award

The Catalan actor David Verdaguer, known for his comic roles in Catalan TV programmes such as ‘APM’ and ‘Crackòvia’, has recently received the Gaudí Award in the best actor category for his leading role in ‘10,000km’, directed by Carlos Marqués-Marcet. After the success of the film, Carlos Marqués is planning a new project to be filmed in London with a supporting role for Verdaguer. Deeply dedicated to theatre, David Verdaguer has just performed in the play ‘El somni Americà’ at the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona.

Salvador Sunyer, Director of the theatre festival Temporada Alta, is a great example of what defines an entrepreneur. He created the company ‘Bitò Produccions’ in Girona in 1992 along with two professional local actors who wanted to stimulate theatrical activities in the city. They immediately planned the creation of a new festival called the ‘Temporada Alta’ 24 years ago as a short cycle based on premieres, but it has grown at such a great speed that they have achieved a 90% occupancy rate every year since 2000. Last year they sold 94% of all tickets. Without a doubt, the Festival has become a point of reference in the sector, considered by experts as the best festival in Spain in terms of quality and pioneering spirit. For this reason, in 2010, Sunyer received Catalonia's National Theatral Award. Sunyer works hard to bring to Girona the greatest artists from the international scene as well as being a platform for presenting new local talents

On the second day of the Mobile World Congress, which is the largest event of the mobile industry and is currently being held in Barcelona, the GSMA announced the Global Mobile Award winners in more than 30 categories and Blackberry presented a new phone oriented towards the business sector. If Then This That won the Best Overall Prize in the app category and LG’s G3 and the iPhone 6 shared the Best Smartphone award. In the featured keynotes speech, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales remarked on the importance of minority languages on the internet. In addition, Wales presented his project to provide free access to Wikipedia in developing countries, following Monday's announcements by Google and Facebook to also provide internet access to the entire planet.

Isona Passola, the producer of the internationally-acclaimed Catalan film ‘Pa Negre’ (Black Bread), the Spanish contender for an Oscar in 2013, believes that “Catalan culture can be appreciated worldwide”. Passola has made many historical documentaries and is now convinced that “life acquires meaning when working for collective benefit”. Last year she presented ‘L’Endemà’, a documentary aimed at countering the arguments against Catalan independence and financed through crowd-funding. Passola, the current president of the Catalan Film Academy, is “a true defender of the right to form a family” and “has never lost the joie de vivre”.

José Manuel Lara Bosch, President and partial owner of the Barcelona-based Grupo Planeta – the world’s largest publisher in Spanish language – died on Saturday in the Catalan capital aged 68, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. His funeral was held on Monday in Barcelona and it brought together top representatives from Catalonia’s and Spain’s political, business, media and cultural worlds. Grupo Planeta owns many publishing houses as well as TV channels, radio stations and newspapers. It also grants each year the biggest prize in Spanish literature. In the late 1960s, Lara Bosch started to hold top positions in the family’s publishing house Planeta, founded by his father. In the 1980s, he was behind the business’ expansion, buying many publishing houses. His brother’s early death in 1995 made him become the group’s ‘number 2’ after his father, who passed away in 2003. In the 1990s and 2000s, Bosch transformed Planeta into a multimedia giant.

Catalan cinema is getting ready for the 7^th edition of its annual ‘Oscars’ ceremony, the Gaudí Awards. The event, organised by the Catalan Film Academy, will take place next Sunday at the Sant Jordi Club in Barcelona and will be hosted by the Catalan actor and theatre director Àngel Llàcer. ‘El Niño’, the Catalan co-production directed by Daniel Monzón, and ‘Stella Cadente’, directed by Luis Miñarro, compete in the Best Director, Best Film and Best Script categories with 15 and 13 nominations, respectively. They are followed by the horror film ‘[REC]4: Apocalipsis’, with nine nominations, together with ‘10,000km’ and ‘Rastres de Sàndal’, with eight nominations each.  

The crime literary festival BCNegra will celebrate its 10^th anniversary in Barcelona from 29^th January to 7^th February with distinguished authors, such as the British and American thriller writers Anne Perry and Sue Grafton, as well as the Scottish author Philip Kerr. This year’s edition, with a 40% increase in its budget, which rises to €140,000, will be held for the first time at the Liceu Conservatory and will offer more than 50 activities. The event will gather together almost 70 renowned writers from all around the world and will award the Spanish crime fiction author, Alicia Giménez Bartlett, with the 10^th Pepe Carvalho Prize, named after the famous detective created by Barcelona-born Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. 

The Academy of Catalan Cinema has released the nominees for the 7 Gaudí Awards, the main annual prizes recognising Catalan motion film productions. ‘El Niño’, by Daniel Monzón, tops the ranking with 15 nominations, including Best Non-Catalan Language Film, Best Director and Best Script. However, the movie is nominated twice in two categories (Best Actor and Best Secondary Actor), so it could only win 13 awards at the most. It is followed by ‘Stella Cadente’, with 13 nominations; ‘[REC] 4: Apocalipsis’ with 9; and ’10,000 KM’ and ‘Rastres de Sándal’, both of which have received 8 nominations. The 4 nominees for Best European Film are ‘Ida’ by Pawel Pawlikowski (Poland); ‘La grande bellezza’ by Paolo Sorrentino (Italy); ‘La isla mínima’ by Alberto Rodríguez (Spain); and ‘Magical Girl’ by Carlos Vermut (Spain). The awards ceremony will take place in Barcelona on 1 February.

The International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) presented the awards for the year 2013. Messi has been honoured as the highest goalscorer in the world’s main football leagues, and Iniesta as the best playmaker in the world. On Friday, Andrés Iniesta and Leo Messi received the awards at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper from Robert Ley, vice-president of the IFFHS. This is the second consecutive time that Iniesta has won the award after he also collected it in 2012, thus succeeding his team-mate Xavi Hernández, who has won it four times. Messi has also won his award for the second time in a row.

The Catalan Film Academy has announced the 10 European films to be candidates for the 7^th Gaudí Awards, the main cinema competition in Catalonia. Among others, these include: 'Deux jours, une nuit' ('Two days, one night'), written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne; 'La grande belleza' ('The great beauty'), directed by Paolo Sorrentino; 'La Vénus à fourrure' ('Venus in Furs'), by Roman Polanski; 'Nymphomaniac: Vol. I and Vol. II', written and directed by Lars von Trier; and, the Spanish 'La isla mínima', directed by Alberto Rodríguez. The award ceremony will take place in Barcelona at the end of January. The nominations were selected by a committee appointed by the Board of the Catalan Film Academy.

Juan Goytisolo (born 1931 in Barcelona) is the latest winner of the Cervantes Prize, which is considered to be the Nobel Prize for literature in Spanish. On Monday at noon, the jury’s verdict was read by Spain’s Minister for Culture, José Ignacio Wert, and it emphasised the author’s "ability to delve into language", his "complex stylistic proposals" and "his desire to bring together" different cultures. Goytisolo, who currently resides in Marrakech (Morocco), will receive the award at a ceremony to be held on April 23 in Alcalá de Henares, in Madrid's region. The Cervantes Prize is awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and is worth €125,000. Goytisolo's works have been translated into English, French, German, Polish, Slovak and Romanian, among others.

Photographer Colita has rejected the National Photography Prize awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture because of "the pitiful, shameful and painful" situation of the cultural sector in Spain. Colita, who was one of the main photographers portraying Barcelona's bohemian life of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, did so after another Catalan artist, the world-famous musician Jordi Savall, did the same last week for similar reasons. In both cases, the two artists highlighted that their reasons for rejecting the award were linked to the Spanish Government's cultural policies and had nothing to do with its blocking attitude towards Catalonia's self-determination process. Colita ironically stated that she "does not know where [the Spanish Ministry of Culture] is located, neither if it exists".

The internationally-recognised Early Music expert, Catalan Jordi Savall, rejected on Thursday Spain’s National Music Prize, which is awarded by the Spanish Government each year. Savall has not accepted the Prize, which was announced on Wednesday and comes with €30,000, because he wants to show his rejection of the Spanish Government’s cultural policies, particularly that towards musicians. Savall is probably the world’s top interpreter of viola da gamba and the main expert in Early and Renaissance music. In 2012 he received the Leonie Sonning Music Foundation Prize, considered to be the ‘Nobel Prize of Music’. In a letter addressed to the Spanish Culture Minister, José Ignacio Wert, Savall blames the Spanish Government for “the dramatic lack of interest and the great incompetence in defending and promoting arts and its creators”. Furthermore he “deplores the Spanish Government’s downplaying policy towards the vast majority of musicians”. Besides, Savall has been publicly advocating for Catalonia’s right to self-determination in the last few months.

Catalan author Jaume Cabré’s latest novel 'Jo confesso' has been translated into English and is finally hitting bookstores in the Anglophone world for the first time since its original publication in 2011. It was translated by Mara Faye Letham and published by Arcadia books. The novel, which this year won the Courrier International Prize for 'Best foreign novel', as well as several Catalan literature awards, has already been translated into Spanish, German, Italian and Chinese, among others. This is another success for Catalan literature, after the publication in English of 'Quadern gris' ('The Grey Notebook') by Josep Pla and the Joan Sales classic 'Incerta Glòria' ('Uncertain Glory'). Catalan literature is blossoming among English readers, thanks to the recent translations of several other classics.

On Wednesday evening, at an award ceremony in Barcelona, the Mexican author won the prestigious literary award the Planeta Prize, with his novel 'Milena o el fémur más bello del mundo' ('Milena, or the most beautiful femur in the world'). The Planeta Prize, now in its 63^rd edition, is an award bestowed on unpublished books in Spanish that are submitted under pseudonyms, and with false titles, in theory to avoid judges being biased by author’s reputations. In the case of the winner, the work was presented under the pseudonym Eduardo Nevado, with the fake title 'Los crímenes del cromosoma XY ('XY chromosome crimes­'). A finalist to the prize, was Barcelona journalist Pilar Eyre, who submitted her work 'Mi color favorito es verte' ('Seeing you is my favourite colour'), under the alias Coral Teide and title 'Se llamaba Sébastien' ('His name was Sébastien').