Yesterday, Tuesday 8 April, as part of the “Mirem per tu” programme, a team from the Barraquer Foundation travelled to the Casal dels Infants in Santa Coloma de Gramenet to carry out comprehensive eye check-ups for adolescents in vulnerable situations, thanks to the current collaboration agreement with the Probitas Foundation.
Established in 2008, the Probitas Foundation is a non-profit organisation focused on promoting access to healthcare for vulnerable populations, both nationally and internationally. Its work particularly centres on the protection and wellbeing of children in contexts of social exclusion.
During the day, a total of 24 minors aged between 12 and 17 were attended to. Of these, 13 will soon need to go to General Optica to have their prescriptions adjusted and to receive their glasses; another 4 will be referred to the Barraquer Ophthalmology Centre for a more thorough examination, while the remaining 9 were found to have adequate visual health.
We would especially like to thank Dr Claudia Andino and Dr Sebastián Arrús, from the Barraquer Ophthalmology Centre, as well as María Fuentes, optometrist at General Optica, for their valuable contribution to this charitable initiative.
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Thousands of rock fans will flock to Santa Coloma de Gramenet, outside Barcelona, on Friday for the eighth edition of the Rock Fest.
The festival will feature 44 bands over three days, offering a wide range of rock and heavy metal styles.
"It will be a Rock Fest with many classics and we have new additions and a variety of heavy metal styles for all tastes," said Inés Quintana, the festival's spokesperson.
One of the most anticipated bands is KK's Priest, formed by former members of Judas Priest.
Its leader, K.K. Downing, said he was looking forward to the show and promised a set of hits from his entire career.
"We are absolutely pumped and excited to be here in Barcelona. Just look at these amazing stages. We will be there tomorrow night playing a great mix," he said.
Other headliners include W.A.S.P., Deep Purple, Pantera, Parkway Drive, Primal Fear, Cavalera, Angelus Apatrida and Ross the Boss.
Organizers are expecting 20,000 music fans to attend each day of the three-day festival.
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The project is located in a transition area between the historic center of Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelona)
with a compact and established urban fabric
with a precipitous and discontinuous morphology
The area of intervention is composed of two plots limited by the Francesc Macià Avenue
Pallaresa Avenue and the Passatge d’en Salvatella
as well as by the stretch of Puig Castellar Avenue that separates both plots
The aim of the project is to create a new centrality in Santa Coloma through the presence of a complex equipped with facilities – hotel
parking – as well as by private and social housing
the intervention strategy stems from the functional discontinuity of the nearby environment
which makes the idea of a continuous fabric unfeasible
the proposal suggests creating vast open spaces and concentrating the construction of high-rise buildings
The vertical nature of the complex aims to free up as much space as possible around the buildings
turning the project into a symbolic landmark in the area
in which it acts as a sort of door or facade defined by the formal dialogue between the two housing buildings that go up on either side of Puig Castellar Avenue
The free space is organized as an urban park
an extension of the nearby Europa Park connected to the Can Zam leisure complex
formed by a low-rise volume with a hotel and two levels of housing
has different heights but a similar facade design
thus giving a unitary image to the totality of the intervention
The arrangement of the volumes adapts with precision to the needs of the site: the prism of the hotel is a parallelepiped with eight heights and a rectangular floor plan
which interacts with the twenty-five story housing tower via two large platforms at different levels
The hotel is lined up with Pallaresa Avenue and the tower is set back
of fourteen heights and an almost squared floor plan has been placed on the other side of Puig Castellar Avenue
and because Pallaresa Avenue is not perpendicular to Puig Castellar
this building visually rounds off the central square without closing it
The compound is complemented with the construction of two social housing buildings for senior citizens
and with a residence for the elderly located on the eastern end
Federico Accetti (directores de proyecto project architects); Catarina Prata
MC2: Julio Martínez Calzón (estructuras structural engineering); A&J Enginyers: Juan Hernández (instalaciones mechanical engineering)
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Police say it’s likely the 39-year-old got stuck trying to retrieve his mobile phone after dropping it
Police in Catalonia are investigating the death of a man who is thought to have become trapped inside a large dinosaur statue while trying to retrieve his mobile phone.
Officers were called to the statue in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a satellite town of Barcelona, after a man and his son noticed something inside the papier-mache stegosaurus on Saturday afternoon.
A spokeswoman for the regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, said the death of the 39-year-old man was not being treated as suspicious.
“A father and son noticed that there was something inside and raised the alarm,” she said.
“We found the body of a man inside the leg of this dinosaur statue. It’s an accidental death; there was no violence. This person got inside the statue’s leg and got trapped. It looks as though he was trying to retrieve a mobile phone, which he’d dropped. It looks like he entered the statue head first and couldn’t get out.
The spokeswoman said officers had called in firefighters to help cut into the statue so the body of the man could be removed.
“We’re still waiting for the autopsy results, so we don’t know how long he was in there, but it seems he was there for a couple of days,” she added.
According to local media, the dead man had been reported missing by his family a few hours before his body was discovered.
The Independent Student Newspaper of Oswego State
I think that this kind of initiative with sports is definitely necessary in our society. The merit and value of this project that unites the people of the city of Santa Coloma around futsal are really great. This is a clear example of the desire to promote the values of sport for many years by Vicenç Garcia, who is one of those people who are worth knowing in life.
Photo by: Jean-Daniel Francoeur via Pexels
A shop in Santa Coloma de Gramanet with the sign showing they accept local currency.Photo: Vicente Zambrano
Santa Coloma de Gramenet has issued a social currency it calls the grama, with the object of incentivising local trade and strengthening residents’ commitment to their town. Inspired by this and other projects, Barcelona City Council is preparing a test local currency for introducing to the Besòs neighbourhoods.
When Bristol Council saw the success of the initiative, it gave its support to the circulation of the currency and extended the range of its use. Today almost half a million inhabitants in Bristol pay their rates with the Bristol pound, which goes to show that social currency can also be a way of promoting and stimulating public policies, because it’s linked to a project for energy, ecological agriculture and promoting the uniqueness of local establishments.
Barcelona’s project for a social currency is linked to the municipal minimum income pilot scheme in the neighbourhoods making up the Besòs Hub. In the image, the Besòs market.Photo: Vicente Zambrano
This social project for the Besòs, called B-Mincome, is a world first and has an estimated budget of 13 million euros, of which 4.85 million is being provided by the European Union. It’s one of the three initiatives in the Urban Innovative Actions programme whose object is to fight poverty and inequality –the other two proposals are the ones in Madrid and Turin.
The Besòs hub project, which will benefit a total of one thousand homes chosen at random, will take place with the collaboration of various partners: the Young Foundation, the Novact Foundation, Ivàlua, the IGOP of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC).
Although the way it’s to be put into practice is still under study, what is clear is that care will be taken over the viability and security of Barcelona’s social currency to avoid fraud of any kind taking place. The biggest challenge, though, is to avoid it becoming a ‘beggar’s currency’, as it’s starting life linked to the introduction of the minimum income.
Traditionally, social currency projects have been driven from the bottom up by civil society. Among other experiments, in Catalonia there’s the turuta in Vilanova i la Geltrú, which even has a game. These currencies successfully set out to create social and personal ties around an alternative project for economic exchange, but their most obvious weakness is that they don’t reach many people and are often idealised by their users.
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Complementary currencies are systems created on the fringes of official currencies to promote economic, social and environmental projects. They also assign value to local activities and resources that are not found on ordinary exchange circuits.
The Austrian town of Wörgl’s local currency reactivated production and internal demand during the Great Depression. The Swiss WIR business cooperative’s credit system is another successful example of a complementary currency. WIR and the Kenyan mobile payments system, M-Pesa, are the only present-day examples that are having a macroeconomic impact.
Time banks are spaces where skills can be exchanged without any money changing hands. Instead, the hours people spend providing services to others are deposited in the bank and withdrawn in the form of other services they need.
The first eco-networks appeared in Catalonia around 2009-2010. These innovative initiatives entailed the use of local currencies, which in turn promoted economic transactions operating outside the dominant monetary system. They are not-for-profit networks of citizens who exchange goods and services that are paid for in social currency.
The digital revolution has eliminated intermediaries from most economic sectors, apart from the area of finance where they have strengthened their grip. The ability to create currency — the exclusive domain of banks — is the primary reason for this anomaly. The solution is to develop new currency-creation mechanisms.
About 60 residents were evacuated from their homes in Santa Coloma de Gramenet
on Monday after cracks were discovered in the internal structure of the buildings
The affected buildings are located at 9 and 11 Pirineus Street
in the Santa Rosa and Raval neighborhoods of the city
51 have informed the city council that they don't have an alternative place to stay with friends or family and need alternative housing
the city council launched a project to rehabilitate the apartment blocks in the area where the evacuation took place
The news follows an incident three weeks ago in which three people lost their lives in a building collapse in Badalona. Three adjacent buildings were evacuated as a safety precaution.
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The local council of Santa Coloma de Gramenet
has ordered all residents living at 9-11 Carrer Pirineus to move out due to safety concerns that the building is at risk of collapse after the appearance of cracks in the building.
Around 60 residents in the building – those living in the A stairway – were evacuated on Monday
After a further inspection on Thursday morning
the council decided to also move residents in the B stairway out of the building.
The apartment block dates from the 1960s and has had conservation and maintenance problems for many years.
A total of 29 people were evacuated on Thursday
A grocery store on the ground floor of the building has also been vacated.
the city council ordered a fifth block of flats to be evacuated on Friday.
Residents living in the twenty flats at 116
Carrer Ausiàs March were ordered to move out after "serious" cracks were discovered in the building
The apartment block is located just behind Carrer Canigó, where three people died after a building collapsed at the beginning of February.
It is the fifth building on the same block to be evacuated over safety concerns
Badalona council and the Catalan government agreed this week to perform technical inspections in more than 400 flats on the block
in buildings built by the same developer between 1954 and 1960
In addition to the evacuations in Badalona and Santa Coloma, a building with 16 people was cleared in Blanes on Thursday.
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Catalonia police investigating the appearance of a human corpse crammed into the leg of a papier-mâché statue of a dinosaur in Santa Coloma de Gramenet
say the most likely explanation is that the deceased man somehow lost his phone in the dino and got stuck trying to retrieve it
According to the Guardian
a spokesperson for the Spanish regional police force Mossos d’Esquadra told the paper
“A father and son noticed that there was something inside and raised the alarm
We found the body of a man inside the leg of this dinosaur statue
It’s an accidental death; there was no violence.”
“This person got inside the statue’s leg and got trapped,” the spokesperson added
“It looks as though he was trying to retrieve a mobile phone
It looks like he entered the statue head first and couldn’t get out.”
Authorities said there was no evidence of foul play and the deceased had been reported missing by his family just hours before his body was discovered by a father and son who observed a corpse through a crack in the stegosaurus’s leg, the BBC reported
Firefighters were forced to cut through the leg of the statue to extract the remains
The police spokesperson told the Guardian that they are still “waiting for the autopsy reports” but indications were the body had been trapped “for a couple of days.”
The statue has since been removed from the grounds of the cinema it was advertising, the BBC reported.
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The body of a missing 39-year-old man was found inside the leg of a dinosaur statue in Spain
BBC.com reports the man's body was discovered after a father and son noticed a smell coming from inside the papier-mâché figure in Santa Coloma de Gramenet
and the father spotted the corpse through a crack in the Stegosaurus statue's leg
Police said the body was identified as a man reported missing by his family and don't expect foul play in relation to the incident
Three fire brigade teams responded to the scene and cut open the dinosaur leg to retrieve the body after it was discovered and reported to authorities by the father and son
Local media outlets report the man -- who has not yet been identified publicly by police -- was trapped inside the decorative statue after dropping his phone inside and trying to retrieve it
Aparece un cadáver dentro de la pata de una estatua de un dinosaurio en Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelona) https://t.co/Is4aX7rnht
The man was left trapped upside down and couldn't call for help, according to police. Authorities have not confirmed how the man specifically ended up inside the statue and are awaiting autopsy results to see what caused his death.
The Stegosaurus statue has since been removed from its location outside the Cubic Building in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, where it served to advertise an old cinema.
“If you’re one of those people who thinks all cemeteries should look like castles
then maybe you won’t like this one,” the 46-year-old pet shop owner admits
“But I think it looks modern.”
Modern it certainly is. Santa Coloma is the first city in Spain to convert its municipal burial place into what is essentially a power plant. The installation consists of 462 solar panels spread over roughly 10,700 sq. ft. (1000 sq. m.), and has a capacity of 100 kilowatts, enough to meet the energy needs of 60 families. (See pictures from Spain’s madcap tomato festival.)
a company that manages Santa Coloma’s cemetery
Serret had long been interested in renewable energy
as he worked with his father in the graveyard
he realized they were standing in a potent site for it
“To produce solar energy you need a wide open space,” Serret says
the biggest open space is the cemetery.” Indeed
the city’s 124,000 inhabitants are squeezed into a bare 1.54 sq
km.) of space — and much of that land is mountainous
Serret had only to convince the cemetery’s owners: the municipal government
especially because the $935,000 it would cost to install the panels would come from Conste and Endesa
we thought,” says Begoña Bellete
“A city like ours has to commit itself to being on the frontlines of the fight against climate change
And this was a great opportunity because the financing would be private
All we had to do was provide the space.”
isn’t normally used for multi-tasking
But in an effort to protect delicate sensibilities
the city made sure to disturb the cemetery as little as possible
Although the panels would produce more energy if they pointed directly south
that orientation would have required adding a structure to the graveyard
Santa Coloma’s citizens posed little resistance to the project
Says Serret: “Even the priest of the city’s biggest church is collaborating with us.” Santiago Pérez likewise says he hasn’t heard any complaints from his neighbors
“Why would anyone care if you’re producing a little light at the cemetery?” he asks
The people of Santa Coloma may even be setting a trend
the potential energy generated could reach 800,000 kilowatts and according to councilwoman Bellete
the city is already getting inquiries from other municipalities
“People always say that the global begins with the local
and this has helped us see ourselves as setting a precedent for doing that,” says Bellete
it’s nice to be a reference for something positive.”
See TIME’s Year in Health From A to Z
Contact us at letters@time.com
First published: December 24, 2023 01:16 PM
Two men were killed in separate incidents in the Barcelona area on Saturday night into Sunday.
On the one hand, a 32-year-old was shot dead inside a bar in Blai street, in the Catalan capital's Poble-sec neighborhood.
The incident happened at around 12.45am, according to the Mossos d'Esquadra police.
Some officers, along with emergency services, were sent to the site, but no detentions have been made.
Mossos d'Esquadra are investigating the events, as some witnesses in the area have said that the author or author of the murder fled with a motorbike.
In parallel, a man was stabbed to death in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, just outside Barcelona's northern area.
The event occurred on Saturday at 9.30pm in Passeig Llorenç Serra.
In this case, the police did arrest the alleged author, a 47-year-old man, because he handed himself in to the police in Barcelona's Sant Andreu station.
Authorities in Catalonia told The Guardian on Monday that the man
is thought to have fallen into the stegosaurus statue while he was attempting to retrieve his cell phone
which he presumably dropped into the sculpture.
Police retrieved the body after two visitors to the statue — a father and son — reported a smell coming from the structure, BBC News reported on Monday
After looking through the cracks of the statue
the father saw a body and contacted authorities
Police were called where they found a man dead inside the leg of the statue
a spokesperson for regional police force Mossos d'Esquadra told The Guardian
the man had been reported as missing by his family
The Mossos d'Esquadra spokesperson told The Guardian that the death is not being treated as suspicious.
"It's an accidental death; there was no violence
This person got inside the statue's leg and got trapped," the Mossos d'Esquadra spokesperson said
"It looks as though he was trying to retrieve a mobile phone
It looks like he entered the statue head first and couldn't get out."
Firefighters were called to help cut open the statue and remove the body
The stegosaurus statue in the suburb of Santa Coloma de Gramenet has since been removed
It was displayed as an advertisement for a shuttered movie theater
Officials told The Guardian that it's unclear how long the body had been inside the statue
"We're still waiting for the autopsy results
but it seems he was there for a couple of days," the Mossos d'Esquadra spokesperson told The Guardian
Representatives for Mossos d'Esquadra did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment
Solar panels sit angled atop mausoleums in the northern Spanish city of Santa Coloma de Gramenet
harnessing the power of the sun to provide electricity to some of the city’s residents
In March, 47 percent of Spain’s electricity came from renewable sources, ThinkProgress reported earlier this month
Spanish households do pay some of the highest prices for electricity in Europe. In the first half of 2013, the cost of electricity for homes in Spain ranked sixth in the European Union behind countries like Denmark, Germany and Cyprus, according to Eurostat
The high prices are due to an electricity deficit that has ballooned over the years, El Pais reported
Subsidies to promote the use of renewables
the perpetuation of poor policies to keep rates low for consumers amid supply cost surges and the failure of the current government to enact reform to right the debt
officials in cities across the country have had to get creative when it comes to finding places to house renewable energy equipment
In 2008, Santa Coloma – on the outskirts of Barcelona – placed 462 solar panels on top of the grave niches in its main cemetery, after running out of alternative locations to house a solar farm in the crowded working-class city, Time reported
The solar cemetery idea has crossed the Atlantic and in 2012, a cemetery in East Hanover, New Jersey installed solar panels to help power the cemetery itself, local media reported
In Long Island, NY, a 2014 proposal to place solar panels on the 114-acre property of St. John’s Annex Cemetery in West Babylon, will soon enter the permit process with the Town of Babylon, Randy Van Yahres of the Catholic Cemeteries of Brooklyn and Queens said in an email to PBS NewsHour.
The panels would occupy unused, non-burial land and the electricity produced there would benefit Long Island communities.
Editor’s note: This post has been updated with additional information about the cost of electricity in Spain.
Carey Reed assists in covering breaking and feature news for NewsHour Weekend's website. She also helps the NewsHour Weekend broadcast team in the production of the show. She is interested in the flourishing fields of data journalism and information visualization and recently graduated, with honors, from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
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Last year Catalonia lost 24% of its drinking water
This is slightly below the Spanish average and close to rates across Europe
A total of 134.300 billion or 134.3 cubic hectometers were lost in 2022 according to Catalan Water Agency (ACA) figures reported by RAC1 radio – enough water to fill the worryingly empty Sau Reservoir or for Catalonia to have twice as many reserves as it has now
The minority Esquerra cabinet and opposition parties failed to reach an agreement on how to tackle the ongoing drought following an hours-long meeting at the government headquarters in Barcelona last Friday
with one of the points of contention being a moratorium on fines.
According to climate action minister Teresa Jordà
local councils are in charge of upkeeping water retailing distribution systems
but she said she was aware of the difficulties smaller towns face and suggested they might not be fined.
"The fine system acts as a deterrent," Jordà said
"If the municipality begins to carry out the necessary works that should be completed within in a year
If two years go by and they are not completed
government spokesperson Patrícia Plaja said on Tuesday that "it is possible that while there is no explicit moratorium
Plaja also announced that €50m in aid would be allocated to local councils to help them carry out works to improve the water supply
has been losing 180,000 liters per day for the past 15 years due to a pipe leak
The leak was detected in the city's Canyet neighborhood in 2005
since then it has been losing 2 liters per second
who suggested councils were in charge of maintenance
the mayor has called on Aigües Ter-Llobregat
It is a "grave contradiction" to ask citizens to reduce water consumption when "thousands of liters of water" are being lost every day
a city north of Barcelona and west of Badalona
has also reported her city is losing 86,000 liters per day as a result of a pipe leak
she believes it is Aigües Ter-Llobregat's responsibility to fix it.
Company sources have told the Catalan News Agency that they are searching for the source of the issue and claim "it is not possible to affirm that the lost water is from an Aigües Ter-Llobregat pipeline."
After weeks without significant rainfall, reservoirs in Catalonia are at 27% of their capacity as of April 4
2023, according to the Catalan Water Agency
Some of these reservoirs have had to organize fish culls to prevent dead fish from contaminating drinking water
Learn more about the issue by listening to the Filling the Sink podcast episode on the ongoing drought from September 2022.
The BesArt project, which sets its sights on becoming the biggest open-air urban art museum in the world, was inaugurated on Wednesday.
The objective of the project is to see artistic murals painted on the walls running 18km along the banks of the river Besós, immediately north of Barcelona.
Organizers calculate that nearly five million square meters of wall space will be available to become artistic murals and form part of the open-air museum, making it the largest in the world.
While only the inaugural wall with the title of the museum - BesArt, The River Museum - is in place at the moment, promoters of the project say that they are working with artists' agendas and hope that during this springtime, more murals will be created.
There will be 18km of wall space available to be used, while the East Side Gallery in Berlin, for example, stretches only 1.3km.
The initiative has been organized by the Santa Coloma de Gramenet city council, the Mediterranean Street Art Association, and the Royal Artistic Circle of Barcelona.
Organizers hailed the fantastic work done in recent years to reclaim and renaturalize the land on the banks of the Besós river, as only some years ago the area was not suitable for recreational use. To them, the project is a symbiosis of culture, art, and urban values.
The mayor of the city, Núria Parlon, explained that the space will make urban art "an asset that attracts visits to the city and encourages artistic talent among young people."
The president of the Royal Artistic Circle of Barcelona, Josep Fèlix Bentz, aims for BesArt to become a destination point for visitors to Barcelona, comparable to other spaces such as the Sagrada Família, he said.
A father and son alerted authorities when they noticed something inside the papier-mâché stegosaurus in Santa Coloma de Gramenet
Officers called upon local firefighters to cut the dinosaur’s leg in an effort to retrieve the body of the 39-year-old man
and believes he was trying to get his phone back when he got stuck inside
“It’s an accidental death; there was no violence,” their statement reads
“This person got inside the statue’s leg and got trapped
It looks as though he was trying to retrieve a mobile phone
Authorities have floated the possibility that the man was able to get inside the dinosaur by going through a panel located on its underbelly, an entry method that the outlet points out had been used in the past by homeless people. However, nothing has been confirmed yet, as they continue to look into his death.
Couple Has Sex on a Castle Moat, Falls to Their Death
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Elderly Man Who Died Having Sex With Prostitute Picked Up By Paramedics With Woman "Still Attached"
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The police operation represents the final phase of an investigation conducted by Central Court 6 of the Spanish National High Court. During the operation, specialized squads of the Mossos d’Esquadra carried out 12 raids and arrested 9 individuals. Three of the arrested individuals are suspected to have connections with the authors of the terrorist attacks at Brussels’ metro and airport.
The Catalan Minister of Home Affairs, Jordi Jané, confirmed the confiscation of a large amount of money, drugs, and firearms as well as digital information, which still has to be analyzed. According to Jané there is no evidence so far that the arrested individuals were planning an attack in Catalonia but he added that it cannot be ruled out. The minister highlighted the successful collaboration between the Catalan police force (Mossos d’Esquadra), the Belgian police, and the Spanish police.
Of the arrested individuals 8 are from Morocco and one from Spain. Even though not all of them are charged with the same crimes, they are all charged with a at least five: ties with or belonging to terrorist groups, ties with or belonging to organized crime groups related to illegal drug trade, illegal possession of firearms, money laundering, and misappropriation. Most of the 9 arrested suspects have been residents in Catalonia for more than 20 years.
Tuesday’s anti-jihadist operation was coordinated with the Belgian police within the EU program Eurojust, according to the Catalan police forces who informed the Audiencia Nacional, which is the leading investigator. A joint investigation team of Belgian and Catalan police forces was created immediately. Over the last few months they had been exchanging information and finally determined the direct connection of the arrested individuals with jihadist terrorism.
On the other hand the scope of the investigation also required the collaboration between the Mossos d’Esquadra and the CNI, the Spanish National Intelligence Center, in order to inform the latter about the development of the investigations, exchange information, and coordinate with Spanish police forces. This Tuesday morning Spanish and Belgian Federal Police agents also participated in the operation. There were also raids in Morocco.
Barcelona has become one of the most expensive cities to live in Spain
it is the Spanish city with the most expensive rent in general
surpassing even the minimum interprofessional wage
This increase in prices has led many citizens to look for alternatives and consider moving to municipalities near the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona
The constant increase in the price of housing in Barcelona has led to record prices for shared room rentals
making Barcelona the city with the most expensive room rentals in Spain
According to the six-monthly ranking published by Idealista
the outskirts of Barcelona have become one of the most sought-after areas to live in
Among the municipalities near Barcelona that have become especially attractive to home seekers
leading the list with an average rental price of 842 euros per month
This locality is closely followed by Hospitalet de Llobregat
which enjoys an excellent connection with Barcelona and an average rental price of 965 euros per month
Also in the top positions of the ranking are Cornellà de Llobregat and Badalona
with average rental prices of 933 and 1,147 euros per month
the city of Barcelona itself has fallen to 15th place in the list of the most sought-after areas to live in
This is largely due to the prohibitive cost of rent in the city
Barcelona is closely followed by cities such as Terrassa
which are also popular destinations for those looking for more affordable living but still want to stay close to Barcelona
This is partly due to the lack of supply in the Catalan capital and the high demand it faces
the Catalan employers’ association Foment advocates public-private collaboration to increase the stock of affordable housing
the implementation of tax incentives to rent unoccupied housing and the improvement of legal security in cases of squatting or non-payment
The difficulty of buying a home has put pressure on the rental market
which is why Foment is proposing the introduction of public guarantees for young people
The Barcelona City Council seeks to develop strategies in response to the critical situation of the residential market
Stock images by Depositphotos
La venta de la nuda propiedad
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Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty ImagesA local photographing the monument
now the site of a tragedy — with flowers left behind in tribute
Spain ended its national state of emergency and eased lockdown and curfew restrictions
But the celebration was cut short this week when police discovered the body of a man in a giant papier-mâché dinosaur sculpture
According to The Washington Post
a father and son pair spent the Saturday of May 22 strolling through the modernist Cubic Building complex in Santa Coloma de Gramenet
they noticed a stench emanating from the stegosaurus statue
Only when the curious duo approached that they discovered the source — a crack in the statue’s leg revealed the corpse of an adult male
which identified him as a 39-year-old man who been reported missing that morning
is surrounded by statues and art installations
“A father and son noticed that there was something inside and raised the alarm,” a spokesperson for the police said
“We found the body of a man inside the leg of this dinosaur statue
We’re still waiting for the autopsy results
so we don’t know how long he was in there
but it seems he was there for a couple of days.”
The spokesperson explained that officers were forced to call the local fire department in order to cut the statue open
While the installation was made of papier-mâché
it contained more rigid components — leaving the retrieval of the body to those with professional tools and experience
The statue was installed as part of a series of advertising sculptures set in the plaza of the apartment buildings to draw people to a now-shuttered movie theater
The stegosaurus was the last of these papier-mâché sculptures standing
El Mirall.net/TwitterThe fire department had to cut open the statue to remove the body
“It’s an accidental death; there was no violence,” the police spokesperson said
“This person got inside the statue’s leg and got trapped
It looks like he entered the statue head first and couldn’t get out.”
The man’s shocking discovery marked a traumatizing culmination of his family’s search
He had been missing and out of contact for two days before his discovery
a family member contacted the police department to report him missing
the leading theory of how he got stuck makes it all the more tragic
Google MapsThe dinosaur sculpture was the last of a series of advertisements for a defunct movie theater
With citizens invigorated by the ending of lockdown restrictions and eager to get outside, the man decided to visit the Cubic Building and check out the deteriorating stegosaurus that had stood on the public road for years
Parts of the statue had opened up to reveal the metal frame inside
and he took out his phone to snap some photos of the unusual sight
But he accidentally dropped it through the opening
he toppled in upside-down and hit his head
leaving him trapped and unable to call for help
Following the initial news of this horrific accident
mourners left flowers by the leg where the man spent his final moments
After reading about the man who was found dead inside of a dinosaur statue in Spain, read about the San Diego woman who died when a man landed on top of her after jumping off a nine-story building. Then, learn about the haunting disappearance of Etan Patz, one of the original milk carton kids
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A 40-YEAR-old man died after becoming trapped inside a large statue of a dinosaur in a Barcelona suburb
It is not clear why the man went inside the decorative stegosaurus located outside a disused cinema in Santa Coloma de Gramenet
said a spokeswoman for the regional police force
“Everything indicates it was an accidental death,” she told AFP
Police were called to the scene on Saturday
Spanish media reported that a father and his son out playing in the area noticed a strange smell coming from the papier-mache figure and alerted the authorities
which was inside one of the legs of the dinosaur
police suspect the man – who had been reported missing by his family – had entered the statue to sleep there or to try to retrieve something
The dinosaur statue has previously sometimes been used by homeless people as a place to sleep
There is a removable slab in the dinosaur’s stomach which the man is believed to have used to climb inside
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She holds a PhD in Architecture and lectures in Urban Planning at the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB-UPC)
she co-directed the Master’s Degree entitled Laboratory of Housing in the 21st Century at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Public Roads and Civic Affairs in Santa Coloma de Gramenet (2015-2019)
she holds the position of distinguished professor in the School of Art
Architecture and Design at the Tecnológico de Monterrey (TEC) and
she has been the Federico Mariscal Extraordinary Chair at the Faculty of Architecture of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
The design of a substantial amount of housing is based on an obsolete concept that organises space according..
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The Department of Climate Action of the Generalitat has issued a preventive alert for air pollution in the Special Protection Zone (SPA) of the Barcelona conurbation
due to high levels of particulate matter with a diameter of less than 10 microns (PM10)
This announcement comes in response to data collected from four measurement stations located in Mollet del Vallès
where the daily average of PM10 exceeded the critical threshold of 50 µg/m³
Food and Rural Agenda has identified the municipalities affected by this situation
the alert covers a large metropolitan area
This preventive warning represents the preliminary phase of a possible environmental episode and is activated with the purpose of reducing pollutant emissions
The Generalitat urges citizens to take immediate action to mitigate the environmental impact and protect public health
Among the recommendations issued is the preference for sustainable transportation
it is advisable to give priority to public transport
reduce travel by private vehicle (considering
the option of teleworking) and encourage carpooling
It also calls for the adoption of efficient driving practices
the choice of low-emission vehicles and the regulation of air conditioning in homes and establishments
The preventive measure responds to the persistence of unfavorable weather conditions
The 24-hour forecast suggests that pollution levels will remain elevated and may exceed the daily limit of 50 μg/m³
to the presence of an anticyclone in the south of the European continent
which has negatively affected the dispersion of atmospheric pollutants
It should be noted that this is not the first time that a preventive alert has been activated in the region
similar circumstances led to the implementation of measures to reduce emissions and mitigate the effects of air pollution
The Generalitat calls for citizen cooperation and stresses the importance of following the indications to protect air quality and the health of the population
It is recommended to be attentive to the updates provided by the local authorities and to abide by the established preventive measures until the environmental conditions improve significantly
The activation of this preventive alert underlines the need for collaboration between citizens and authorities to achieve a cleaner and healthier environment
File Photo of the Arrest of a Jihadist | Agencia POLITICS Jihadist Arrested in Santa Coloma for Recruiting Fighters for ISISThe Police Maintain Maximum Anti-Terrorism Alert in Catalonia21/03/2025 14:00:00h by Redacción
New Police Operation Against Jihadism in Catalonia
The National Police arrested a 36-year-old Moroccan man on Monday in Santa Coloma de Gramenet
accused of recruiting fighters for the Islamic State (ISIS)
who was in an advanced process of radicalization
aimed to ascend in the hierarchy of the terrorist organization
This new arrest highlights the latent Islamist threat in Catalonia
Jihadist activity has increased over the last year and a half
and good police work has managed to thwart several attacks
Spain has been at level four reinforced anti-terrorist alert since December 2023
Catalonia is a hot spot for Islamism in Spain due to the concentration of Islamic immigration and the proliferation of Salafism
One in three jihadist operations in Spain takes place in Barcelona
The police managed to intercept this suspect
who compulsively consumed violent content on ISIS-affiliated channels
His goal was to train in propaganda and recruitment of fighters for the global jihad
After tracking his movements for several months
the National Court authorized the raid on his home last Monday in Santa Coloma de Gramenet
The agents conducted two other searches in Barcelona
they seized counterfeit products that he might have been selling to finance his illegal activities
and the judge ordered his preventive detention
He is accused of wanting to mediate in sending jihadist fighters to conflict zones
The case is now in the hands of the National Court
The Police Maintain Maximum Anti-Terrorist Alert in Catalonia | E-NoticiesThe police are keeping the investigation open
This arrest comes shortly after the dismantling of a Pakistani network in Barcelona that planned to behead infidels
the expulsion of two imams from La Jonquera and Figueres for radicalization
The jihadist threat in Catalonia has grown following the call for global jihad due to the war in Gaza
The succession of anti-terrorist operations is causing alarm among the population
Several comments on X warn that "things are getting ugly," highlighting that these are not just simple perceptions
Some parties and public and subsidized media insist on downplaying the jihadist threat
They do so under the pretext of not sowing Islamophobia and hate speech
But the reality is that there is a serious public security problem in Catalonia