The Catalan language

By Alex Gatius
Catalan is the language of Catalonia. Catalan is not, as some believe, a dialect of Spanish, but a language that developed independently from the Latin spoken by the Romans who colonised the Tarragona area.
Catalan is also spoken in other regions such as Valencia region and Baleares Islands and even a part of Italian country, the region of Alguer. All of these are inside the European Union.

Catalan is spoken by thousands of people each day, in fact this language has recently reached than 10 million speakers that is exactly the 72.4% of all the Catalan community.

But this seems not to be enough to make it an official language, at least at European level and not as a dialect. 

Language is a great asset of each society, we must ensure his survival because it is part of us, is our heritatge to the next people that will come after us, if we let it die, we will lose forever an essential part of us. 

This is a video about some statistics of Catalan as a language and its important for our country as all the languages all over the world.

If you are interested in learning a few words you can visit the Cambridge online Dictionary.

Us hi esperem! 

Mobile World Congress and Innovation

By Adrián Lorenzo

Since 2006, Barcelona has signed a contract with Delson Group Inc and some important Chinese companies, which finishes in 2018. This contract is about a huge conference called "Mobile World Congress".  In this congress, there are some companies, start-up's, and freelancers who innovate in the different areas of technology (most of these companies, deal with mobile phones).

Environment

Since 2008, the GSMA company, which is working with
the Mobile World Congress, has been committed to reducing the
impact of business on the environment, both in his offices and at his
events. In particular, Mobile World Congress focuses heavily on reducing waste of printed materials, encouraging the re-use and the recycling of materials, using electronic tools and recycling waste from events.

Innovation

Two companies which went to the Mobile World Congress, independently, modified a VR headsets (VR: Virtual Reality) to improve its level of realism. 

This change, which is called eye-tracking, modified the way to interact with the sense of sight with different NPC (non-person-character, its a game entity, not a person) all speaking in a virtual reality world. This improvement of realism applies to the exchange of glances this means the NPC's eyes follow yours.

Mobile World Congress

By Joaquim Torres

The Mobile World Congress is one of the largest world’s technological exhibitions, focused on the mobile industry. Every year this event attracts a hundred thousand visitors and a thousand operators and companies coming from two hundred countries. These figures place the city as a guide to see and touch the new mobile models that will be launched that year and to know more about all the innovations and new technology that will arrive at the market in the near future. 

Although the Mobile Word Congress is famous for being the main showcase of the mobile companies to present their new models, this event is much more than that, offering information about retail and digital commerce, internet of things, new advertising ways using mobile devices and emerging tech in general. All these topics are presented through exhibitor’s stands and conferences, the two main activities that form this event.

The Mobile Word Congress has been organized in Barcelona since 2006, taking this Catalan city as a word reference and consolidating the event as a fixed stop and a meeting point where all the firms share ideas and show their most upmarket products and sophisticated services.

In 2017, Barcelona will host again this event from the February 27 to March 2, distributing its content in two venues, “Fira Gran Vía” and “Fira Montjuïc”. 

The Mobile Word Congress is a challenge for Barcelona city, pushing to the limit all its services, hotels and means of transportations and a good example of the capacity of Catalans to organize massive events. For this reason if you are thinking of traveling to the city during these days you should book you hotel in advance and plan the trip carefully.

Music festivals

Music Festivals (by Marina)


In Catalonia there are a lot of music festivals all year round. In these festivals you can listen to all kinds of music: jazz, classical music, rock, indie, electronic,...

This are some of the most popular music events:

Jazz Festival of Terrassa (in March or April)

It takes place once a year in Terrassa, a city near Barcelona. For almost a month between March and April it brings together more than 250 artists from young emerging figures to amazing figures of international Jazz.


The last edition of the festival was the 35th and during these years more than 5.500 musitians have played in Terrassa and there have been over 1.100 concerts.


Moreover, this festival organizes dances, gastronomic events, lectures, exhibitions, videos, workshops and a film series, always with jazz as the central element.

The most massive activity of the festival is the Jazz Picinic that takes place in the Vallparadís Park  one Sunday. This event offers outdoor concerts and stands where you can buy food, drinks and t-shirts of the festival.


Primavera Sound (May-June)


It takes place in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, for 4 days. The days of Primavera sound 2017 are 31 May- 4 June and it’s a festival that has been celebrated in Barcelona since 2001.


This festival is organized to have a good experience of live music to all different generations. There you can listen to a lot of different kinds of music, but it’s strongly influenced by rock, pop and the most underground tendences of dance music.


Moreover, during the same days is celebrated in Barcelona the Primavera Pro, an international meeting of professionals of music industry that has become an international reference for independent music.


Festival Grec (June and July)


Festival Grec is the most important festival of music, dance, theatre and circus that takes place in Barcelona.


This festival is celebrated during the months of June and July every year.


Shows are in different theatres and concert halls. The act of presentation of the festival is celebrated in the Teatre Grec de Monjuïc, an outdoor theatre that was built for the Universal Exposition of 1929.


The last edition of Festival Grec was the 40th edition of this festival.


Sónar (June)


Sónar Festival was created in 1994 and it is celebrated in Barcelona every June for 3 intensive days.


Its first class reputation makes this festival a reference for other international ones. This is thanks to the combination of its playful nature and experimentation with newest trends in dance and electronic music.


Sóner festival is able to combine established artists with emerging talent, in all areas of musical and audiovisual production. This facilitates and improve the relationships between creativity, technology, innovation and business.


Sóner Barcelona’s activities are divided in two locations: Sónar by Day, which is located in Fira Monjuïc, and Sónar by Night, located in Fira Gran Via de l’Hospitalet.


Canet Rock (first Saturday of July)


Canet Rock festival was created in 1975 during the last year of Franco’s dictatorship. It was a movement against the government and the festival promised 12 hours of music and crazy atmosphere. In this edition played a lot of Catalan songwriters and singers and they sang controversial songs like L’estaca  and La gallineta which were prohibited by the government. After this edition this festival was never celebrated until 2014.


The festival is held in a waste ground in Canet de Mar. Canet Rock is a meeting point for around 25.000 people from all Catalonia who love Catalan rock. This festival goes on from 7pm until the sun rises.


Currently it continuos being a rebellion act against the government, specially against the Spanish government.

Catalan TV Marathon

LA MARATÓ DE TV3 ( Susana Roca)

La Marató de TV3 is a TV progam created in 1996 by the Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation with a purpose: to promote and foster biomedical research, as well as raise social awareness about the diseases .

The main aim of the La Marató de TV3 is to raise funds from donations basically from the generous  citizens in Catalonia.

Last edition the programm is celebrating his  25 years anniversary with figures for participation and fund-raising that confirm it as the great party for solidarity, social awareness-raising and boosting biomedical research in Catalonia.

Last year (2016) the topic was "Strokes and traumatic spinal cord and brain injury". 

After 21 hours of live  broadcasting in the radio ant TV, the scoreboard for this edition is more than  8.400.00 euros.

Once again, La Marató 2016 enjoyed massive and enthusiastic support from members of the public, who this year organised a total of 3,427 activities in more than 700 places in Catalonia and some outside it. During the weeks before the programme, Catalonia turned into an immense party of support for La Marató, involving a million people around a wide range of activities. With connections all through the day, the people watching La Marató could enjoy a live experience of the charitable and festive atmosphere of the events around Catalonia.

Business and Industry

Proud of its own identity and language, Catalonia is one of Spain's richest and most highly industrialised regions, and also one of the most independent-minded.

In the business area Catalonia has powerful companies as Tous, Casa Terradelles, Puig, etc. But the biggest company in Catalonia is the “CaixaBank”

Catalonia is the first region in mainland Europe attracting foreign investment in business R & D since 2010.

Although we have big companies, the Catalan economy is based mainly for the small and middle business.

By Pere Gasol 

Sport in Catalonia

Sport has an important incidence in Catalan life since the beginning of the 20th century. The main sports in Catalonia are football, basketball, handball, rink hockey, tennis and motorsport. Then I will talk about some of these.

FOOTBALL

Football is considered the most important sport in Catalonia and was introduced in the late 19th century by a combination of British

There are several reasons to affirm that football is the most practiced sport in Catalonia, since both by tradition and by the number of federative licenses in progress, therefore it’s the most important sport in Catalonia.

FC Barcelona stadium

To travel, when people ask me: Where are you from?, if I say that I am from Catalonia, (north-eastern zone of Spain), they immediately join it with the city of Barcelona to the city of Barcelona and the football club barcelona, (FCB) saying right away their players, Messi, Neymar, Suarez, etc. They are known around the world for their great impact.

MOTORSPORT

Motorsport has a long tradition in Catalonia involving many people, with some world champions and several competitions organized since the beginning of the 20th century. ”Circuit de Catalunya”, built in 1991, is one of the main motorsport venues, holding the Catalan motorcycle Grand Prix, the Spanish F1 Grand Prix, a DTM race, and several other races.

Motorcycling is one of the historical sports, with motorcycle road racing world champions as Àlex Crivillé, Sito Pons, Emilio Alzamora and Dani Pedrosa.

Now the most important motorcycle rider is Marc Márquez.

He’s only 23 years old and he’s ALREADY won five World Championship Motorcycle titles in the three existing categories.125cc (2010), Moto2 (2012) and three-time world champion in MotoGP (2013, 2014 and 2016).

In his first season in the top category of motorcycling, he became the title of 2013, becoming the youngest driver to win a MotoGP championship. He is also the youngest driver in history to be three times champion category of motorcycling.

TENNIS

Tennis began to be practised in Catalonia in the late 19th century, in cities such as Barcelona or Reus, by some British people established in Catalonia and members of the Catalan bourgeoisie.

The main annually tennis tournament that is organized in Catalonia is “Torneo Godó”, held in Barcelona on clay surface since 1953.

The tournament is played in the men's singles and men's doubles categories. It is part of the ATP World Tour 500, and delivers one million dollars in prizes

Some Catalan players have won the most world tournaments:

Roland Garros: Sergi Bruguera (1993, 1994), Albert Costa (2002) and Arantxa Sánchez Vicario (1989, 1994, 1998);

US Open: Arantxa Sánchez Vicario (1994).

Masters Cup: Àlex Corretja (1998).

And also some medals have been won by Catalan tennis players in the Olympic Games: Jordi Arrese, silver in 1992, Sergi Bruguera, silver in 1996, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, silver in 1996 and silver in 1992 in doubles.

BASKETBALL

The Gasol brothers, Marc and Pau.these are the names of Catalan players currently making history in the NBA, the league of the United States and the most famous in the world.

Catalan footballers among its players, and many of the most celebrated players of Barcelona team, Xavi Hernández, Carles Puyol, Gerard Piqué, Cesc Fàbregas, Víctor Valdés, Sergio Busquets, etc. Also a great coach Catalan who made history in the barça, this is Pep Guardiola CURRENTLY WORKING.......