Culture

‘Pa negre’ (Black Bread), directed by Agustí Villaronga and shot entirely in Catalan, was the main winner of the last Spanish film awards surprising everyone. Now it has been pre-selected together with Pedro Almodóvar’s latest movie ‘La piel que habito’ ('The Skin I Live In') and Benito Zambrano’s ‘La voz dormida’ (The Sleeping Voice). The film that will represent Spain will be known on September 28th.

Jordi-Pere Cerdà was awarded Catalonia’s highest distinctions, including the National Prize for Literature, the Cross of Sant Jordi and the Prize of Honour of Catalan Letters. He wrote under the pseudonym Antoni Cayrol and was one of the main Catalan voices of the Roussillon.

The award will be presented on September 22nd at Barcelona’s Palau de la Música. The awards are named after Catalan writer Terenci Moix, who was a film lover and a true expert on Hollywood’s classical period.

Iesso was the Roman town that is know nowadays as Guissona, in Western Catalonia. The facilities offer a walk throughout the ruins and an entertaining audiovisual guide to life in the ancient city of Iesso.

The delegation from the Generalitat in the United Kingdom commemorated the National Day at the Tate Modern London, where a major retrospective exhibition of the Catalan painter Joan Miró is currently on display.

Technicians have completed the construction of stages and arts companies have rehearsed. For 4 days Tàrrega will host 261 performances of 54 shows, 16 of them premieres. More than ninety national and international companies will participate in this the 31st edition of the fair.

Despite the financial crisis, visitors have increased by an average of 9.3% compared to the same period from January to August last year

Amongst the numerous acts, a special tribute, sponsored by Alice Cooper and Amanda Lear, was paid to the painter Salvador Dalí. The festival was held in the town of Figures, in northeast Catalonia. It is the best year that the festival has experienced.

Tàrrega, close to Lleida in Western Catalonia, will become the capital of the performing arts from the 8th to the 11th September, during which time the public can enjoy 261 performers. The fair is a mixture of a street festival and professional fair.

The National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) has the greatest collection of Romanesque Art of the world. Highlights from the Alt Urgell series include the altarpiece of St. Michael and St. Peter.

‘Jo confesso’ (‘I confess’) is the new novel by Catalan author Jaume Cabré (Barcelona, 1947). Seven years after publishing ‘Les veus del Pamano’, which sold more than 100,000 copies in Catalan, 450,000 in German and has sold well in a further eleven languages, the writer returns with a novel about love, lack of affection, guilt and evil.

Isaki Lacuesta will run in the official competition with ‘Los Pasos dobles'. Manuel Huerga will show his movie on the Second Republic and the political fight between Catalonia’s main politicians at the time, Francesc Macià and Lluís Companys.

The new cultural facility explains how was life in Manresa, central Catalonia, during the Middle Age. The new centre aims to generate tourism for the city. It was unveiled last weekend.

Vic, in central Catalonia, unveils a renewed museum focusing on leather crafts, “the best in Europe in its field”, according to the institution’s director. The reform aims to make the museum "more understandable" and approachable to the public. The director of the institution has explained that the centre’s new project will coincide with the celebration of the Tanners Guild.

On the 26th, 27th and 28th of August the old streets of Cervera will be filled with mysterious figures, magicians and witches in a colorful dark-arts festivals. The capital of the Segarra county (in Western Catalonia) hopes to have 30,000 visitors between Friday and Sunday.