Our main festival takes place this year from the 20th to 24th September. Five days to enjoy music, gastronomy, culture, open days and street art. Here are six glimpses of everything it has to offer, and you can look this all up on the merce.barcelona website.

There can be no mercé without the pregón, and the honour this year of starting the festivities falls to the artist Carme Solé. Casablanca will be the guest city, and will share its vibrant sounds, dances and visual arts with us.

The 2024 Piromusical will definitely be remembered as one with a strong auteur style. Rosalía will be choosing the songs that will be played on 24th September at 10:00 p.m. The Avenida de la Reina Maria Cristina will be full once again with spectators who’ll be able to witness a breathtaking spectacle of bursts, light and colour, all perfectly in sync with music picked by one of the greatest artists in the world today.

Music is one of the main elements of the Barcelona Festival. Live performances by 140 artists and musical groups will take place on fourteen stages across the city, at Música Mercè, the BAM, as well as the concerts organised by radio stations.

And when it comes to popular culture, the 200th birthday of Josep Anselm Clavé will be commemorated this year, a musician whose L’aplec del Remei zarzuela will be performed on the 23rd. The city’s Aligá, which is even older, celebrates its 650th anniversary in the Plaça de Sant Jaume, on Sunday, 22nd September.

Elsewhere, the Ciutadella park will be the scene of the fourth edition of Terra i Gust, the sustainable food festival. Tastings, showcookings and workshops regarding food and drink will once again be on offer, and reflections will be made on food waste, sustainable fishing and water.

To cap it all off, the traditional La Mercè-Bimbo Global Race will take place on 29th September. The family race is added to the traditional routes this year, a fun and non-competitive activity set up to run a short and central route.Don’t forget that you can find all the information at merce.barcelona. Long live La Mercé and long live Barcelona!

This autumn, from 8 to 13 October, a new edition of the Biennial of Thought will bring debate and reflection back to the city’s streets and squares. The event will feature more than 100 experts on topics including democracy, memory, postcolonialism, feminism, technology and climate change and cultural debates.

Under the theme ‘The Day After It All’, the fourth edition of the biennaldepensament.barcelona will focus on deconstructing the defining principles and dynamics of the past two centuries, which are now at odds with a future where sustainability, social justice and the fight against inequalities are paramount.

To reflect upon these major philosophical debates and the global transformations happening all around us, the Biennial will feature 120 participants and 65 free activities, with no prior registration necessary. The list of notable guests includes Herta Müller, Perejaume, Wajdi Mouawad, Jacques Rancière, Jason Hickel, Zadie Smith, Elena Martín, Donatella della Porta, Javier Pérez Royo, Eliane Brum, Oyèrónké Oyèwùmi, Begoña Román, Las Hijas De Felipe, Maria Rovira (Oye Sherman) and Ana Polo, Rocío Quillahuaman and Jean-Rémi Carbonneau.

The debates will take place in the CCCB, Can Felipa, Canòdrom, La Model, Plaça de Masadas, Plaça de la Virreina and the gardens of Pla i Armengol, among other venues. This edition of the Biennial coincides with Barcelona’s year as the European Capital of Democracy, which aims to strengthen the connection between participation and citizenship.Visit biennaldelpensament.barcelona for all the information.

The third edition of the Neighbourhood Plan, the series of small-scale actions to reduce inequalities in specific areas of Barcelona, is under way. The plan targets those who suffer the effects and consequences of vulnerability the most, such as women, elderly people, teenagers and migrants.

The plan should reach a quarter of the city’s population, around 27 neighbourhoods in seven different districts, with an overall investment of 300 million euros. Two unique urban regeneration plans will be added from 2025, for the mountain neighbourhoods and for La Marina del Prat Vermell.

The new Neighbourhood Plan consolidates some of the policies already started and acts in a more specific and intensive way in neighbourhoods covered in the previous editions. The plan is distributed in three main spheres: education and culture, public space and accessibility, and housing and renovation, with new strategies in the fight against inequalities.

You can find full information on the Neighbourhood Plan at pladebarris.barcelona.

In a context of climate emergency, the search for innovative solutions to achieve greater comfort and energy efficiency in buildings is essential. Barcelona is testing three prototypes that use industrialised construction to respond to the challenge to improve the habitability and sustainability of existing buildings, reducing CO₂ emissions and energy consumption.

The three winning projects from the ideas competition launched in 2022 by the Fundació BIT Habitat and the Municipal Institute of Urban Planning are the prototypes ALIGRA, Regenerar Barcelona and InnoFAB. The projects consist of large modules that resemble three building façades, designed to adapt to existing residential blocks.

Made of wood and metal, the structures add a new façade to buildings and help create new spaces (balconies, new rooms and communal areas), or to improve their insulation and the impact of the sun. Constructions are also planned for rooftops, to add solar panelling, green rooftops and enable buildings to collect and reuse rainwater. These industrial systems can be manufactured in parts in workshops and then assembled directly on buildings quickly, easily and economically.

The three prototypes will be monitored for 12 months at a site on the Campus Diagonal – Besòs of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), in Sant Adrià de Besòs, to assess their impact for health and comfort, urban resilience, energy efficiency, circular economy and biodiversity. This will be possible thanks to the installation of a smart sensor system able to continuously measure various parameters. You can find more information on the website bithabitat.barcelona.

One of Barcelona’s classic summer events is back. The Grec festival goes into its 48th edition with a return to its origins. This year’s programme is an inner journey, in search of the essence of this performing arts event and looking back at the history of the theatre. Most of all, the event seeks to celebrate artistic friendships and the alliances formed over the last eight years.

The programme includes big names from the international scene, essential figures in theatre, dance and circus arts: Lola Arias, Angélica Liddell, Christiane Jatahy, Jan Lauwers, Krzysztof Warlikowski, William Forsythe, Johan le Guilhem and Hofesh Schechter will be bringing their projects to the Teatre Lliure, the Mercat de les Flors and the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya.

Artists and companies with strong ties to the Grec also play a prominent part in this year’s programme. Silvia Pérez Cruz will be opening this edition with the project Circular, based on her latest disc, Toda la vida, un dia, offering three days of performances surrounded by artist friends. Other names at this year’s Grec include Antònia Font, Pau Vallvé and Kae Tempest.

The festival extends to more than fifty venues in Barcelona from 26 June to 4 August, with 81 shows and over 51 parallel activities. You’ll find full information and ticket purchasing on the website: festivalgrec.barcelona.

A new issue of the magazine Metròpolis Barcelona has been published with a new look. The magazine has a new design and its content has also been reorganised. Headed by Milagros Pérez Oliva, this quarterly publication will continue to foster calm and collected debate among the public, away from the vertigo of our times.

Issue 130, now available in full online on the website metropolis.barcelona, reflects on the city of five million people, how the metropolis has overwhelmed administrative borders, and calls for a coordinated transformation of public spaces and policies.

In this issue, the urban planner Oriol Nel·lo explains how residential segregation works, the geographer Mireia Belil describes the complex network of cities that make up Europe, and the sociologists Núria Gómez and Sergio Porcel talk about counterurbanisation, the migration from the city to the rural environment. There is also an interview with the journalist Francesc Escribano and a reflection on suburbanisation from the planning expert Margaret Crawford.

The magazine can also be downloaded in pdf format, purchased as a hard copy from the Sala Ciutat, or received directly by email by signing up for its newsletter.