The Barcelona Mid Beach Season

From 23 March the beaches of Barcelona enter what is known as the mid-season period, which continues until 1 June.

The cleaning operations involve brigades carrying out morning, afternoon and evening shifts, and the number of litter bins installed on all the beaches has increased five-fold. To ensure the waters are clean, the Barcelona City Council will also be activating the sea water cleaning service, with two boats that will remove waste from the surface of the water.

To ensure safety and mobility on the beaches, the Guàrdia Urbana will be stepping up its seafront patrols. Officers from the Ciutat Vella and Sant Martí district units will carry out uniformed and plain clothes patrols, prioritising the fight against theft & robbery and will work to minimise practices such as illegal beach vending and other activities.

For people who wish to sunbathe whilst connected to the internet, the Council has set up fifteen Wi-Fi points on the Sant Sebastià, Barceloneta, Somorrostro, Nova Icària, Bogatell, Mar Bella and Llevant beaches.

Beaches of Barcelona

Barcelona’s Beach Libraries

Two beach libraries are opening in Barcelona for the 6th consecutive year. They can be found at two different points on the city’s shoreline: the Bac de Roda breakwater and the Beach Centre (in the Barceloneta arcade, next to the beach and level with Hospital del Mar). They offer beach and library users the chance to borrow or consult books, magazines and the daily papers for free during the summer months.

The Beach Centre library hours are from 10 am to 7 pm, Mondays to Saturdays, and 11 am to 2 pm on Sundays, whereas the Bac de Roda library is open every weekday from 11 am to 2 pm and from 3 pm to 7 pm. The Bac de Roda library will be open until 31 August and the Beach Centre library till 30 September.

The loan service includes 16 newspapers, 18 magazines and 418 short novels, comics, books for children and teenagers and foreign literature.

It is a free service, aimed at all Barcelona beach users, organised by the Environment and Urban Services and Barcelona Libraries for the high season.

Source: www.bcn.es

VI Busker’s Festival Barcelona

Busker’s Festival Barcelona is an internacional street music festival wich objective is to spread the cultural diversity of Barcelona through music. This time, the festival will take place in August, from 5th to the 8th, in the well-known neighbourhood of Barceloneta; four nights of music for all tastes and for the whole family!

Busker’s Festival Barcelona has the peculiarity of being a “hat’s pass” entrance festival. It means, artists don’t receive any fee to be part of the festival; the audience is who gives the money directly to the artists, according to his abilities, tastes and preferences. During the show, artists “pass the hat” and you can also buy their CD. Busker’s has positioned itself as the only festival of it’s kind in the whole area and the only international street music festival in the city.

This festival aims to banish the idea that buskers play in the streets because they can’t “become professional“. Coming to the festival, you can enjoy over 50 music shows of a great variety and quality, above all!

Organizer: La Casa Amarilla

Music in the Parks of Barcelona

Last wednesday, 2nd June, started the inaugural concert in the latest “Music in the Parks” cycle, organised by the Barcelona City Council Environment Area, with a performance by the Sant Andreu Jazz Band – the youngest big band in Europe – in the Teatre Grec Gardens.

The concert has opened new “Music in the Parks” programme. Now a traditional event, this year it aims to reach more people by raising the number of city parks holding the concerts to eight, doubling last year’s total.

It includes three parallel programmes, classical music, jazz and sessions by the Banda Municipal de Música of Barcelona, and these run from 2 June until 25 August.

There are 28 concerts in this year’s cycle. The Municipal Band’s concerts will take place in the Creueta del Coll, Diagonal Mar, Barceloneta and Guineueta parks. Turó Parc, the Príncep de Girona Gardens and the Hivernacle (Winter Garden) in Parc de la Ciutadella will hold the classical music concerts, while the Drets Humans (Human Rights) Gardens and the Hivernacle will hold the jazz sessions. The Municipal Band concerts start at 8 pm and the classical music and jazz concerts begin at 10 pm. All concerts are free and in the open air and you don’t need to book in advance.

The summer park concert programme came about fifteen years ago. The aim is top bring quality music to every kind of audience and to encourage performers by young musicians, while promoting the possibilities offered by parks as meeting places and recreational areas on summer nights and evenings.

Sponsored by DAMM Free, the event is being collaborated on by Cespa, UME Unión Musical, El Periódico, Time Out, Aigües Veri, the Conservatori del Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC).