Barcelona, best city

Barcelona is named the “greatest city on Earth” by the British newspaper The Telegraph, and Albert Serra’s new film is acclaimed at Cannes festival

May

1. The Telegraph’s travel experts put the Catalan capital at the top of a ranking of 50 cities. The study focused on “the ultimate visitor experience, rather than how convenient it is for residents”, and it valued the city’s relaxed pace, good weather, unbeatable food , as well as the culture and design.

2. Dolors Feliu was elected the new president of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC). A lawyer and an activist with a long trajectory in Catalonia’s independence movement, Feliu took over the leadership of the key Catalan pro-independence organisation from Elisenda Paluzie.

3. The Spanish Supreme Court confirmed the acquittal of pro-independence activist Tamara Carrasco. She was detained under terrorism charges in 2018 for sending messages to a pro-independence Whatsapp group and barred from leaving her hometown Viladecans, near Barcelona, for over a year before trial.

May 4. The Banyoles-born Catalan filmmaker, Albert Serra, premiered his latest movie ‘Pacifiction’ at the renowned international film festival in Cannes. The director shot the film in French Polynesia, on the island of Tahiti, with the idea of talking about a “current” world but framed in “a context of visual fantasy”.

Is our privacy under threat?

Is our privacy under threat?.

This month we looked at the illegal use of the Pegasus spyware in the Catalangate scandal, one more example of how vulnerable we can be in the digital world, and the growing concern about how our personal data can be used to monitor us.