This cooperative was set up at the end of the Franco era to defend the workers. Today it has seven offices and more than 80 members defending the underdog in court, be they victims of asbestos or of bank abuse. Their legal crusades target the new exclusions, the growing precariousness in employment and the decline in rights and freedoms.
Talking to them about the profound changes that have occurred in the music industry in the last twenty years, they don’t relate to it. Born in the eighties, Pau Vallvé, Clara Peya and Maria Arnal have no links to that old world whatsoever.
A conscious diet for a healthy life: this is the principle that guides these three nutritionists. Marc Vergés, Marta Castells and Consol Rodríguez suffered from chronic illnesses or conditions which they were able to reverse through dietary changes.
Barcelona’s traditions as well as its prestigious schools and university centres make it an attractive location for designers. Modernity attracts modernity, although the business apparatus must be able to consolidate them. A combination of insecurity and incentives is leading to the redefinition of the profession, as shown by Alex Trochut, Marta Altés and Ariadna Serrahima.
To transform the economy so that society changes: this is the goal of hundreds of examples of social economy, born and raised here in Catalonia. We take a look at three of them.
Pescatarianism (vegetarianism plus fish), traditional bread baking with an innovative edge, strictly organic country produce… these are some of the options expanding gastronomic horizons in Barcelona and its area.
Josep Carner, Galyn Norwood and Jordi Sánchez Forés are three of the eighteen students from Barcelona that took part in a project by the CERN European Laboratory for Particle Physics to develop new products based on scientific discovery.
Creating a video game is a collective endeavour where every member of the development team adds something from their own personal perspective. Andreu Taberner, Rubèn Farrús and Kevin Cerdà are three video game authors who have demonstrated their talent through their work and thus gained worldwide recognition.
Jordi Morató, Neus Ballús and Carlos Marqués-Marcet are young Catalan filmmakers who have come into their own with their first features, which have won them awards and taken them to festivals around the world.
Young, non-conformist and with clearly defined ideas. These adjectives describe Santi Pozo, Adrià Recasens and Jordi Valls, three of the people chosen to imagine the future of Barcelona, to explore what defines us as a city and as a society. They represent up-and-coming talent in the Catalan capital according to Bibiana Ballbè, the curator of Fàbrica Futur Barcelona, the movement they are involved in.
Closing our eyes is a reflex action that we find ourselves doing when we hear good music because, unconsciously, we want to enhance our sense of hearing. Ignasi Cambra’s blindness has brought him closer to the keys and has given him a temperamental character that has been seen in venues throughout Catalonia, Spain, Russia, Japan and the United States, where he trained seven years ago.
With her mezzosoprano voice, Marta Rodrigo dedicates her life to creating music with historical criteria, taking into account the conditions in which it was performed at the time it was composed. Therefore, the instruments are either from the period or are replicas and she thinks about the sound qualities of the historical moment. Rodrigo is a singer who studied in Catalonia, Belgium and Germany and is half of a duo, together with the lute player Andreas Martin.
Joan Bagés calls himself a sound artist, a concept that, he believes, more fully reflects the task of contemporary music creators, as he understands his work to be a cross-cutting, interdisciplinary project, on a par with the concept of a visual artist and far from the work of the composer who practised an artisan craft.
First it was chefs who took Catalan avant-garde cuisine to the very summit of international opinion. Winemakers followed, with creations born from their terroir which made a great name for themselves. And now sommeliers are bringing things full circle, ensuring that both the food and wines are properly explained to diners.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Rubèn Garcia worked as a researcher for one year at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. However, he wanted to turn his career around; he was a chemist and was becoming increasingly more interested in
This Brazilian artist got hooked on the world of design at the age of six. “I was very little, but I liked making my own toys and used to make gifts for the whole family. I somehow knew where my
After studying at the School of Architecture of Barcelona and taking off to Lund University in Sweden, Marc Folch was granted a NASA scholarship for the “Space for Living – Living in Space” programme developed in Houston by the US
Two and a half years ago, Víctor Bautista was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. His life changed completely as of that moment. However, far from becoming demoralised, Víctor leveraged his professional experience in IT to improve his quality of life and that of other diabetics around the world.
As far as Francesc Sistach is concerned, youth is a question of attitude rather than age. Perhaps it is Francesc’s seven-year-old daughter, Sara, who keeps him young at heart. She suffers severe autism, which was detected in the first few months of her life.
With almost a decade of business adventures behind him, twenty-five-year-old Marc Cercós is an experienced entrepreneur. Alongside Pau Garcia-Milà, he was the whizz-kid of Catalan IT thanks to eyeOS, the desktop that is installed on a server and which can then be operated from any computer. He created it at the tender age of eighteen, when nobody had even heard of cloud computing.
In Catalonia, for many years now theatrical innovation, experimentation and risk have been about dressing up the characters of Hamlet in a white blazer and having them sing in front of a microphone. This, we were told, is modernity, and
Three years ago, Marta Cerdà Alimbau set off for New York to seek her fortune with her photo album under her arm. She had won the ADC Young Guns award, had worked in London and Berlin and had the makings
I find it distressing to rehash what everyone says about Josep Pedrals, that he’s a young poet, as if we were announcing Youth Fashion Week at El Corte Inglés – denim fashion, bold sonnets, poetic joy, etc. We get it:
The name Jacob Suñol will mean nothing to most of the people reading this. Nor will the names Pere Vallès or Ana Izquierdo. However, they are important people. The economic recovery has thousands of unsung heroes – people who risk their own assets to push projects through and generate economic growth and employment. They are the entrepreneurs.
Just like Einstein, Sònia Fernández-Vidal started out in the world of quantum physics because she didn’t know it was difficult. Nor did she ever think that it would be impossible to conduct research at CERN (the nerve centre of particle
The objects around us are such an important part of our world that sometimes we do not even realise that they transform our lives. The design of tools and machines, for example, not only makes our daily life easy or
“Who said that girls aren’t into engineering?” The engineer Mercedes Balcells, a pioneer in biomechanics and high-flying researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), asks the question and then points to herself, because she is the living proof that
They say that even José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, towards the end of his term as Spanish prime minister, went onto YouTube to see Españistán. Este país se va a la mierda (or “Spanistan, This Country is Going to the Dogs”),
Her letter of introduction to the world of the silver screen, Tres dies amb la família (Three Days with the Family), came out in 2010 and positioned her as one of the most promising new directors in Catalan cinema. It
Marçal Lladó (Girona, 1978) and Xavier Riembau (La Bisbal d’Empordà, 1975) will be remembered for having created a record company, Bankrobber, which is one of the most exciting labels on today’s Catalan music scene. The label has just celebrated its
