Music, tradition, street arts and plenty of festive fun are in store in the city from 23 to 26 September with La Mercè 2022. The festival regains a wholly face-to-face format, with no bookings required. At lamerce.barcelona you’ll find the full programme for a decentralised and diverse event offering hundreds of activities, with Rome as this year’s guest city.
Highlights in this year’s programme include:
The opening speech. Film director Carla Simón has marked a before and an after in Catalan film and will be giving the opening speech this year.
Popular culture. In addition to the traditional opening ceremony, there will be human towers meetings, music, dance and film linked to tradition. This year’s festival also sees the return of the Nit de la Vigília after an absence of three decades.
The music and fireworks spectacular. The show returns to Av.Reina Maria Cristina, with a display combining light, colour and sound, and blending Italian and Roman melodies with music from a feminist perspective, opera to mark the 175th anniversary of the Gran Teatre del Liceu and music against war around the world, in a finale packed with energy and optimism.
Concerts. Consecrated artists, new talent and new types of creation form part of the programme, which consists of three music sections: the BAM, Música Mercè and Acció Cultura Viva.
Street shows. The MAC street arts festival offers innovative projects and new technological formats, with genres as diverse as integrated dance, contemporary dance, urban dance, street theatre, installations, workshops, circus, games, puppets, music and clowning.
You can find full details on this eagerly awaited edition of La Mercè on the website lamerce.barcelona.
The poster for La Mercè 2022
The author of the poster, David de las Heras, has brought together three generations of Barcelona women, representing a Mercè which transcends the passing of time and brings traditional and artistic creation together in the same celebration, remembering its roots and reiterating the city’s commitment to justice and peace.
If you wish, you can pick up a copy of the poster while stocks last at the Sala Ciutat (C/ Ciutat, 2), or download it here.
GeoTLDs promote local identities on the internet thanks to geographical domains. This makes them the perfect way of getting to know cities all around the world without leaving your home. We’re proposing a trip around the world by visiting five city domains. Are you coming along?
Our journey begins with .barcelona, a domain which has been operating for six years now and has more than five thousand registered addresses. Browsing the various types of .barcelona domains offers us a first-hand look at some of the city’s most typical and iconic sectors. For instance, through cultural domains such as the one used by Park Güell; gastronomy, such as the domain used by La Boqueria, or meet.barcelona, as a way of getting to know the city and what’s going on there. In just a few clicks you can tap into the city’s heartbeat. But we already knew about this domain, so let’s pack our bags and move on!
Our next stop is .stockholm, one of the most singular city domains in that it is limited only to websites relating to the City Council in this city. A good example is start.stockholm, where we can find general information about the city and a clutch of .stockholm websites for the various services which the City Council offers its citizens.
Changing continent, we visit the geographica domain with the most registered websites in the world, at over 302,000! This is .tokyo, the domain for the Japanese capital. Here we can find the website marathon.tokyo, for international runners, along with visit-chiyoda.tokyo and visit-minato-city.tokyo to discover neighbourhoods in Tokyo, or japanfreak.tokyo, for those interested in curious aspects of Japanese culture.
From here we hop over to one of Australia’s cities with its own domain, which is .sydney (the other is .melbourne if you’re wondering). This city domain has over seven thousand registered sites, including cycleways.sydney, a website with maps and routes for getting around the city by bike.
Our journey continues with one of the most visited cities in the world, as we stop off at .nyc. The city that never sleeps has over 68,000 registered domains. We can find sites such as greenwichvillage.nyc, with everything that’s going on in the neighbourhood, and newyearseve.nyc, for those wishing to recreate the legendary New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square, so often seen in films.
Finally, the last stage of our journey takes us to .capetown. The domain for the South African capital has over four thousand registered domains. These include wanderer.capetown, to discover various routes around the city, iseeyou.capetown, a project seeking to give visibility to different collectives and fight to eradicate the discrimination and inequalities that still exist in a city as complex as Cape Town.
We spoke to Laura Maeso from the marketing agency OOMKT. The company is a member of the Barcelona Digital Chamber and works for the digital transformation of businesses in the industrial and B2B sector in the Bages county and the province of Barcelona, helping companies to generate business through their digital channels.
A few months back the government announced the launch of the Kit Digital subsidies, offered by the EU as part of the Next Generation EU funds. The subsidies are designed to help with the digital transformation process for SMEs and the self-employed in our country, and to speed up this process.
As an agency promoting digitalisation, OOMKT opted for the domainagentkitdigital.barcelona to promote its services as an agency working with these subsidies.
Laura, tells us about the Kit Digital for those who are not familiar with it
The Kit Digital is a subsidy planpromoted by the Spanish government as part of the EU’s Next Generation funding. The main goal is to improve the digital maturity of SMEs and the self-employed in our country. More than 2.5 million companies are expected to benefit from this initiative. Subsides range from 2,000 to 12,000 euros and come in the form of a digital payment, which all companies with up to fifty workers will receive if they request it. The money can be used to implement a list of tech solutions, ranging from the creation of a website or e-commerce page to the implementation of software to optimise the management of all the company’s processes and clients, plus other solutions.
Which companies can benefit from it?
The government has separated companies into three large groups: those with 1 or 2 workers, which can apply for up to €2,000; those with 3 to 9 workers, which can apply for €6,000, and those with more than 10 workers, which can apply for up to €12,000.
Companies obtaining the subsidies must contract the solution they require from any of the 8,700 plus digitalisation agencies operating around the country.
Companies in Barcelona interested in further information can check out this linkabout the Kit Digital, where they will find detailed information.
How do you think the Kit Digital will help small businesses?
Without the slightest doubt, these subsidies will provide a big impetus for a large part of the business network in our country when it comes to digitalising their communication and sales channels.
I also think it will help them to improve their internal management processes, a factor which will boost things such as efficiency and production capacity. With society and the world where it is now, after more than two years of the pandemic, I think that companies need to clearly back the digital world in all senses, regardless of the sector we might be looking at. These subsidies are simply a helping hand to try and speed this process up, as there’s nothing that will stop it.
You mentioned that one of the tech solutions covered by the Kit Digital subsidies is the creation of a website or e-commerce platform. What other solutions are there for small businesses? What have they asked for the most so far?
There’s quite a variety of tech solutions on offer. From the creation of a new website to SEO of all content on an existing website, which is what we specialise in.
For instance, companies can also request a strategy for social media to enhance their online reputation, boost their community and increase their sales.
Another solution which our agency believes will be very successful is the installation of management software for internal processes, which will improve the efficiency and control of all business processes relating to production or operational matters.
Similarly, the optimisation of client management and invoicing is another key factor for any company’s operations, and the Kit Digital includes the installation of a CRM, none other than a programme designed to digitalise and automate this process.
Another type of technology which is playing an important role is business intelligence, as it helps to improve decision-making and reduces errors through the use of artificial intelligence to analyse data. The Kit Digital also offers companies the possibility of implementing software of this nature. These are the most commonly requested solutions among our clients.
Where a company wishes to create a website, what do you think they should bear in mind when choosing their domain?
It depends what they want to achieve with their site. In our sector, a domain can be chosen by brand, by company name, or by a product or service, if the idea is to use SEO to position the domain and the company’s products and services on Google.
In your case, you opted for a website with a .barcelona domain. Why did you choose .barcelona?We did it for local SEO. We were looking for companies in Barcelona interested in requesting these subsidies, and the domain agentkitdigital.barcelona was available. We found it a very interesting option for achieving our goals, and that’s why we chose it.
Getting your brand out there for people to engage with is a basic step for people to identify with you. Social media not only helps promote your company’s products and services, but also offers a chance to generate a community, disseminate the mission and values of your brand, gauge the needs of your target audience and, ultimately, make your brand more human and familiar.
Work your brand identity well
It is really important for your brand to be coherent across all platforms, making it easier for people to recognise. When somebody looks for you on social media, they need to know that your profile corresponds to your brand.
If you have various social media profiles, try to get them to have the same name across all media platforms.
The profile image should be your logo.
Add the URL of your website to your social media profiles.
Use a similar visual design across all platforms, consistent with your website.
Identify your audience and your social platform
Don’t jump the gun when it comes to creating a social media profile. First be sure of the profile you are targetting and the characteristics of each platform. Consider who you want to reach (their age, where they live, their interests, how they express themselves etc.) and identify which social media you will find them on. For example, users on TikTok and Instagram will be younger than those on Facebook and Twitter.
Once you know your target audience and which social media you want to be on, consider the type of content you need. For instance, Instagram and Pinterest are highly visual platforms and need good quality image-based content, with photos and videos alike. In contrast, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are perfect for text content, sharing articles, explaining new projects, asking users things and so on.
Plan and be consistent
Now you have identified your audience and the social media platforms you want to be on, it’s time to generate content.
Produce a calendar for social media content. This will help you know what and when to communicate. Identify key days for your brand, capitalise on current events, international days which have some connection with your brand or its values etc.
Create quality content: think about what you want to give to your audience. What do they need? What content generates interest? Create content which offers value, explain real stories and stick to the same tone and style in all your communication. If you’re unsure, you can try one sort of content and when you have a minimum base of followers, conduct surveys or ask them what sort of content they would like to see on your profile.
Generate special content for your followers. Maybe you can clear up queries with a live video for your followers, publish tutorials, reward your followers with a draw or competition of some sort…
Most of all, be patient
Share your social media on all your channels, from the website to visiting cards. This is a good way to get people who see your brand somewhere to track you and perhaps end up engaging with your brand.
Generating a community of followers on social media is not a fast process. It’s best to have some followers who identify with your brand and engage with it than to try to quickly build a base of followers regardless of their profile.
The Fair Tourism BCN campaign is back this summer to raise awareness among locals and visitors alike relating to the harm caused by this illegal activity. The website, with its .barcelona domain, enables users to check if a specific building has flats without tourist licences, notify the City Council and help combat the phenomenon, as well as clear up any queries.
The flat search on fairtourism.barcelona makes it easy to check if there are illegal tourist lets in a particular building in the city. Users simply fill in the fields with the address, and if it doesn’t appear in the database it means that any tourist let in the building is unlicensed. The site also allows users to notify the City Council if they believe there is an illegal tourist flat operating in a building.
The site for the Fair Tourism BCN campaign also includes a questions and answers section to clear up any doubts over what constitutes a tourist let, what conditions legal tourist lets must satisfy or what happens if an unlicensed flat is reported when there are people staying there.
Towards sustainable and respectful tourism
Barcelona has a wide array of tourist accommodation so that all visitors can enjoy the city as if they were just another city resident. Yet for visitors to benefit from their experience while respecting local people in the city, they also need to steer clear of any type of tourism which allows illegal flats to flourish in the city.
Over 2,300 tourist flats have been closed down since the shock plan to tackle illegal tourist accommodation was introduced in July 2016. Besides fines, a team of over a hundred inspectors and spotters continue to work to confirm that flats do not resume their activity, to detect new unlicensed accommodation and pursue organised networks managing more than one flat.
In parallel, work is ongoing with the holiday rental platforms through the joint working group which already included Homeaway, Booking, TripAdvisor, Rentalia, Apartur and Airbnb.
The GeoTLD Group met in the Breton city of Quimper on 2 and 3 June, in a meeting organised by .bzh, the domain representing the Breton community on the internet.
Headed by the Fundació .cat, and with the .barcelona domain as one of its members, the goal of the group is to promote local identities on the internet using geographical domains.
During the meeting, the GeoTLD Group presented a comparative study, highlighting the high renewal rate among a very large number of geographical domains, standing at between 80% and 90%. In some cases, renewals even topped 90%. Of all the geoTLD domains, .tokyo enjoys the highest number of registrations, with 302,574 to be precise. Besides .tokyo, the only domain with more than 100,000 registrations is .cat, the domain representing the Catalan-speaking community. Most geoTLDs have between 5,000 and 25,000 registrations, as is the case with the .barcelona domain. If we look at the number of domains per inhabitant, .barcelona comes out above domains such as .madrid, .paris, .sydney and others. Specifically, there are 3.23 .barcelona domains registered per 1,000 inhabitants.
The geoTLD meeting also covered various other topics such as the campaign for the emoji with the Breton flag, marketing practices geared towards specific solutions for the communities these organisations serve, and the evolution of the European regulatory framework for the internet.
Finally, Stockholm City Council presented its experience in transferring all the services in the city to its own domain, start.stockholm.
Minsk is a graphic design studio which started life eight years ago. The studio has evolved over time, its members have recycled their knowledge, and little by little Minsk has become specialised in audio-visual projects using video, animated graphics and digital design. With the creation of the domain minsk.barcelona the studio has been able to link its website with its values and those of its clients. We spoke to Pere Gómez Gavaldà, a member of Minsk, about design and the .barcelona domain.
What sets you aside from other graphic design and audio-visual studios?
Even though we’re a small studio (there are five of us), the thing that specifically sets us aside is that we are multi-disciplinary and flexible, meaning we can take on all types of projects with the advantages of working with a small studio, offering personalised service and dealing with clients directly.
How important is it for a company in the graphic design sector to have a website?
In our case it’s essential, as precisely one of the services we offer is the design and layout of websites, so we need a website which meets the expectations of what we offer our clients.
Of course, it also acts as a showcase where we can publish our outstanding projects and create our own discourse (you can get the idea if you read the texts on the website). That said, and as people know, when you get on with things your own website sometimes ends up at the back of the queue, and admittedly we often don’t have the site as up-to-date as we’d like to.
How do clients relate to you when they discover you through your website? What differences are there when dealing with them personally?
In our case the website tends to be a tool we direct clients towards when they want to see examples of what we do, as the site features some of our most notable projects. We’ve also got clients who contact us for the first time because they’ve found our website (the truth is that without being experts in SEO, we’ve got it well positioned), and with these clients the advantage is that they’ve actually seen what we do and they’ve actively contacted us, meaning part of the work is already done.
Even so, personal treatment for a small studio like ours gives added value, and once we get a mail from a client who contacts us via the website we try to get together or call them to be able to speak to them directly, as that’s what enables us to work in a more agile and personalised way.
Why did you choose a .barcelona domain?
One of the main reasons for changing the domain is that although the .es domain is shorter, we felt that as a brand we preferred the idea of linking our company to Barcelona, which ultimately is our city and has an international reputation we wanted to link to our company.
What differences did you notice in the everyday activity of the company after launching the website minsk.barcelona?
Most of all, the fact of linking the brand to new values which are much closer to us, our values and those of our clients. It mainly helped us to avoid misunderstandings. We opted for a change in strategy and communications, leaving behind Minsk Disseny (our commercial name up until that point) and becoming Minsk.barcelona. On the one hand, because design is now just a small part of our work, and on the other, because we wanted to link our main name (Minsk, the capital of Belorussia and the imaginary world we associated our brand with) to Barcelona (our real city, with values which we sincerely identify with much more at present).
As a graphic design company, what do you get out of linking yourselves with the city of Barcelona?
A lot. Barcelona has long been associated with design in general (not just graphic). It was important for us to be able to link these ideas. In addition, the contraposition between Minsk and Barcelona also helped us create a friendly word combination which has been useful for playing with the dissociation we usually use as a communication value in our branding.
How much clout does the name of Barcelona have in the world of graphic design and audio-visuals?
A lot. I think on an international level people continue to see Barcelona as the national leader when it comes to design. The same applies with audio-visuals, although here it’s more spread out.
A safe mobility campaign has been launched with the aim of improving safety for all citizens when getting around. On the websitemobilitat.barcelona you’ll findvisual and easy-to-understand information on the regulations for getting about in the city on foot, by car, moped or electric scooter.
Over 90% of those sustaining serious injuries in road accidents are motorcyclists, pedestrians, cyclists and people riding electric scooters. That’s why we all need to be familiar with the regulations, so that we can get about the city safely and comfortably and reach our 2050 goal of zero road deaths and zero injuries with lifelong consequences.
Now it’s much easier for us to get around thanks to this campaign, which you can find on the website mobilitat.barcelona. The site explains everything which is permitted or prohibited when circulating in Barcelona, and includes recommendations for when you travel by car, van or lorry, by motorbike, electric scooter, bike or on foot.
You can also find other useful tools for getting around the city safely. For instance, real-time information on mobility incidents and disruptions to traffic or the search feature to find spaces for cyclists and pedestrians, where you simply indicate your location to find out about bike lanes, traffic-calmed streets and widened pavements available to you.
Another key feature is the ‘Getting there’ route planner, which calculates the best way to get from one point to another in the city. All you need to do is specify where you are and where you want to get to, and the tool displays different options on foot, by bike, by private vehicle and public transport. The website mobilitat.barcelona also keeps you up to date with all the latest news in this sphere and more information on the Urban Mobility Plan, to achieve safer, healthier and more sustainable mobility.
L’Orgullosa gets Barcelona celebrating between now and the end of June, in an event whichalso conveys a message. As a pioneering city and a leader in LGBTI struggles, theprogramme has been put together with the intention of bringing the reality of LGBTIgroups closer to everybody in Barcelona. The programme can be found on the website orgullosa.barcelona.
Various city museums such as the MACBA, the MNAC, the Picasso Museum and the Maritime Museum are offering activities to reflect on LGBTI matters through different visions of their collections, guided tours and other specific projects. Elsewhere, city libraries and community centres are organising workshops, exhibitions, book presentations, talks, theatre shows and film screenings to give visibility to the plurality of visions of this collective. A series of round tables is also planned at the Barcelona LGBTI Centre on 30 June, to rethink museums from a queer point of view.
L’Orgullosa culminates with a grand musical gala for everybody, to be held at the Olympic Ring in Montjuïc on 28 June and featuring a line-up which will have everybody dancing, travelling and defending LGBTI rights.
An explosion of colour and symbolism
The poster for L’Orgullosa was created by the illustrator Javier Navarro, better known as El Dios de los Tres, with text by Javier Alcaraz. The design is full of LGBTI motifs and references to Barcelona, such as the cat sculpture in El Raval, one of the freshest and most effervescent of the city’s queer spots.
If you would like a hard copy of the poster, get along to the Sala Ciutat, at Carrer de la Ciutat, 2, or download it in digital format from the website orgullosa.barcelona.
Barcelona is a global leader in culture. Along with Madrid, the city is the national culture and science capital for the performing arts, theatre, urban culture, music and gastronomy. Culture is one of the main reasons why every year Barcelona attracts people from all over the world.
This is why cultural institutions and stakeholders in the city use the .barcelona for their websites. Being linked with the Barcelona brand in the realm of culture generates opportunities within the city and elsewhere.
Many cultural institutions use a .barcelona domain. Here are some of them:
La Model. The former prison which has been part of Barcelona’s contemporary history since 1904. As the name suggests, the prison had to act as a model in terms of the treatment of inmates and ended up symbolising repression in the city. The complex has now embarked on a process to become a leading space for culture in the Esquerra de l’Eixample neighbourhood.
OFFF Barcelona. A meeting point for design talents from around the world, this international festival for digital creativity, art and design was held at the Disseny Hub Barcelona from 5 to 7 May 2022.
Urban Art Barcelona. This open platform for artists producing all types of street art puts the city at the forefront for all artistic trends revolutionising the new paradigms of urban art. The platform organises artistic events and showcases artists and their work.
FAD. Also based at the Disseny Hub Barcelona, Fostering Arts and Design is a non-profit organisation of professionals and companies linked to design. Cristina Gosálvez, head of communications with FAD, opts to link the brand with the city: “With both our social media and our domain we’ve chosen to link ourselves with Barcelona to set ourselves apart from other international organisations”.
Jazz Barcelona. And lastly, an example of how the world of culture and the Barcelona brand do wonders when they work together. This is the case with the traditional Barcelona Jazz Festival. In the words of Agustín Borlán, from The Project, the company which organises the festival: “The advantages of having a .barcelona domain are obvious, from directly linking the festival and the city to the realm of publicity. Barcelona is jazz during the festival, so nothing beats jazz.barcelona for getting the message across”.
