Society

The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, which is one of Australia’s main universities, will offer Master and PhD programmes in Barcelona. The RMIT University, which has three campuses in Melbourne and two in Vietnam, is now coming to Europe and will coordinate its activities in the continent from Barcelona. The Australian education institution will also cooperate with several Catalan universities, in particular the UPC, the UPF and ELISAVA. The Catalan Minister for Economy and Knowledge, Andreu Mas-Colell, attended the opening ceremony. He underlined that Australia’s higher education system is “the most internationalised in the world”. He also stated that the RMIT campus in Barcelona “is a bridge towards Europe, the Mediterranean Area and Latin America”.

The healthcare tourism sector is growing. Russian, British and German visitors make the most of their holiday trip by visiting specialists, passing medical tests or undergoing a surgical operation. As a response to this, a private medical center in Girona has announced that it will invest more than €1 million to profit from healthcare tourism.

The new species has been named “Nievisia sossiensis” and has been discovered by researchers at the Catalan Paleontology Institute. Described as a small primate that weighed between 100 and 150 grams and lived in the Eocen epoch, the remains have been found at the archeological site of Sossís near the town of Conca de Dalt (Lleida Pyrenees). The research has been published this month in the international magazine ‘Journal of Human Evolution’, specialized in Paleolithic Archaeology and Primatology.

The parties defending the current Catalan school model, which represent 80% of Catalonia’s Parliament, met on Tuesday to discuss how to face the Spanish Government’s Education Reform, known as LOMCE. They all agreed to act together in Madrid to try to change the law. The Catalan Government proposed modifying the reform in the Spanish Parliament in order to make it honour Catalonia’s main law – approved via a binding referendum – which clearly states that Catalan is the language of instruction. The Catalan school model is based on the linguistic immersion principle, guaranteeing equal opportunities and social cohesion. The Spanish Executive’s Education Reform aims to stop linguistic immersion and allow parents to choose Spanish as their children’s language of instruction.

Both women have been awarded Catalonia’s most prestigious prize for “their determination and courage in the defence of human rights”. Malala Yousafzai is the young activist in Pakistan who was shot by the Taliban for defending the right to education, particularly for female students. Gro Harlem Brundtland coined the term “sustainable development”, advocated for fighting climate change, was the Director of the World Health Organisation and had the luck to escape from Utoya’s deadly attack. Each year, the ‘Premi Internacional Catalunya’ is given to individuals who have greatly contributed to humankind’s development. Brazil’s former President Lula da Silva, received the prize last year. Other awardees include: Haruki Murakami, Jimmy Carter, Aung San Suu Kyi, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Doris Lessing, Jacques Delors, Amartya Sen and Karl Popper.

The Spanish Government has approved its Education Reform, which aims to make Spanish a teaching language in Catalonia and reduces the Autonomous Communities’ power to manage their education system. The new law states the Spanish Government is to decide on the curricula of the main subjects, such as History. In addition, tests will be set at the end of the schoolstages and their contents will be exclusively decided from Madrid. Since the tests will be the same for the whole of Spain, items regarding Catalan culture, geography or history will not enter into the final examinations. The Catalan Education Minister, Irene Rigau, considered the law to be “pre-democratic” and “re-centralist”. She also stated that “it is impossible to honour it in Catalonia”, since privately-owned schools teach in Catalan and the law goes against the Catalan Statute of Autonomy (Catalonia’s main law).

The vaccine works by re-introducing immune system cells, which have previously been extracted and modified, in order to avoid the destruction of beta cells, which are those producing insulin. The vaccine has been developed by researchers from the Germans Trias Hospital in Badalona, in Greater Barcelona. Furthermore, in February, another group of Catalan scientists announced the cure of Type 1 Diabetes in two dogs, which is the first time this has been successful in large animals. In the last few years, Catalonia and especially Greater Barcelona have become a world centre within the biomedicine sector.

The ‘Rossinyol’ project aims to improve social problems faced by foreigners such as inequality and social exclusion. It is an adapted version of the ‘Nightingale’ program, consolidated in different European cities, and was brought to Girona due to migratory patterns. The ‘Rossinyol’ project is based on a mentoring network helping the inclusion process of immigrant children. Volunteer university students play a tutorial role for Primary or Secondary school foreign students who are in difficult economic and social situations. In 2006, the project was implemented for the first time both in Catalonia and Spain thanks to the University of Girona. Now the project is applied by different organisations in the province of Barcelona and in Navarra, in the north of Spain.

The initiative targets 10,000 young women, studying at university and wanting to start their own business, from Morocco, Palestine, Jordan and Spain. The 'Young Women as Job Creators' project aims to create 400 new businesses. It is an initiative by the Union for the Mediterranean – whose headquarters are based in Barcelona – and the Association of Organisations of Mediterranean Businesswomen (AFAEMME). The project will run from May to November 2013 and it will be based on workshops and courses taught in universities from the four countries involved. The initiative has a budget of €300,000, paid by the Government of Norway, the Catalan multinational Gas Natural Fenosa, the Union for the Mediterranean and the European Investment Bank.

The poster ‘Keep Calm and Speak Catalan’ was created by Josep Maria Ganyet, expert in digital communication, in order to protest against the draft law proposed by the Spanish Minister of Education which puts at risk the school model of linguistic immersion in use in Catalonia since the end of Franco’s dictatorship. The poster, in its origin a tweet, came from the fields of social media and reached Congress as a symbol of passive resistance directed at those aiming to alter the Catalan school model. It refers to the historical poster ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, which also became one of the most wide spread pop icons.

The European Commissioner for Education, Culture and Multilingualism, promised Catalan Euro MPs to ask the Spanish Government – chaired by Mariano Rajoy - about the Education Reform it is preparing, which goes against the linguistic immersion model of Catalonia’s school system. According to the Catalan MEPs, Androulla Vassiliou was “a bit perplexed” about the Spanish Government’s initiative and the recent judicial sentences obliging teaching to be in Spanish if a single pupil in the classroom asks for it. Besides, the Spanish State Council – the Spanish Government’s top advisory body – criticised the reform’s measure obliging the Catalan Executive to pay for private schools in Spanish for the pupils who do not want to attend public schools in Catalan. The Catalan Education Minister asked the Spanish Government “to paralyse” the reform.

The Catalan Education Minister will appeal the decision to the Spanish Supreme Court and meanwhile will not follow the petition of the Catalan Supreme Court (TSJC). The Minister stressed that “the classroom language cannot change just because a child asks for it”. She emphasised that only 17 families have asked to have their children schooled in Spanish. These kids received individualised attention in Spanish but the TSJC thought it was not enough. In the last few years, the Catalan school model has been put in the spotlight by Spanish nationalism, despite having been in place for the last 30 years. The model has shown that pupils perfectly command both languages by the end of their studies. It has also been praised by international organisations, as it guarantees equal opportunities and social cohesion.

The Consortium for Advanced Studies of Barcelona (CASB), made up of 9 of the most important universities from the United States and 4 Catalan public universities from Barcelona, is considering implementing international masters degree programmes and summer courses together. 300 American students have already come to Catalonia to study through the CASB. According to the American universities, the Catalan language is not an obstacle but an added value to the cultural and social experience of studying in Barcelona.

The Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) is one of the 3 centres with the highest scientific production internationally in its field. It is directed by Eudald Carbonell, the palaeontologist who has been directing the Atapuerca site since its discovery. Atapuerca was where the oldest human specimens in Europe were found, the so-called Homo Antecessor. The IPHES started its activities in 2006 but due to its increasing relevance it needed more room. Since last June the institute has moved to a new building in the Sescelades Campus of the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) in southern Catalonia. On Friday the President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, officially unveiled the facilities. The new building cost €6 million and it has 3,000 square metres to host 62 members of staff.

The firm QNORM, located in the Scientific and Technologic Park of the Girona University (UdG), participates in a European project that aims to transform vegetal biomass into plastic. The project, which is called BioConSepT (bio-conversion and separation technology), has a budget of 13 million euros (MEUR), funded by the European Union. The project wants to use vegetal biomass (such as fats, oils and straw) and turn it into plastic in order to reduce the use of petrol.