cultural industry

Sónar+D is an international professional conference for creativity and technological innovation, which coincides with Barcelona's Sónar Festival of electronic and advanced music. The 3^rd edition of the professional event will take place in Barcelona on the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th of June 2015, at the same time as the popular and prestigious music festival. Its main aim is to bring together international experts presenting initiatives and tools that will shape future creative experiences in the fields of music, visuals, and interactive content and transmedia platforms. This year, 4,000 professionals and 2,000 companies from all over the world will take part in the event, a remarkable leap forward on last year's figures. "It is not just a fair or a conference", Sonar co-Director Ricard Robles said on Thursday. "It is a 360-degree, all encompassing event, a point of interaction between the creative and technological communities".

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.

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".

About 3,200 square meters of native vegetation cover the frontage of the building under criteria of sustainability. The garden, 185 meters long and 18 meters tall is pioneer in the use of wastewater for grass irrigation.

‘Extraordinary Film Studios’ may open its doors as early as 2011 and employ some 80 people. The company already has three films scheduled for the new studios.

The 28th edition of the Liber International Book Fair ends tomorrow in Barcelona. This year’s 3-day fair focuses on new technologies such as the Ipad, book tablets and other electronic reading material.