International Day of Working Women

By Berta Moya and Irene Monferrer

On March 8th we have celebrated the International Day of Working Women every year since 1911. This is a festivity recognized by the United Nations Organization. This day commemorates the fact that women participate in the same way as men in the world of work and in society.

The establishment of this date as the International Women's Day was the result of a long process. It supposedly relates to a fire that took place in a textile factory in New York in 1908, causing the death of a hundred striking workers. The reality, however, was more complex. There were three events, not just a single fire in New York: the textile workers’ strike in 1857, the fire in the Cotton Factory and the Triangle Shirtwaist Company on March 25th 1911. In the latter, 142 workers (mostly young immigrants) died. They had been on strike the year before to demand better working conditions.

Medieval festival

By Thamesis Balceda

In Badalona, from 25th to 27th March, we celebrated the medieval festival along La Salut Avenue. The streets of the neighborhood of La Salut were crowded. They were full of lights and the floor was full of straw. There were a lot of of fools, knights and kings. The atmosphere was very medieval. People wore medieval clothes. There were all kind of medieval shops, donkeys… The objects were handmade. You could watch, for example, how a man made bread, and then he put it into the oven. You could also see how women sewed clothes. You could mount the donkeys and go for a ride. You could eat medieval meals and listen to medieval music.

International day of the bird

By Nicolas Ordax

In October, more specifically on the 3rd and the 4th, the International Day of the Bird is celebrated.

It is mainly a day on which activities related to ornithology are promoted in natural spaces. For example, there are guided bird-watching trips, guided photography tours and other activities...they are all, of course, free.

The Remolar-Filipines reserve, in the Llobregat Delta, is a place where these kinds of activities take place. It is located at the mouth of the River Llobregat and is a great place to observe birds. I've been there many times on short trips to do some bird-watching.

On the International Day of the Bird, the main activities in the Delta del Llobregat are the following:

-Guided trips: There are guided trips with local staff members to bird-watching hides on the lagoons and to the Pineda de Cal Francès, which is a little forest that is closed all year round apart from this day.

-Competitions: There are some competitions, involving, for example, drawing, identifying and photographing birds.

-Bird releasing: Injured birds that have been found and cured are released.

-Bird ringing: Bird ringing is a very big project, in which people at ringing stations put some nets in a specific area and then ring the captured birds. When birds migrate, they are sometimes captured by other ringing stations and this allows us to trace their migration route of the birds. On the Day of the Bird, visitors are shown how this process works.

The Year of Joan Maragall

By Marson John Mesa Bautista

In 2010 we celebrated the 150th anniversary of Maragall’s birth and to honour the occasion the Barcelona City Council placed a statue of Joan Maragall in Plaça Molina. The sculpture was created by his son Ernest Maragall i Noble.

He was born on October 10th 1860, in Barcelona. He was a Catalan poet, journalist and translator, and a very important member of the Modernista movement in literature.

When he was 14 years old, his father wanted him to work in the family textile business but in 1879 he enrolled in the University’s law faculty, where he graduated in 1884. He also learned several languages (English, German, French and Italian) and studied the piano.

In 1891 he married Clara Noble. He had 13 children with her and passed his interest in culture on to them. In 1891 he started to write for “L'Avenç”, where he published some poems. He wrote in a simple and spontaneous way and this led him to create the theory of the “living word”. Although he is well known for his poetic work, he also wrote more than 450 texts in prose. He contributed to various magazines and newspapers (L’Avenç, Catalonia i Luz, Diario de Barcelona and La Veu de Catalunya), in which he published articles in both Spanish and Catalan about literature, politics and social issues.

He won many competitions and awards during his life, as well as many honours, particularly his appointment as “Mestre en Gai Saber” and his election as president of the Barcelona Athenaeum in 1903. He was also a founding member of the philological section of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

He fell ill in November 1911 and he died on 20th December in Barcelona.

His most important works are Poesies (1895), Visions i CantsLes Disperses (1904), Enllà (1906), Seqüències (1900), (1911).