Society

CaixaBank and Visa Europe will begin installing the system enabling “contactless payments” to be made throughout Barcelona. The system consists of paying for goods valued at less than €20 by passing a special credit card in front of a sensor, with no need of actually introducing the card anywhere or typing any code. The system will become fully operational to coincide with the Mobile World Congress, which starts on February 27th. Barcelona will be the first city in Europe where the contactless payment method can be used, ahead of London, which aims to have it ready for the Olympics this summer.

Barcelona City Council launched a plan to improve street cleaning. The plan aims to change the perception of residents and visitors of the city by fostering street irrigation, better waste collection and increasing the frequency of cleaning teams, among other initiatives. The city’s downtown and other entertainment areas will also have more police on patrol to prevent people urinating on the streets.

The Status Report on the Catalan Language 2010 shows an increase in the Catalan speaking population over the past ten years. This places Catalan on the list of the hundred most spoken languages in the world with 10 million speakers. However, the report claims that the scope of Catalan is being limited by state policies, its precarious presence in cultural products and the growing use of English in schools.

Barcelona’s famous central artery and main tourist street will undergo a major transformation due to the degradation experienced over the last number of years. Barcelona City Council has decided to make Les Rambles an appealing location and presented an investment plan based on six main points. It aims to increase security and to make the street more pleasant to walk on. The plan has a €10 million budget and will be gradually implemented between 2012 and 2018.

Sant Joan de Déu Hospital in Greater Barcelona has become the first facility in the world to assist a woman who lost her two ovaries to get pregnant. A decade ago she had to have her ovaries completely removed because of two tumours. Ovarian tissue was frozen, kept for ten years and now re-implanted. The patient has had her period again and, thanks to in vitro fertilisation, is now pregnant.

Catalonia is fast becoming an international reference point in research projects thanks mainly to a large number of articles being produced and exchange initiatives with other countries being set up. Catalan research centres, especially medical and technical institutions, have accomplished an important level of international recognition after a relatively short period of time.

The Parkinson symptoms detector device will help patients fight the degenerative disease and improve their quality of life. The system, partly created by Catalan researchers, now needs to be tested on four volunteer patients from around Catalonia. The initiative has brought together institutions from Italy, Israel, Germany and Spain.

The Catalan public television and radio broadcaster continues to lead the audience share in Catalonia. Regarding newspapers, ‘La Vanguardia’ tops the ranking in Catalonia, followed by ‘El Periódico’. The number of consumers choosing newspapers in Catalan has grown by 29% in the last year, thanks to the recently created ‘Ara’ and the new edition of ‘La Vanguardia’ in Catalan. This totals 48% of its readers.

The brain damage a foetus may suffer during pregnancy is sometimes not detected in the first few years of a child's life. If that damage could be detected early, psychological stimulation could reduce future learning disorders. Scientists from Barcelona’s Hospital Clínic have identified biomarkers indicating possible brain damage while carrying out a brain scan.

In an international conference taking place in Barcelona of Ombudsmen from Europe, America and Africa, the Catalan Ombudsman, Rafael Ribó, has warned that the institution has “less influence”. Furthermore, in some areas of Europe there is a threat that they will “disappear”. The Ombudsmen have been discussing their role in the face of the privatisation of basic services. The conference has been organised with the ‘Cercle d’Economia’, which is mainly an economic forum, open to businesspeople, academics and economic professionals.

Students have protested against the Catalan Government’s measures intended to adjust university budgets. Protesters have criticised “privatisation”, with budget cuts and university tax increases. However, the Catalan Government denied these claims and said it had no intention of laying off 4,000 lecturers and researchers. As with other strikes, the figures presented by both sides are contradictory. Organisers talk about a “success” and stress that in some faculties classes were completely suspended. Nevertheless, official information states the uneven support of students for the strike action, ranging from 25% to 40% depending on the faculty.

The Spanish IT multinational company Intel and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center will create a joint research and development lab to calculate speeds on the exaFLOP scale, which are a thousand times quicker than the current fastest computers in the world. The lab will be created in Barcelona over the coming years, at the BSC facilities. Intel hopes to reach Exascale performance within the next ten years.

The trade union organising the protest has said that 70% of doctors took part in the strike, while the Catalan Ministry of Health reduced the figure to only 20%. Doctors are protesting at the budget cuts in the Catalan healthcare system in order to decrease the public deficit, which included a 5% salary reduction. The doctor’s union called for a strike on November 15th and 16th, coinciding with the negotiations on the 2012 budget and the Spanish elections. The Catalan Government stated that the strike asks for unrealistic salary increases and considered it has “failed”. 20,000 medical consultations have to be postponed.

The French newspaper ‘Le Monde’ published an article in December 2006 that falsely linked FC Barcelona with doping practices. A first trial condemned ‘Le Monde’ to pay 300,000 euros to the Catalan sports club, but the French newspaper and the journalist Stéphane Mandard appealed. A second court reduced the fine to 15,000 euros, but they appealed again. The Spanish Supreme Court has upheld the last sentence and dismissed the French newspaper's appeal.

Eurofragance is a Catalan company that belongs to a very specific economic sector: the fragrance market. Specialising in producing scents for food and bathroom products, this company with its headquarters in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area exports 90% of its products. Its creations can be found around the world but especially in the Middle East and emerging markets