It is currently not possible to fly directly to 23 countries thanks to bilateral agreements that establish Madrid as the priority airport in Spain and explicitly block the possibility of flying to Barcelona. Even though Barcelona complies with all the requirements to become an intercontinental hub thanks to its privileged location in Europe and the Mediterranean.
I was always amazed at how airports of cities such as Manchester fly directly to every corner in the world and wondered why we couldn’t do that from Barcelona, how was that possible? how …

A recent study by Stanford university professor Antoni Abad was made public last February the 18th in a meeting organized by the Cercle d’Estudis Sobiranistes. The study, which can be downloaded here in pdf format in its catalan version, has demolished one of the arguments unionists recurrently used to scare catalans with: “If Catalonia becomes independent it will be kicked out of the EU and will have to ask for readmission and Spain will veto it”.
Now we know this isn’t true, when Catalonia, Scotland, the Basque Country, etc. become …

On February the 21st a familiar scene happened again, during the final of the Basketball Spanish King’s Cup that took place in the Basque Country and faced Barça against Real Madrid (final result: Barça 80 – Real Madrid 61) while the Spanish anthem started playing on the PA the booing by the Catalan and Basque audience was so loud the anthem could not be heard. Below, the video.

This was a repetition of what happened last spring at the Football Spanish King’s Cup that faced Barça with Athletic de Bilbao. All …

About a month ago the channel Euronews made an excellent documentary about Catalonia’s independence which is available online.
Even though I didn’t post it at the time I think it is interesting since it shows how the independence option not only has achieved a normality status inside Catalonia but also internationally. This is a major achievement for Catalan society which, through popular initiatives such as the referendums held on 13S, 13D and 28F, have put Catalonia’s independence in Europe’s political agenda and have shown that if Catalans want independence this …

Following the last round of referendums that took place on february the 28th and waiting for the new round of referendums that will take place on april the 25th a disruptive factor has just entered the catalan political arena. Joan Laporta, the president of Barça, has created a new website www.laporta2010.cat where he’ll explain his ideas about politics, it displays a logo with the catalan independentist flag blended with his name and advocates that “now’s the time for brave decisions”.
With a very clear independentist political discourse Laporta emerges as …