Culture

The 'Dansalona’ festival in the months of August and September is aiming to “popularise dance” in the city with a variety of activities. With numerous performances in theatres across Barcelona, the opportunity to discover behind the scenes and practical workshops, the festival aims to open the city’s creative industry to new audiences, including foreign visitors.

The Cistercian monastery is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and receives around 130,000 visitors a year. It has had an 800,000 euro renovation of its cloister. Lasting 7 months, the task was funded by the Catalan savings bank ‘La Caixa’. The work was unveiled last Saturday by the Catalan Minister of Culture, Ferran Mascarell.

Primavera Sound, Sónar or Cruïlla BCN. These are some of the music festivals that the city of Barcelona hosts. However, according to Marcelo Rosero, director of the Salsa & Latin Jazz Festival, the city “lacked high quality salsa and latin jazz music”. This new festival is taking place in a square at Poble Espanyol (Barcelona). Rosero has compared the programme of the festival with a restaurant saying that it has an “exquisite menu” and a “buffet where all is jewellery”. The festival will have “top-level bands” and its “musical acts are very important internationally”, Rosero has concluded.

The Minister of Culture, Ferran Mascarell, met in Parliament with representatives from the Catalan cultural sector. In the meeting they discussed how unpopular the new VAT increase is within the cultural sector in Catalonia. Mascarell sent a letter to Spanish Finance Minister, Cristóbal Montoro and Spanish Culture Minister, José Ignacio Wert representing the cultural sector on this issue. The president of the Employers Association of Catalan Cinema, Camilo Tarrazón, said after the meeting "Spain will be the only state to have culture as a luxury good".

The eruption of the volcano Vesuvius destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, amongst others. However, the studies of the remnants have allowed historians to reconstruct the lives of these cities in an exhibition now hosted in l’Escala (Catalonia). The exhibition comes from Italy and uses the latest technologies (scenographic reconstructions, multisensorial effects, virtual interfaces, holograms, 3D technology, interactive systems and a unique 3D film with tridimensional sound and special effects) to enable visitors to walk and live in Pompeii, Herculaneum, Baiae, Stabiae and Capri. For example, they can visit the Nymphaeum of Baia which is seven metres below ground. The exposition will be open until 9th September.

The ‘Caixa Penedès Vijazz’ kicked off with a concert from the seven-Grammy award winner Al Jarreau. At the heart of one of Catalonia’s most famous wine regions and less than 50 km away from Barcelona, a series of jazz concerts take place over the weekend, combined with wine tasting.

The 5th edition of the Catalan capital’s music festival ‘Cruïlla Barcelona’ kicked off with Iggy & the Stooges, Nneka, Gogol Bordello, Julieta Venegas, La Pegatina, M.I.A, The Specials, Cypress Hills, 2manydjs, Sharon Jones, Amadou & Mariam, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Gustavo Gordera being some of the 35 artists who will play their music from Friday to Saturday night.

Catalan and international painting from 1870 to 1970 will interact to show the relation between people and landscape. The exhibition ‘Landscapes of light, dream landscapes. From Gauguin to Delvaux’ kicks off the activities at the Espai Carmen Thyssen, in Sant Feliu de Guíxols Monastry, on the Costa Brava. This will be the first of many exhibitions in this Catalan coastal town, said Carmen Thyssen. In fact the Baroness and the town’s City Council are planning to build a permanent Thyssen Museum in the town. Thyssen also stated that it would be “wonderful” to show more paintings in her collection at Catalonia’s National Art Museum’s expansion.

The ‘Gaudí Experiència’ offers the visitor, in 9 different languages, an interactive experience, diving into the work of the Catalan genius who designed the Sagrada Família, La Pedrera, the Casa Batlló and the Parc Güell. In fact, the new museum is located next to the famous park. It shows how nature’s elements including cypress trees, water and the Montserrat Mountain inspired Gaudí.

Catalan-singing band Antònia Font is preparing a new album. According to band sources, the group has all the material ready and is aiming to record it before the end of 2012. Antònia Font is continuing to tour with their last album, Lamparetes, but they are currently combining stage-shows with the task of creating another outstanding album.

This year’s ‘Grec ‘Festival offers 68 plays, dancing, music and circus performances from July 1st to the 31st, 30 of them from international artists. Ramón Simó, the new director of the event, considers that this year’s Grec is more international, contemporany and multidisciplinary than ever before and its objective is to bring to Barcelona the best shows from Europe and the world.

Lana del Rey, New Order and The Roots star at the three day advanced music festival attended by almost 100,000 people. Visitors from 80 different countries filled the festival with a thousand different colours as Sónar Barcelona was the culmination of the Festival's travels for this year, which have taken it to Sao Paulo, Tokyo and Cape Town.

Sónar 2012 electronic music festival is underway and Barcelona’s CosmoCaixa has invited its visitors to hear the sounds of meteorology at the ‘METEOlab’ exhibition. It is a selection of works by some of the most prominent artists in the field of audible and multimedia contemporary creation, such as Thomas Köner, Chris Watson and Geir Jenssen, all inspired in meteorology and climatic phenomenology.

The festival offers more than 150 proposals in its program, including music, exhibitions, screenings and activities for professionals based around the technology applied to artistic creation. For three days, from June 14th to the 16th, Sonar brings electronic rhythms to Barcelona. This year, the MACBA square, in the centre of Barcelona, will be the venue for Festival’s day programme while the Fira Gran Via, at l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, will be the night venue.

This weekend, 14,500 people rocked at the Palau Sant Jordi, in Montjuïc, in a charity concert that brought together the most famous Catalan singers and bands. Singer songwriter Lluís Llach interpreted a poem with former F.C. Barcelona Manager, Pep Guardiola, who finished with the verse: “Everything is to be done, and everything is possible”. 20 more artists participated in the concert, which turned into a cry against AIDS and for the independence of Catalonia.