Every day I wake up and blithely contribute to climate change. Out of mental lethargy and a misguided sense of being too busy, I subsidize greenhouse gasses, dump waste incorrectly, and use energy like it'll last forever. In the supermarket I never look at labels; I buy toxic crap from irresponsible companies and support overfishing or inhuman farming practises without a thought. And all because I don't feel like I've got time to do otherwise. I'm too caught up. Too caught up

Topic: Too many pigeons. How many is too many? According to the Generalitat, BCN's population of the cooing columbidae genus is currently believed to be about 85,000. One pigeon for every 20 or so humans. Or one per every four hipsters. Doesn't sound so bad, really. The problem is the infections, parasites and diseases they carry around with them. The pigeons, that is. Eg. Pigeon faeces carries over 60 forms of disease - known as zoonoses - which can be potentially harmful to

El patrimonio de la paella. The concept of paella goes back to the medieval Moorish tradition of cooking rice and cod casseroles during Lent (when meat was off the menu). But the modern version of paella - derived from the Catalan for 'cooking pan' - was born in the Valencian region of Albufera in the mid-19th century. Today, with the indiscriminate cross-pollination of food cultures taking place across the world's kitchens, traditionalists are digging trenches around their m

Critic Peter S. Beagle, writing about Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, commented on the 'erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty.' For decades Spain has been sold as such a place, a place of 'perfect liberty', by budget tour companies. In particular, for the last sixteen years British students have converged in the handsome Costa Dorada locality of Salou, intent on turning it into a scene fro

Occupation: Patron Saint of Catalunya. And lots of other places. Appearance: Visored helmet, chainmail. Tunic emblazones with a red cross on it. You mean Saint George, that Italian chap who killed a dragon. Contrary to his traditional depiction, experts now claim the Saint was from Capadoccia in Turkey. But yes. The one who, in European Christian folklore, rescued the damsel from the dragon. And inspires all that book for a flower stuff on April 23. Explain. The scent of ros

A much-maligned city of some 200,000 inhabitants to the north of Barcelona, in the heavily overbuilt-up area known as the Vallés Occidental, Terrassa's got more than enough industrial pedigree and architectural durge to give it UNESCO crap town status. However, explore further, and Terrassa throws off its shackles, announcing itself as a curious crossover; an interesting crap town, well worth the 40-minute FGC ride from Barcelona. It's majestically located upon the lap of the

‘Ey, chiquillo! When you ever seen an officer of the law in this country pay for anything?’ TimeOut slated the first flick in this slacker detective series, Dumb Arm of the Law as ‘broad, obvious, crude and visually ugly.’ Somehow they put their finger on just what people like about it. Santiago Segura’s farting, burping, grunting, swearing, shoplifting, racist, chauvinistic detective can be an eyebrow-raiser for Anglophone audiences unfamiliar with irreverent Spanish barstoo

The criteria for a bed were: as few ants as possible, a patch of grass which might best imitate a mattress and an enclosed space inconducive to large mammal hospitality. Long ago in the twilight of history, the city was called Bolskan and it was the capital of the Celto-Iberian Hergotes tribe. When it was absorbed into the Roman Empire the city became Victoria Urbs Osca, an academic centre for privileged young Iberians. When the Saracens took it in the 8th Century it became W

During his time as an Erasmus student in Barcelona, Dr. Olaf Jordbear-Knutssen (b. Aarhus, 1959) dedicated himself to an exhaustive statistical survey, documented in the groundbreaking work, Barcelona: A Statistical Review. In this book Knutssen made many startling discoveries. Measuring the frequency with which Catalans end phrases with a querulous 'eh?' the young Danish student counted 47,322 of them in one 10-hour stint in an Eixample cafeteria, afterwards attributing the