Today's Barcelona was born from a boom-boom. Hiroshima my loveThe demolition of the walls in the 19th century. Without a nuclear explosion, there is no love. As a Barcelonian said in 1854: Barcelona explodes and we fall in love… with a new Barcelona. Without the first great explosion, there wouldn't be the other two major upheavals: the War-Dictatorship, which is the transition from a free city to an occupied one. And the final explosion: the Olympic atomic dog, Cobi. A grand finale that leads us to the Barcelona of today, ripped open and with pieces damaged by the city's skin. And the umbilical cord?

This week, new ads have appeared for entire villages for sale at five hundred thousand euros. I confess: I'm one of those people who spends time looking at these ads, driven by a kind of fascination, a dream, and awe all at once. "Should we sell our apartment and move there?" I often ask my family, knowing I'm suggesting the impossible.

The older I get, the less I understand cities. Not because they've ceased to fascinate me, but because I find it increasingly difficult to believe certain narratives. The contemporary world is immersed in urban debates that seem disconnected from reality: parameters, densities, land use, residual values… And I walk through my neighborhood and I'm only interested in the gardens, the smells, the morning mists, the squares, and the sunny terraces where I can have a coffee and read a book.

After the end of the school year, a group of European NGOs has published its annual report, Clean Cities, on child accessibility in different European cities.

My son's vision of Barcelona is much more radical than mine. The city no longer appeals to him, and he doesn't feel as connected to it. When we go downtown, he experiences it as too touristy. The overcrowding stresses him out, and having to constantly be on the lookout for crime repels him. In fact, he would prefer to live outside the city, in a more relaxed environment.

City and Madrid will face each other this Tuesday at the Etihad Stadium (9pm) in a match that will correspond to the play-off Champions League knockout stages. Madrid have always qualified for the last 16 in their previous group stages. City, meanwhile, will be looking to play in another round of 16 since the 2013-14 season.

Manchester City and Real Madrid showed their urgency in a round of 32 match in which, a priori, neither of the two teams should have been involved. Neither the English nor the Madrid side did their homework well in the qualifying round and that now forces them to play a two-legged tie in which the Whites got a great haul in their visit to the Etihad (2-3). Pep Guardiola's team was leading on the scoreboard ten minutes from the end, but two errors in the final stages allowed the Whites to take the victory to Madrid, where the return leg will be played.