WHAT HAPPENED IN DECEMBER

From Jan­u­ary 1, bi­cy­cles are no longer al­lowed on Barcelona pave­ments mea­sur­ing be­tween 3 and 4.75 me­tres in width. The move comes after an ex­pan­sion of the city’s cycle lanes, which now make up over 200 kilo­me­tres, ac­cord­ing to the coun­cil.

The gov­ern­ment is look­ing into re­duc­ing uni­ver­sity tu­ition fees by 30% over three years, which could begin in the next aca­d­e­mic year, de­pend­ing on the bud­get pass­ing in par­lia­ment. The Min­is­ter for Uni­ver­si­ties, Francesc Xavier Grau, es­ti­mated the cost at some €60m.

Sur­geons from Vall d’He­bron Hos­pi­tal suc­cess­fully op­er­ated on pa­tients with lo­cally ad­vanced pan­cre­atic ade­no­car­ci­noma using a pi­o­neer­ing tech­nique con­sist­ing of in­sert­ing a nee­dle into the tu­mour and burn­ing the can­cer cells. The pa­tients who have re­ceived the new treat­ment will now be mon­i­tored to study whether it of­fers a longer life ex­pectancy than other meth­ods.

The new tax on pol­lut­ing ve­hi­cles, part of cli­mate change leg­is­la­tion passed three years ago, will be ap­plied from 2020. The tax has run into ob­sta­cles de­lay­ing its ap­pli­ca­tion, such as a court sus­pen­sion that was lifted in April. The gov­ern­ment hopes the tax will bring in €70 m in an­nual rev­enue.

The TV3 Marató telethon cel­e­brated its 27th edi­tion, this time to raise money for can­cer re­search. The sums raised are a new record for the Cata­lan char­ity ini­tia­tive, at al­most €11 mil­lion by the end of De­cem­ber.

The gov­ern­ment will go ahead with leg­is­la­tion for the wine­mak­ing sec­tor. The aim is to bring a Cata­lan law from 2002 into line with Eu­ro­pean rules and im­prove the com­pet­i­tive­ness of Cata­lan wines, pro­mote their di­ver­sity and qual­ity, im­prove safety, and boost their in­ter­na­tional rep­u­ta­tion. The new reg­u­la­tions could come into force at the start of 2019.

The FGC rail­way is to get new eco­log­i­cal and sus­tain­able trains from 2020. Some 15 new trains will be in­tro­duced, which will be made from re­cy­clable ma­te­ri­als and com­ply with noise pol­lu­tion rules. The trains are part of a plan to im­prove the en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment of the sys­tem.

Re­searchers from Barcelona’s Au­tonomous Uni­ver­sity have cal­cu­lated the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of tourist ac­tiv­ity on the city for the first time. The study found that each vis­i­tor to Barcelona pro­duces green­house gas emis­sions equiv­a­lent to 96.9 kg of CO² a day.