Is any good music made in Barcelona? Good question, difficult answer. Barcelona itself is one of the cities that holds the most international tours of bands of all styles and genres. This large musical traffic undoubtedly produce the appearance of new bands. Here is some things that you have to choose local bands in Barcelona. The music speaks for itself of course.

Manel is a band that borders indie and pop, with light instruments and dreamy rhythms. These Catalans also brush tradition as well as using melodies that sounds like background music from Disney or Pixar films. Suitable for romantic afternoons with the boyfriend or girlfriend, walks to anywhere or picnics. All of it sung in Catalan sounds very beautiful.

Amics de les Arts is another example that Catalan boys are very sweet, romantic and ‘poppy’ with a somewhat undefined taste. Also between indie and folk but with songs with electronic touches, these guys are out there to conquer your heart. Dressed like your next door neighbour, without effort or pretensions, honesty is their best weapon, the weapon that undresses others and undresses them.

Mishima also fits inside the Barcelona neo-folk wave, perhaps with better taste and some interesting tunes. It seems that this guy listened to Coldplay and indie rock too much and then lost his original albums and couldn’t listen to anything else. The tone of voice is so similar to Amics de les Arts and Manel that it’s not even interesting to know who influenced who. Do people in Barcelona actually believe that love is possible and put so much effort with these happy-sad sounds? No, this is a solid scene that grows and grows.

Banda Municipal del Polo Norte (which would translate as North Pole local band in English) is another Barcelonian band of the moment. They sing about broken loves in key of rock or the most delicate pop.

The New Raemon also want you to fall in love, use accoustic guitars and pleasant tunes. It seems that the biggest worry of these guys is that their girlfriend takes them out to dance the last song at the party.

Some musical critics in Barcelona should put less effort into promoting their local music packages and try that in some way these bands realize that they’re making the same music, that they’re not original and that the attitude of feeling sorry for yourself and being the good boy in the neighbourhood might be useful to pull a girl once or twice but, in the real world, it’s useless.

Probably nice music for conservative ears, who don’t like risk and who don’t have the slightest intention of stepping outside their bubble, the pop-folk-rock scene in Barcelona should really look at itself in the mirror and awake from its lethargy of pretty girls, shirts and skinny jeans with their four-day beard.

Alexa Ray

Get apartments in Barcelona and enjoy its diverse musical scene. Many concerts await you in the Catalan capital and you mustn’t miss them. Not everything is indie-folk in Barcelona.

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Some say the world of musical shows are something bland, banal, less than meaningful nowadays. But what makes so many musicals still to be staged? What encourages it? To what audience is it directed to? Long questions with long answers. Musical show  provides  entertainment for affluent masses, that is, to go to a musical  costs a lot… or not so necessarily. That if it is worthwhile of course, is relative to the capabilities of your pocket and that what you’re looking for on stage, staging, music playing, the unfolding of the story…

Today, musicals opts for a wide audience, one could say tailored made for families. Going to a musical can be an event that everyone of all ages can enjoy. These days, some of the musicals you can find in Madrid are:

“Over 100 lies”, this musical was inspired by the popular singer Joaquin Sabina. The musical shows the underground world of Madrid where thieves, criminals and poets live, this universe itself is the result of the lyrics Sabina has developed. The story is about three friends who work for the mob and after some trouble, they decide to start their own little mafia. Their ex boss knowing about their planes prepares them a thousand pranks , and after many misfortunes the three buddies decide to take revenge on the Capo. All this, of course, has the background music of Sabina as its soundtrack. Obviously recommended for fans of Sabina, who seemingly in this world has too many. On until  April 8th at the  Rialto Theatre.

The Lion King, we all know the story of this fascinating fable that was adapted by Disney Studios. A love story, of growth and maturing, to last in time and learn responsibility, the Lion King continues to move adults and children worldwide. This great musical runs until July 15 at the Teatro Lope de Vega.

Alice in Wonderland, another classic story adapted many times into film and animation, this time it reaches the space of psychedelic music to tell the adventures of Alice, through a world of dreams and outlandish events, she crosses the infinite possibilities of the unconscious with magic pills, hallucinogenic cats and rabbits that want to catch time. An essential book of Lewis Carroll that has also been and remains a source of inspiration for many artists. On until March 24 at the Teatro Figaro Adolfo Marsillach.

Pretty Woman My Love, with the best soundtrack of the 80′s, this festival tells the frivolous story of a girl who is part of a “reality show” who is not going to stop until she is  the most beautiful queen and loved by the whole world, a stardom unattainable for millions. Only for true fans of 80′s best trashy moments. On until April 1 at the Teatro Nuevo Apolo.

Alexa Ray

Get apartments in Madrid and enjoy some great musicals. Cultural life in Madrid is diverse and entertaining. Do not hesitate to seek the best of art, literature and music in every style.

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What better way to begin the year than enjoying good films. The Berlinale -Berlin International Film Festival- will celebrate its 62nd edition from the 9th to the 19th of February in the German capital. Berlin, a city with a broad cultural and artistic scene, celebrates one of its most prestigious events. During this year’s edition, the streets will be full of celebrities and parties and there’ll be many news stories regarding the world of film.

A festival of great projection, the Berlinale 2012 will show some 400 films of different styles and genres. It will open with the premier of the film ‘Les adieux a la reine’ by the French director Benoit Jacquot, which is an adaptation of the novel by Chantal Thomas that portrays the beginning of the French Revolution from the point of view of the servants who worked at the Palace of Versailles. It stars Diane Kruger, Virginie Ledoyen and Léa Seydoux.

In the competition section, where they discover new film talents, films such as ‘Time for outrage’ by Tony Gatlif, ‘Dictado’ by Antonio Chavarrías and ’10+10′ by Hou Hsiao Hsien among others.

On the 14th of February, the honorific Bear of 2012 will pay tribute to the career of Meryl Streep. She will attend the Berlinale palace in the event of the presentation of her latest film, ‘The Iron Lady’, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, where she plays the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In a statement made by Dieter Kosslick, the director of the festival, he says to be delighted to give Meryl Streep -a world star and an extraordinary artist- the honorific Golden Bear. He outlined her great talent and capacity to easily combine comedy and drama roles.

In the tribute to Meryl Streep, six films of hers will be screened. ‘Kramer vs Kramer’ by Robert Benton, ‘Sophie’s Choice’ by Alan J. Pakula, ‘Out of Africa’ by Sidney Pollack, ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ by Robert Altman and ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ by Clint Eastwood.

We’ll also enjoy the retrospective labelled ‘Happy Birthday, Studio Babelsberg’, where they’ll celebrate the centenary of the first film that these studios produced (February 1912), ‘Der Totentanz’, directed by Urban Gad, followed by ‘Münchhausen’ (1943) by Josef Von Bakey. After an era dominated by the Nazis, in the years 1946-1990, the filmed over 1500 productions there and, after the fall of the Berlin wall, they went through a long process that lead to its eventual privatization.

Various failed attempts emerged to give Studio Babelsberg its splendor back, something that it didn’t recoup until 2004 under the management of Carl Woebcken and Christoph Fisser. This meant the beginning of its biggest international projection, with films such as ‘The pianist’ by Roman Polanski or ‘The reader’ by Stephen Daldry, both included in the retrospective.

Berlin is always a recommendable destination, but possibly even more this month. For all the information on the festival, you can visit http://www.berlinale.de

Dani

This is one of the most prestigious international film festivals that gathers the best directors and actors from around the world. If you decide to visit the festival, don’t hesitate to rent apartments in Berlin

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Until the 19^th of February 2012, MAPFRE Foundation will exhibit a retrospective of the photographer Gotthard Schuh. The exhibition presented at the newly remodeled Azca showroom is organized with the collaboration of Fotostiftung Schweiz, owner of the photographs.

The director of Fotostiftung Schweiz, Peter Pfunder, curates the exhibition. Among the 113 photographs that make up the sample, 93 belong to Gotthard Schuh. These photos were taken between 1929 and 1956. Werner Bischof, Robert Frank, René Groebli and Jakob Tuggener, all of them, members of the distinguished Swiss Kollegium of photographers in the 50s, took the other twenty photographs.

Although his parents were Swiss, Gotthard Schuh was born in Berlin in 1879. His main contribution to the art world was the creation of poetic realism that revolutionized photography and European photographers in the twentieth century. He started his career as a painter, but in 1930 he interrupted his promising career to devote himself to his passion for photo images.

Schuh was actively involved in the aesthetic changes that occur during the late twenties in the photograph. Like many other great photographers, he found in the photojournalism the opportunity to carry out his experiences in the field of imaging. It is in this area, where speed and charm of reality produce a multiplicity of situations captured with the camera, which together produce great and interesting works. He worked as a photographer for prestigious publications like Paris Match, Life, Berlin Illustrite, among others.

Paris attracted him, because the city matched his hectic life. He worked with the lights and shadows of the city, while capturing with his camera, everything what the common eye misses, developing what is called poetic realism, which is related to capture the subjectivity implicit in a situation to display bare emotions and the psychology of the characters and the density of the environments in a single image.

In 1941 he was appointed photo editor of the newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung. This opened him a window, both to his work, as well as to other emerging photographers internationally known as Robert Frank or the Hungarian Gyula Halász, better known as Brassaï. From that moment, his works began to be structured in more complex ways, giving life to his book Islands of the Gods, which was published on his 11 months touring Bali, Singapore, Sumatra and Java.

His constant struggle to give the photography a prominent place among other arts, led him to participate in the formation of the Kollegium Schweizerischer Photographen, through he sought to position the photography as a proper expression of arts, since it works primarily in aesthetics, requires a long creative process and creates a tension in the viewer. Many photographers enrolled in the Kollegium, including a host of top Swiss photographers who accompany Schuh’s work in this retrospective of his work, for  the first time presented in Spain.

For more information: http://www.exposicionesmapfrearte.com/schuh/

Nancy Guzman

It’s a wonderful time of year to rent apartments in Madrid make up your mind and take those vacations that you deserve!

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Translated by: Hans
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Being in Paris is always about retreat, long interminable walks and atmospheres that seem out of a film. Winter in Paris is somewhat grey and slightly humid. A long walk in the drizzle that soaks everything in slow motion ends up being a moment of pure and utter beauty. The streets shine and the lights reflect on the sidewalks and the streets themselves. The shops are usually open every day and the people are used to being in the streets even when it’s cold or the weather is bad. Unlike other European cities, winter doesn’t stop Paris, the opposite, it gives it a unique beauty contrast. It’s the city’s spirit, the emotion that one has when going through its old streets.

The world of comic books has many fans in Paris, since the comic book has always been something that has experienced new artists, stories and discourses that have implemented themselves with time. And that’s how before, probably, novels had some sort of social role at the time of portraying singular historical moments, questioning political systems, unchaining questions on the current state of things. Comic books have taken up that role efficiently, especially in a day and age that revolves around the media so much, where you can find all types of comic books with all contents, even risqué ones, and they’re all the better for it.

The simple thing about comic books is that its diffusion and spreading is a lot faster as a visual and written publication. You just have to make a photocopy or scan it for the internet and the images and stories that are told can spread quickly in a physical format and on the internet. You just have to check the social networks to see that there are sketches of all types and quality, and they’re use to diffuse current affairs: global crisis, market, capitalism, gender studies… The comic book is still one of the best tools for revolution.

On the other hand, Japanese comic books, also known as ‘manga’, is a universe in itself that, from a western point of view, has become one of the best ways of understanding Japanese and Oriental discourses. If you’re a fan of manga and you’re in beautiful Paris, make sure you visit Paris Manga on the 4th and 5th of February. This important manga convention is already on its 13th edition and it’s one of the most important landmarks of the year for all comic book fans. As well as thousands of magazine stands and presentations, the best of sci-fi and film collectables will also be at your disposal. For more information visit the following website: http://www.parismanga.fr/

Alexa Ray

Get apartments in Paris and discover the immense universe of comic books and manga. Paris awaits you with its agitated and diverse cultural life. You can’t miss out on exploring the beautiful French capital this winter. You’ll love it!

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Barcelona is a city that when it comes to going shopping, you have plenty of options of all types for all tastes. If you want to spend a lot of money, you won’t need fashion shops and the best known brands to buy different clothes, from trousers, jackets, shirts, blouses, shoes, skirts and everything that you need is within reach. In the same way, and with the change in season, many shops offer big offers and sales, prices that are much more affordable so you can fill up your wardrobe.

If you want to explore Barcelona looking for quality clothes and style, begin with a long walk around the Gothic and the Born district. These districts are located in the oldest part of the city, in the centre. In these small shops, lost among different cellars, bars and small markets, you’ll be able to find exclusive designs of the highest quality and that’s because many young designers from all nationalities and styles meet around these areas presenting their best products and styles in these shops. The prices are variable of course, so don’t hesitate to haggle if you think it’s right.

In the centre of Barcelona, towards Passeig de Gràcia, we can find some of the most famous fashion brands in the world. As such, the prices can be a bit higher in this area, or even a lot higher depending if it’s the beginning or the end of the season, or even sales that can go up to 50% off. If you’re on Rambla Catalunya, you can also find exclusive clothes shops, as well as different cafés and restaurants. The best possible time to visit these shops is probably in spring or the end of summer when, once again, sales go hand in hand with the change in season.

Shops like El Corte Inglés or H&M guarantee you some discounts in clothes that can be considered pretty conventional, but they will definitely solve your ‘problem’. These shops offer discounts all year long, you just have to be aware. You also can’t forget about a walk in the Gràcia district, which despite being a place more about food and entertainment, it still has small shops where accessories, hats or clothes for all seasons are also available.

Get information on flea markets and artist markets that take place in the city frequently. Offers of clothes, as well as gifts or accessories for the home, are within your reach at these markets. When it comes to finding affordable prices on modern fashion, flea markets in Barcelona are places where modernistas and hipsters gather in search for the best in vintage. Don’t be afraid to go with retro fashion; fashion always becomes retro and it’s now in fashion to re-discover styles.

Alexa Ray

Get apartments in Barcelona and enjoy its diverse cultural lifestyle and the shopping offers in clothes and footwear. In Barcelona you’ll be able to find all the styles that you’re looking for.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Barcelona has a lot to offer if what you’re looking for is some night time action and excesses. Many tourists come to Barcelona during weekends to have some fun and have a great time in this city, that goes crazy when it comes to party and fun. This is undoubtedly one of the characteristics that attracts the most visitors. Here are some options for a crazy weekend and for you to be part of this ongoing party.

Friday: A Friday in Barcelona can begin early in the morning by walking down the busy Ramblas. You’ll see a lot of tourists and people from all over the world browsing the stalls and watching street shows. Walk a bit more and go down the promenade towards the district of the Barceloneta. There you’ll find a large diversity of bars and exquisite seafood restaurants. After the food, the Gothic district awaits you with plenty of modern bars with indie and hipster waves, where beautiful guys and girls will show off more than they should. After a few drinks, go to Plaça Reial, where the famous Sidecar awaits, a club with the best rock DJs that will make you dance until 6am. After, you can have a beer in the street and go back to your hotel.

Saturday: The next day, after a light breakfast or lunch, have some cocktails or gin & tonics in the multicultural Raval district. People from all over the world are on its streets. You can get to know Barcelona’s own history by seeing its old shops, bar and the changes that this popular district has experienced. A 20 minute walk will take you to Plaça Espanya, from where you can see Montjuïc. Once at the top, visit the MNAC, a museum that stands out for its important Romanic art collection. On your way down, you can eat a delicious kebab at a reasonable price while you drink in a bar in Poble Sec. You can then attend a concert at the popular music venue Apolo where, after midnight, you will be able to dance until 7am non-stop.

Sunday: After some hours of light sleep, walk down Passeig de Gràcia and visit some of Gaudí’s important buildings. On this route, take the metro and go to Parc Güell, on the hill of Carmel, a park that will fascinate you for its designs and columns, as well as giving you a fabulous view of the whole city of Barcelona. You can have another beer at the bar in the park and then walk down to the Gràcia district, where restaurants with cuisines from around the world as well as old bars await for give you a warm welcome and say “see you soon” while you enjoy some patatas bravas with your last beer.

Alexa Ray

Get apartments in Barcelona and don’t hesitate to enjoy its vibrant nightlife. A lot of action and fun await you in this city visited by people from around the world all year long. The heat never leaves Barcelona.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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The exhibition organized around videos and photographic material that’s owned by the Martin Z. Marguiles fund collection in Miami, and it’s set up on 150 photographs and five audiovisuals that belong to 50 authors. Through them they explore the way that mankind lives on the earth, its interaction with it and the way that he has altered nature to satisfy his emotions, everyday life, survival needs and beliefs.

The exhibition was titled taking one of the last poems by the German lyrical writer Friedrich Hölderlin, who dedicated the last years of his life to read Hyperion and his vision on the balance of the stars and the movement of the sun. Based on those thoughts, in his last poems he deals with thinking aspects, who is said to have influenced Hegel and the development of the concept of dialectics.

From those thoughts and investigating the collection of Martin Z. Marguiles, it was possible to generate the main concept of this exhibition and, for that, they created three sections that gather each of the main concepts as: Being in the World, existence of Fluxes, signs and symbols, building, living, mapping. A true space for thought and contemporary outlook on the world.

Martin Z. Margulies began his collection in 1976, led by a passion for beauty and human creation. His first work in the collection was the work by Isamu Noguchi, until he managed to gather one of the most important collections of contemporary art in the world, with American and European artists.

The photography collection of Margulies is renown as one of the top 25 in the world. Many experts, critics and gallery owners consider that it’s one of the best in its field. An important part of its paintings and sculptures are located in his house in Florida, in Key Biscayne, United States.

To preserve the collection of photographs, videoinstallations and sculptures of great size, an interesting rescue plan was developed for an industrial warehouse that was abandoned in 1999, in the art district of Wynwood in Miami, where they’re preserved to develop didactic activities.

Among the authors we can find James Casebere, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander and Ed Ruscha, whose works are moving due to the metaphysical exploration on the action of mankind on the planet and nature.

For more information: http://www.colectania.es/index.php?i=1&p=2

Nancy Guzman

Renting apartments in Barcelona is a wonderful encounter with nature, where you can dispel all your metaphysical doubts on mankind and the environment by attending this exhibition at the Foto Colectania Foundation.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Over a century ago  Marinetti shook the art world with that wonderful sentence in the Futurist Manifesto in which he decreed that in a race car there was more beauty than in the Victory of Samothrace. This was the apotheosis of the celebration of speed and machines, which museums found art absurd and redundant and that it should be destroyed or used without hesitation, perhaps even as automotive circuits in a pendulum motion that would have included the conversion of the old Hippodrome of Domitian into the disturbingly beautiful Piazza Navona during the peak time of the Roman Baroque.

The world was living the fascinating new thresholds of times, but what characterized 1909 was that its vertigo was the result of the rhythmically unusual and violent drive of motor machine. If the twisting motion of curves, shapes and folds of art and architecture, mirrored the new universe which then looked at the neatly polished crystals by Spinoza and Leibniz, one of the most characteristic features of Baroque, it will also be a dynamic characterizing of a futuristic world that heralded a hundred years ago, a world in perpetual motion, however labeled at this particular time by speed and all its possibilities. A world where objects and figures in the pictures are moved mechanically, poetry is an engine that produces images of countless industrial revolutions and grammar and vocabulary deliberately distorted in the interest of onomatopoeia, filming  the ideal means expression par excellence, thus theater, the forerunner of the performance, a dizzying succession of numbers of varieties and music an art of sound that aspires to a mechanized and dynamic condition.

One hundred years later those same vehicles that so fascinated so enthusiastically the Futurists as image and promises of the future for the present living  have become objects of nostalgia that bring us back to the past by cultivating necessarily nostalgia, which is probably very characteristic of an age like ours, undergoing a crisis of such dimensions, including the Maya year and preferring to look back to look into the future that only seems to notice the blackest tones.

From the 1st to the 5th of February at the Porte de Versailles in Paris, where paradoxically  Le Figaro published the Futurist Manifesto,  celebrates the thirty-sixth edition of Retro Mobile (http://en.retromobile.com/) a veritable living museum of automotive history where we can admire the legendary models of the Belle Epoque and the interwar period that raised the unqualified admiration of much of the avant-garde creations of the time.

Paul Oilzum

This is an event of enormous attraction for history car buffs and for those who find in vintage and retro comfort against the uncertain future. You may want to visit it when you rent apartments in Paris

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Translated by: Marc
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On the Montjuïc mountainside, Avinguda Marqués de Comillas 6-8, there’s one of the most extraordinary complexes of industrial modernism in Catalonia, the Casaramona factory. This was a project by the architect Puig i Cadafalch, ordered by Casimir Casaramona i Puigcercós, a cotton factory owner, who substituted the previous factory that was destroyed by a fire. The factory was built between 1909 and 1912, the year that the Barcelona Council named it as one of the best constructions. In 1913 it was inaugurated, the same year that its owner died.

It’s a horizontal building that has two great towers that used to be a water deposit to prevent fires from spreading. Its exterior appearance is made of brickwork, typical of the Catalan construction system, with a lack of decoration other than a ceramic or two on the towers, a mosaic with the owner’s initials and some stone decoration. Even so, the shapes achieved with the bricks on its façade and the forged iron ornaments give the result of a beautiful building that doesn’t need decorative elements.

There are large windows and the ceilings are very high, where light and air comes in. And, differently to many other factories of the time, it doesn’t have a chimney because it worked with electrical power.

But the cotton industry did not last long. In 1920 it closed its doors to become a space that down the years had different uses. In 1929, the Universal Exhibition celebrated in Montjuïc used it for storage. From 1940 onwards it was a stable and a vehicle storage location of the Spanish Police.

It’s worth noting that on the 9th of January 1976, it was declared a Cultural Interest Site because, since its closure, it had slowly deteriorated. Before, in 1963, ‘la Caixa’ bought the complex but it wasn’t until 1992 that it decided to give it back to Barcelona, giving it a new social and cultural purpose. And so, in 2002, after restoring it, modernizing it and adapting it to the new times, CaixaForum was born. Actually, if we visit the building now, we can see that the restoration fully respected both the structure and its elements.

Today, CaixaForum offers a wide range of cultural, social and educational programmes. It’s a place where you can visit temporary exhibitions, concerts, film screenings, conferences, debates… All of this in a modernist industrial complex from the beginning of the 20th century, perfectly preserved and adapted to new structures and, most importantly, with a new cultural and artistic role to be practiced and enjoyed by everyone.

For more information: http://obrasocial.lacaixa.es/nuestroscentros/caixaforumbarcelona/caixaforumbarcelona_es.html

Cinta Blanch

You can enjoy apartments in Barcelona after having seen this unique industrial modernist building, now a cultural and artistic reference centre, where you can see an impressionist exhibition and even a jazz concert.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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