Culture

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Tribute to the victims “of all wars” to commemorate 80th anniversary of Spanish Civil War

ACN

Barcelona’s ‘Palau de la Música’, one of the most symbolic cultural institutions in Catalonia, hosted the first of the commemorative events to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) this Monday. Besides its cultural content, ‘Palau de la Música’ was the place were worldwide famous cellist Pau Casals carried out his last rehearsal before the outbreak of the war, on the 18th of June 1936. Thus, and bearing in mind the strong component that Casals has as a symbol of Catalan culture, and also for his pacifist fight, the institutional event, called ‘The Last Rehearsal’, commemorates that day. The event was organised by the Catalan Ministry for Foreign Affairs, International Relations and Transparency, and aimed to pay tribute to “all those who suffered war both in a direct or indirect way”. 

July 18, 2016 11:19 PM

150 universities in 28 countries worldwide teach Catalan

ACN

More than 6,000 students worldwide learn Catalan language and culture in 28 countries in Europe, America, Asia and Oceania. More than 150 universities teach Catalan at different levels, 88 of which receive funding through Institut Ramon Llull (IRL), a public body in charge of promoting Catalan culture and language abroad. Indeed, in 2016 IRL designated €1,270,722 to helping to fund the teaching in these universities. These are some of the figures on the University Network of Catalan Studies Abroad, presented this Tuesday by IRL’s director, Manuel Forcano. According to him, the Network “offers a very positive image of Catalonia to the world since it promotes the Catalan language everywhere”. France, Germany and the United Kingdom are the three countries with the highest number of universities teaching Catalan. 

July 5, 2016 02:49 PM

Sant Joan, the Catalan fire festival, ignites on the 23rd of June

ACN

Sant Joan, or ‘nit de foc’ (‘night of fire’ in Catalan) will ignite Barcelona aflame the night of the 23rd of June. The festival coincides with the pagan holiday of summer solstice, the longest night of the year, when people celebrate by jumping over bonfires (or ‘fogueres’) on the beaches and marvelling at the display of fireworks at midnight in the night sky. Also not to be missed is the Canigó Flame, which is first lit in a beacon on a mountain peak in the East of the Pyrenees, and later carried throughout all of Catalonia and beyond, ending in a square in the heart of Barcelona. Another tradition is to drink cava and to eat ‘coca’, a traditional sweet bread topped with candied fruit: it is estimated that more than 1,630,000 ‘coques’ will be eaten this Sant Joan, and in the region of Barcelona alone, about 920,000 artisan ‘cocas’ and pastries will be sold. 

 

June 23, 2016 07:26 PM

First International Castells Festival a great success

Sara Prim

Castellers, Catalan traditional human towers, were performed this weekend at different spots in London. The British capital hosted the First International Castells Festival with great success, both in terms of the quality of the towers which were built and the warm welcome of Londoners. “Castells have a strong conciliatory component”, explained Jan Creixell, head of ‘Castellers of London’, “no matter where you come from or how old are you, it is a great excuse to gather different people together”. The local group, ‘Castellers of London’ invited their partners from Paris, ‘Geperuts’ to strengthen the relationship between both groups and also show off castells to an international public. In fact, groups of Castellers are starting to grow worldwide, including ‘colles’ from China, Chile and Montreal amongst many others.

June 20, 2016 02:29 PM

First international castells exhibition to be held in London this weekend

Sara Prim / Laerke Saura

The Castellers of London will receive the French group Castellers de París from the 17th to the 19th of June to celebrate the first international encounter for this traditional human towers. Both groups will offer performances in the city during the weekend, with the aim of strengthening the relationship between the groups and showing off human castles to an international public.  “We want to do regular international exhibitions, like the encounters between castells that are held constantly in Catalonia”, explained Marc Pujol, member of Casellers of London. International castells groups have been flourishing around the world lately, coming to London, Paris, Chile and China, and this event will be an attempt to establish a close relationship between the different groups worldwide. The activities will be held in different locations of London, one of the most expected to be held at London’s Old Spitalfields Market

June 17, 2016 10:45 AM

Sonar 2015 added 72 million euros to the Catalan GDP

ACN

The economic contribution to Catalonia’s GDP from the 2015 Sonar music festival was 72 million euros. Along with Sonar+D, a series of conferences about the relationship between creativity and technology, the event brought in 111,000 visitors from 104 different countries. This data was presented at the pre-festival press conference on Thursday. Indeed, the festival has been interested in tracking its economic impact since it created a study group to do so in 2004. To be held on the 16th, 17th, and 18th of June, Sonar 2016 will include 130 concerts by artists from 28 different countries, and will be based on a “more social” rhetoric. Meanwhile, Sonar+D will include activities in about 180 different formats, with 400 registered participants, and more than 4,000 professionals from 57 countries. Some new additions to the festival will be the new SonarCar stage, and a one-hour delay of the Sonar by Day portion of the festival. In 2016, Sonar is also offering a map of Barcelona showing the creative training offerings one can find in the Catalan capital. The metro strike should not affect the festival.

June 10, 2016 03:30 PM

Summer music festivals ready to kick off in Catalonia

Fay Hemelrijk / Andrea Massot

Two days after the 15th edition of Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona closed its doors with a record 200,000 attendants, half of them international fans, Catalonia is getting ready for a vibrant summer of music festivals, attracting all types of music lovers. In Barcelona and the Costa Brava, both mass and boutique festivals are held. Mass festivals are the big, open air, hipster festivals, such as Sónar Festival, the largest electronic music festival in Europe, and Cruïlla, to name a few. Boutique festivals, on the other hand, focus not only on the music, but also on offering high-quality gastronomy and a classier atmosphere that targets a public with a higher income. In these cases, the venue is sometimes as important as the artists, which may be a castle on the Costa Brava or a cosy stage near the sea. Here is a list of some of most important events from both worlds

June 6, 2016 02:26 PM

Primavera Sound 2016 kicks off

ACN

The 15th edition of Barcelona’s music festival giant, Primavera Sound, has opened its doors, a long-awaited moment for indie and pop fans in the Catalan capital. Since its opening, Primavera Sound has established itself as a global point of reference in Southern Europe, with 200 artists to perform at this year’s festival on eight different stages. Some of the names performing at the festival this time out are Radiohead, PJ Harvey and the recently reformed American rock band LCD Soundsystem, along with Suede, Tame Impala, Sigur Rós and former Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson. The festival opens on Thursday but gave fans a preview on Wednesday, with its signature free night, which attendees enjoyed at Barcelona’s seaside venue Forum Park. The organisers of the festival predict some 190,000 attendees this year and half of them will come from outside Spain. 

June 2, 2016 06:54 PM

LOOP Festival 2016: Where video art and cinema meet

Julia Matinniemi

Barcelona turns into a moving image hotspot again for over three weeks with the 14th edition of LOOP, a festival dedicated to video art. Since 2003, it has provided a platform for both emerging and well-known international video artists to get together, with curated exhibitions taking place around the Catalan capital. Not only is it an event exhibiting high-quality video art, but also hosts workshops and other art events related to the moving image; as is the case again this year, with LOOP featuring over 400 artworks, 58 exhibition projects and 28 activities carried out through a budget of 77,000 euros. In this year's Festival, which is titled 'Faraway, so close', the main themes are 'Beyond the Black Box' and 'Back to the Black Box', exploring the connection between cinema and video art.

June 1, 2016 07:45 PM

18th edition of ‘Tarraco Viva’ includes ancient Egyptian culture for the first time

ACN

After 18 years of focusing exclusively on the Roman world, the ‘Tarraco Viva’ historical festival has included, for the first time, ancient Egyptian culture in its homage to the past. ‘Tarraco Viva’ is held every year in the Catalan city of Tarragona, and it’s estimated that this 2016 edition has already attracted more visitors than previous years. Happy that this “experiment” ultimately worked, director of the festival Seritjol Magi stated on Sunday that it was the combination of the two worlds that drew in aficionados from both fields. Now that the festival is over, organisers are already planning the coming years’ editions, and plan to include various different cultures in the event. ‘Tarraco Viva’ 2017 is to open its doors to ancient Greek culture and thereby focus largely on the beloved activity of the civilisation’s people: sports; also coinciding with the 2017 Mediterranean Games to be held in the same city. 

May 30, 2016 07:56 PM

The Picasso Museum displays ‘The 156 engravings’

ACN

The exhibition can be visited from the 26th of May until the 4th of September. It displays artworks created by Picasso between the 24th of October 1968 and the 25th of March 1972, and first shown in Paris only a year after their completion in 1973, when the artist was still alive. “The last Picasso, the engraver”, is shown in this exhibition, one who “experimented freely” and had an “overflowing life force”, according to a statement released by the museum. The artist created these works at his home in France, and in them, he focuses on the same subjects he always used, such as the painter and the model, and focuses especially on the female nude. Picasso also pays homage to several other artists in the series, including Goya, Manet, Raphael, Rembrandt, Velázquez, and especially Degas. The Museum calls the collection a “final tragicomedy, rich and complex”.

May 27, 2016 07:18 PM

Retrospective on photographer Bruce Davidson opens in Barcelona

ACN

The ‘Bruce Davidson’ exhibition, the very first retrospective dedicated to the American photographer to be held in Spain is to open at the non-profit institution Fundación MAPFRE in Barcelona. The exhibition will run from the 28th of May until the 28th of August, after which it will embark on an international tour. Photographer Bruce Davidson has more than fifty years of uninterrupted work behind him (as well as membership of the prestigious photography co-op, Magnum), which are featured in chronological order in the exhibition. Along with Davidson’s most important photographs and series, the artist’s never-before-featured new works will also be on display. In the exhibition “we can see the stylistic evolution of his work but can also see a small condensed history of American photography from the second half of the twentieth century, which is, undoubtedly, a universal reference for photography”, explained the curator of the exhibition, Carlos Gollonet.

May 27, 2016 04:17 PM

Architecture comes to life at the Catalan pavilion in the Venice Biennale

ACN

The Catalan pavilion at the Venice Architecture ‘Biennale’ brings architecture to life with the project ‘Aftermath_Catalonia in Venice. Architecture beyond architects’. This project, set to represent Catalonia, is curated by film director Isaki Lacuesta and architects Jaume Prat and Jelena Prokopljevic. The three propose to open a dialogue between architecture and cinema; according to Prokopljevic, the aim is to “teach architecture from the point of view of the user, with buildings that are in use, and to flee from the moment when architects show the buildings when they are just finished and about to be opened, when they are all clean and have no life”.

May 27, 2016 08:56 AM

19th edition of documentary film festival DocsBarcelona kicks off

ACN

The DocsBarcelona 2016 film festival opened this year’s edition with the documentary ‘Sonita’ by Iranian director Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami on Wednesday. The film is about an eighteen-year-old Afghan girl after which the film is named, who emigrates illegally to Iran to pursue her dream of being a hip hop artist, despite her mother’s opposition. The DocsBarcelona film festival is running until the 29th of May, during which one can see 46 films from 28 countries at the multidisciplinary institution and museum Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and the Aribau Club cinema. While keeping in mind the important theme of refugees, the documentary also raises the important issue of what role a film should play in the subject it is filming. “Documentary films reflect the society we live in, and in ten years they will reflect what is happening in society”, reflected the director of DocsBarcelona, Juan Gonzàlez.

May 25, 2016 08:22 PM

‘Patum’: the beat of a local festival with international status

ACN / Ivet Puig

‘Patum’ is a popular festival celebrated every year during Corpus Christi in the Catalan city of Berga. In this town, the earliest reference to this festival dates from 1454 although the celebration has its origins in pre-Christian festivities. During five days, the streets of Berga are transformed into a massive stage. The ‘Patum’ festival,  which was declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005, comprises several parts and is a mixture of sound, fire and parades of allegorical and traditional figures such as ‘Guites’ (mule dragons), the Eagle and giant-headed dwarves. All the figures join to perform the final dance, the Tirabol. This years’ ‘Patum’ will take place from the 25th to the 28th of May.

May 25, 2016 10:23 AM

Read the latest updates and breaking news on culture and cultural topics from Barcelona and Catalonia. Keep up to date with the city’s museums dedicated to some of the biggest artists in the world such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and Antoni Tàpies, as well as other institutions such as the National Art Museum (MNAC), the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona (MACBA), and exhibition spaces like the Contemporary Culture Center of Barcelona (CCCB), CiaxaForum, and CosmoCaixa.