 other Christmas markets, including those in Edinburgh, Salzburg, Ravennaschlucht, Prague, Budapest, and Copenhagen. The French city is known for its old town with cobbled streets and a network of canals that has earned it the nickname "Little Venice.". Here at Christmas, six different markets are set up, spread throughout the alleyways and squares. There's a children's market, designed for the little ones, with a carousel. and a lively nativity scene; and one dedicated to antiques and crafts called Old Customs House. Colmar also boasts about its Christmas pastries with products such as gingerbread and cookies. bredele with spices and the springerle with anise aroma, or the Beeraweckaa fruit tart with kirsch.

Being in London and strolling through Hyde Park, spending a weekend in Paris and visiting the Luxembourg Gardens, or going to Madrid and crossing El Retiro Park are common practices for residents and tourists visiting these major capital cities. For city dwellers, urban parks and gardens are places to reconnect with nature, relax, and engage in various recreational activities. They are also spaces that promote health. A Greenpeace report maintains that, when it comes to green spaces in urban areas, all cities should follow the 3-30-300 rule, ensuring that each person can see at least three trees from their home, has 30% vegetation cover in their neighborhood, and is within 300 meters of a decent park. According to the organization, being in contact with green spaces offers benefits such as mitigating high temperatures and flooding; improving mental health and contributing to better brain development and cognitive function; and helping to reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases and premature mortality. In the main Catalan cities, we also find green spaces that provide oxygen to the urban environment, with some notable examples such as the Devesa Park in Girona, the largest urban park in the country with more than 2,500 centuries-old trees; the Ciutadella Park in Barcelona, ​​built at the end of the 19th century and the first park specifically designed as a public park; the Parc del Milagro in Tarragona; and the Parc dels Camps Elisis in Lleida, with its various landscaped areas. However, these parks and gardens are far from the size of some of the most important and well-known urban parks found around the world.

When we think of a mountain refuge, our brains go on autopilot and, almost instinctively, conjure up a high-mountain landscape, probably in the Pyrenees. Add a loaded backpack and boots, and you're likely in the summer, perhaps in the middle of a Carros de Foc or Cavalls del Vent trek. Our collective imagination is captivated by long-distance routes and peak season. And that's understandable, but there's more to mountain refuges than that. This is the premise that motivated geographer and travel journalist Laura Masó to lace up her boots. "I saw it as a necessity. There was a certain lack of information," says Masó, who maintains that a guide was needed, a physical resource to bring order to the situation. "The information was fragmented; each entity offered its own, but there wasn't a single place to consult it all." Above all, she detected a black hole regarding unstaffed refuges. "These are the most basic refuges, and often the adventure begins before you even arrive, simply by calling the town hall or the relevant organization to get the key."

Some hotels invite you to relax, while others can have the opposite effect. If you're the kind of guest who enjoys the idea of spending the night in a room with a spine-tingling history, these are some of the most... terrifying of Europe where you can stay 365 days a year.

Photographer, mountaineer, and educator Jordi Longàs says that in Catalonia we are "very fortunate in our landscape," as after many trips he has been able to verify that "few places have what we have here: a great variety of ecosystems and natural landscapes concentrated in just a few kilometers." Longàs has just published the book The colors of autumn (Cosetania), which proposes 30 routes through Catalonia to enjoy this season with the family. The book suggests excursions throughout the territory, capturing the country's panoramic diversity. While there are some very popular routes, there are also many that readers are sure to discover, as they cover lesser-known areas and offer an opportunity to discover new places.

When the holidays are over and routine begins to set in, that bitter feeling of farewell often appears. But some have found a different way to extend the summer: looking up and being amazed by the birds crossing the sky. What once seemed like a hobby Reserved for ornithologists with notebooks and binoculars, it can be a leisure activity accessible to all audiences. And the last days of August and the beginning of September are ideal for delving into this world.

For those of you who aren't on vacation yet and are counting down the days until you leave, summer can be a great time to take short getaways near Barcelona and discover charming spots you might not yet know about. Here are our suggestions:

Deltebre Danza is the fruit of an unconscious mindset. We were younger, we had enthusiasm, and above all, we were crazy. Around 800 artists, almost 300 shows, 100,000 spectators, 2,500 dance students, and a hundred teachers. The citizens of Deltebre have finally embraced it," explains Tortosa dancer and choreographer Roberto Olivan, director of the festival.

The towns and cities of the province of Barcelona are ideal for local, conscious, and sustainable tourism, and you'll find a wide range of quality activities and services to satisfy even the most demanding travelers.

You board the train with a coffee in hand, sit down, look out the window, enjoy the changing landscapes that pass by, and in just a few hours you're in another city, with a different reality ready to be discovered, adding a thousand stories to your memories. No lines, no tolls. In less time than it would take to cross the entire AP-7 on a Sunday afternoon, you can have breakfast in Madrid, stroll along the banks of the Turia River, or get lost in the streets of Zaragoza's historic center.

When I was a child, we used to cycle from Les Borges to Cogul, where a man would dip a painted rock to highlight ancient figures from the "Moorish era." The remains of the Moorish Civil War found throughout the mountains make them attractive while revitalizing this place, devoid of people and devoid of even the slightest projects for decades. We propose a tour to discover this still little-known territory.

Every March 20th or 21st, when the spring equinox arrives, a ray of light passes through precise points of ancient buildings around the world. At Chichén Itzá, Mexico, the light descends down the stairs of the Temple of Kukulcan and creates the illusion of a moving serpent. At Mnjandra, Malta, the light penetrates between the megaliths whose precision seems to defy the centuries. Elsewhere in the world, temples and structures of ancient civilizations reveal their perfect alignment with the sun. This fascination with marking the passage of time is no coincidence: it responds to a need to understand and organize the cycle of nature.

The silence is only broken by the sound of skis sliding over the snow. You find yourself in the middle of a winter landscape that invites you to lose track of time. The cold air fills your lungs and, before you, a sea of ​​snowy fir trees invites you to take a walk. In an increasingly fast-paced world, Nordic skiing is about endurance, it is calm, it is about getting back to basics.

When masks take over Venice, oranges fly over Ivrea and grotesque characters invade the old town of Basel, it can only mean one thing: Carnival has arrived in Europe! These are days of debauchery, freedom and centuries-old traditions that fill squares and streets with music, costumes and partying. If you think the best Carnival is the one in Rio, perhaps you haven't yet heard of these ten European Carnivals that combine history, fun and lots and lots of debauchery. You'll discover that they have nothing to envy of the famous Brazilian Carnival and that they exude more folklore and fewer feathers.

Going underground is a magical and unique experience. An opportunity to get away from the routine and daily landscapes and discover an unknown, fascinating and often mysterious terrain, with labyrinthine landscapes and unusual morphologies that tell us many things about our past. In Catalonia we have everything from unique caves where stalactites and stalagmites are the protagonists, to mines from which salt or coal was extracted. Some spaces to which we can add caves and grottoes open to the landscape – both mountain and sea – where prehistoric man lived and which in times of conflict have also served as refuge for the inhabitants of the area.

Discovering the surroundings of a train can be a great experience. Seeing the landscape pass through a window gives another perspective, there is a reason why the great travelers of the 19th century found the railway one of their main means of transportation and turned it into the scene of great adventures. Some of the travelers who created the legend of Romantic Spain in Europe traveled around the State by train, such as the cartoonist Gustav Doré or the traveler and writer Charles Davillier, who left magnificent writings about their train trips. The great Victorian adventurers, like Agatha Christie herself, mythical travelers like Livingstone or Burton, or vagabonds like Blasco Ibáñez, traveled around the world by rail. And as those from El Consorcio said (the boomers You will know who we are talking about), what a pleasure it is to travel to the rhythm of the shock-chucho, the chupo-chuco of the train!

The wall is the common element that defines the calls closed villas. It is surely a relatively new term to refer to fortified villas, cities or towns and that many centers of houses and cobbled streets have adopted to attract the attention of those who want to visit them. Peratallada, Montfalcó Murallat, Batea or Guimerà would surely appear on any list of closed Catalan towns. But the truth is that "a closed town is still a closed town with walls", as defined by Jordi Bolós, professor of medieval history at the University of Lleida. And here would come small towns, large cities or medium-sized towns, such as the current regional capitals. That is why medieval Barcelona would be a closed town as well as the city of Granollers from the 14th century or the small Pyrenean town of Peramea in the year 1352.