This international competition is a celebration of the art of documentary film-making with entrants for the main prize from China, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Germany and Sweden. Other awards include Best Short, Best First, Best experimental and Audience Award.

Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB)
Montalegre, 5
Tel. 933 064 100
http://www.docupolis.org/

City of Barcelona International Trophies: Triathlon
05/10/08

Inspired by the popular London Triathlon, Barcelona is hosting its own event as part of the European Cities-Tri Series. There are three versions: Olympic, Sprint and Super Sprint. The first gun is at 8am, the last at 12pm, with staggered starts in-between.

Nova Icària Beach & Vila Olímpica Track

http://www.barcelonatriatlo.com/

Barcelona Extreme Sports Festival
11-12/10/08

Parc del Fòrum plays host to this major extreme sports event featuring: skateboarding, BMX, inline, FMX, urban jibbing and wakeboarding. There will be world-class sporting trials, amateur competitions, plus live music, clothes stalls and urban culture displays. One-day tickets cost 10€, or 15€ for both days.

Parc del Fòrum
Rbla. de Prim, 2
http://www.barcelonaextreme.com/

13th World Music Festival

L’Auditori, built in 1999 specifically for musical performances, hosts the 13th World Music Festival with concerts from Idir (3/10), Hasna el Becharia (4/10), Parissa (5/10), Nino Galissa (9/10), Paulinho Lêmos Quartet (10/10), Repentistes i glossadors (11/10) and Rokia Traoré (17/10).

L’Auditori
Lepant, 150
http://www.auditori.cat/

Spain’s leading film festival with a LGTIB theme focuses on the cultural and social aspects of the content as well as the quality of production. There are jury and audience awards for best feature, best short and best documentary.

Filmoteca de Catalunya

http://www.barcelonafilmfestival.org/

Kosmopolis 2008 – 4th International Literature Festival
22-26/10/08

This year the biennial festival of literature in Barcelona takes humanitarian crises and global conflicts as its overriding theme. Participants include: Jon Lee Anderson, John Coetzee, Hari Kunzru, Dave Eggers, Donna Leon, Juan José López de Uralde, David Rieff, Russell Banks and Simona Škrabec. Secondary themes include: Journalism in the 21st Century, Poetry Today and a JG Ballard Special. Plus the Nuyorican Poets Café Team.

Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB)
Montalegre, 5

http://www.cccb.org/

ArtFutura 2008
23-26/10/08

This festival of digital culture and creativity explores new media, interactive design, videogames and digital animation through conferences, workshops, installations, exhibitions and live performances. Highlights this year include: Hanson Robotics, Supinfocom, Spore, U2-3D – Spalsh, Bestiario, OFFF and Dark Knight…

Mercat de les Flors
Lleida, 59

http://www.artfutura.org/

Boadas Cocktail Bar
C/ Tallers, 1

Boadas is an institution. This tiny bar has seen the likes of Sofia Loren, Ernest Hemingway and the King of Spain sample its legendary cocktails in the past 75 years. The recent request for customers to dress appropriately is an attempt to retain an air of elegant sophistication and stem the decline into unmissable tourist spot… so dress smart or go to a beach bar.

Harlem Jazz Club
C/Comtessa de Sobradiel, 8

Harlem Jazz Club is not underground but – as you pass the long front bar to get to the packed back room with low lighting, round tables and small stage – the classic image of an underground jazz club fits. Musical styles include fusion, African, Brazilian, flamenco and gypsy jazz and with the smoky atmosphere and eclectic crowd it’s impossible not to get absorbed. Entrance is often free but expect high prices at the bar.

Va de Vi
C/ Banys Vells, 16

For wine aficionados. Va de Vi is owned by a former sommelier and artist and offers over 1000 wines, many by the cata (tasting measure). Located in the Barrio Gotico, Va de Vi – with its 16th-century stone arches, wooden tables, rich fabrics and candlelit atmosphere – is wonderfully Romanesque and romantic.

Creative Cuisine

Hofmann is owned by the Catalan/German culinary entrepreneur Mey Hofmann and closely associated with the respected school next door, responsible for producing some of Catalonia’s finest chefs. As a result, the menu blends the traditional with the experimental – foie gras in puff pastry, crayfish risotto, sardine tart, steak in Rioja, pigs’ feet and aubergines – and changes every two months. These gourmet delights get to be sampled in the picturesque El Born overlooking the beautiful Santa Maria Del Mar. Reservations are recommended.

Argentería 74-78, open Mon-Fri 13.30 – 17h, 21 – 1h

Best Vegetarian

Biocenter offers organic vegetarian fare in an environment that somehow successfully combines Asian-influence artefacts with 1950s kitsch, the lighting is low and the mood is mellow, a welcome respite from the hubbub of La Rambla not far away. Biocenter specialises in hot and cold soups, colourful fresh salads (where iceberg lettuce and no dressing is not the predominant ingredient) and offers an astonishing variety of main dishes from homely quiches to hot curries. Top Tip: The lunch time salad bar is a feast; the evening four-course menu, a bargain.

Pintor Fortuny 25, open daily 13 – 16:30h; and Wed to Sat 20 – 23.15h

Authentic Catalan

It is well worth wondering beyond the centre to the quiet streets of Poble Sec for the authentic Catalan tapas of Quimet i Quimet. The bar is tiny, standing room only, while the walls are lined floor-to-ceiling with an excellent range of wines and spirits. The place feels (and normally is) packed, but the tapas is well-worth the squeeze. The official specialities are the preserved seafoods and pickled delicacies but it’s the montaditos that take top prize. Crisp bread is topped with unexpected combinations: grey mullet roe with sun-dried tomatoes; black olive paté with a chunk of salt cod; dollops of creamy cheese and sweet quince jam – the cream of Catalan tapas!

Poeta Cabanyes 35, open Tues-Sat 12 – 16h, 19 -22.30h, Sun 12-16h

(Photo: Quimet i Quimet by ianqui)

October 1986, a great number of citizens congregated spontaneously at Plaça de Catalunia to hear the name of the city designated to host the 1992 Olympic Games. In that historic moment, all eyes were on the giant screen, which broadcast live the ceremony in which Barcelona was proclaimed Olympic city of the 25th Modern Olympic Games.

‘Barcelona organised a superb Olympic Games and emerged as a welcoming and open city. The spirit of this great sporting event goes perfectly with the warm, hospitable tradition of this Mediterranean city.’

Words of the then mayor of Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall, one of the main protagonists of this historic event that meant a profound renovation of the city and of which all citizens of Barcelona will always have fond memories.

The Barcelona of the twenty-first century is a city shaped by the 1992 Olympics, a city transformed for and by the need to do justice to that great international event. The effort involved in carrying through this transformation has helped the city to overcome a series of historical disadvantages, to make major quantitative and qualitative advances in its services and physical fabric.

The Barcelona of the twenty-first century is a European capital of astonishing cultural energy and with a passion for progress. The Barcelona we see around us now, the Barcelona we enjoy today, is a new Barcelona with its face to the sea and its arms open to other cultures and peoples, giving and receiving, happy to make and to share its riches.

At the same time the Barcelona of the twenty-first century, for all its transformations, has not abandoned its Mediterranean traditions or severed its ties with a proud history. A history in which many generations of cultural diversity have blended with the innovations of modern times to create a unique city, with a personality that is all its own.

After the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona made a dramatic break with its immediate past, with the dreams and aspirations of the 1931 Republic.

In the years that followed the war, the day-to-day life of the city was one of rationing and smuggling. Cinemas and street festes (parties) were the only escape from the shortages and repression of the long years of the dictatorship.

In the Barcelona of the fifties – surrounded by shanty towns that grew up in the shadow of new industrial complexes such as SEAT and ENASA (which had replaced the Vella Hispano Suïssa) – Seat 600 cars and television sets began to be seen in the streets and houses. Among the great events of the decade were the tram strike of 1951 and the Congrés Eucarístic of the following year.

The city went on growing until the whole metropolitan area took in Barcelona itself and 26 neighbouring boroughs. The decaying city centre was surrounded by commercial and residential barris (neighbourhoods), and the burgeoning outskirts with great industrial estates such as Bellvitge, Sant Idelfons, la Guineueta, el Bon Pastor and les Cases del Congrés. In this city, the first protests were heard as the new waves of migrants were chaotically squeezed in.

A new generation of industrialists and politicians started out with ambitious developmental plans to turn Barcelona into a modern metropolis, which they called ‘grosse’ Barcelona. But 40% of the city’s inhabitants were still illiterate in 1900 and 18% in 1920. There were fresh initiatives in schooling and professional training, new market necessities and the city’s housing problems were dealt with, the first city trains were built, the tramway was electrified, the streets were lit and lifts were installed in buildings: Barcelona was on its way to becoming a fast-moving vibrant city, a city characterized by the media and mass consumption. During this period the football clubs, Barça and Espanyol, were founded, the mountains of Montjuïc and Tibidabo were developed, and the city grew to the east. This was also the Barcelona of the novel by influential Catalan writer Eugeni d’Ors, ‘La ben plantada’.

The barricades and sacking of religious buildings in the Setmana Tràgica (Tragic Week) of 1909, the gangsterism of the 1920s, the Second Republic, the military revolt and the bombs of the Civil War (1936 – 1939) left behind a defeated city, without energy or memory to confront the long post-war period.

From the proclamation of the new Cadiz Constitution in 1812 until the Republic of 1873, Barcelona experienced the various social and political upheavals that were felt throughout Spain. There were riots, strikes, the burning of convents, bombardments of the city and other kinds of confrontation resulting from the great strains within the city.

The city itself passed from being made provincial capital in 1833 to being governed by Juntes Provisionals i Revolucionàries and Comitès de Salvació Pública (Revolutionary Councils) later in the nineteenth century.

Nevertheless, these struggles brought about further developments that radically changed the city: the most obvious was the demolishing of the city walls that still encircled Barcelona, which in turn made possible the growth of the city, the absorption of neighbouring towns, and the destruction of the Ciutadella Militar (site of the military garrison) to make way for the 1888 Universal Exhibition. Within the old walled city the first reforms were made to deal with the decay and lack of public areas. And the properties of religious orders along the Ramblas and in the Raval were reclaimed.

As regards industry, Barcelona – which was known as la petita Manchester – inaugurated the first railway in Spain in 1848 and later saw the founding of the labour unions UGT in 1888 and CNT in 1910.

The Febre d’Or (literally, gold fever, referring to the economic boom) at the end of the nineteenth century saw the founding of companies such as Transatlàntica and Crèdit i Docks, while the Renaixença (cultural revival) saw the revival of the medieval Jocs Florals (literally, floral games; in reality, a poetry contest), other literary achievements and the resurgence of political movements.

In Barcelona, the eighteenth century opened and closed with the country at war: in 1714, defeat in the War of the Spanish Succession and in 1808, the struggle against Napoleon’s army in the Peninsula War. The eighteenth century was the Age of Enlightenment and despotism; the century that the German philosopher Immanuel Kant summed up as ‘dare to think for yourself’; a time of many changes across Europe that came to a head with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789.

After the military occupation of 1714, Barcelona experienced a period of economic revival promoted by the Bourbon administration, military spending in the city, the opening of cotton and calico mills and authorization to trade with the Americas. It was still a walled garrison city with the newly built fortress of the Ciutadella to protect and keep it under firm control, but within those city walls reforms led to the development of the barris (neighbourhoods) El Raval and La Rambla and the embellishment of the main streets of the city with neoclassical façades and buildings.

Barcelona at this time was a city in a state of flux, where old rural ways of life were making way for a modern city and industrial centre. It was the passing of the Antic Règim (ancient regime) and the beginning of the capitalist era.