Barcelona

The countdown for FC Barcelona’s return to Camp Nou has begun. The club has set February as the target date, a timeline confirmed by the Municipality of Barcelona. This means fans will spend at most three more months at the Olympic Stadium of Montjuïc, where the team has been playing since the renovations at Camp Nou began in the summer of 2023.

International short-term rental platform Airbnb has called on the mayor of Barcelona to reconsider extending the measure to restrict short-term rentals, arguing that they benefit the hotel industry while failing to address over-tourism and the housing crisis.

The Sagrada Familia, the Guel park, the Las Ramblas boulevard… but also the crowds, the noise, and the rising property prices: faced with an increasingly massive influx of visitors, Barcelona is seeking to overhaul its tourism model, a source of tension among the Spanish city’s residents.

Barcelona, one of Europe's most visited cities, has said it aims to ban apartment rentals to tourists by 2029 to ease the housing shortage in Spain's second largest city.

Barcelona, a top Spanish holiday destination, has announced that it will bar apartment rentals to tourists by 2028, an unexpectedly drastic move as it seeks to rein in soaring housing costs and make the city liveable for residents.

"The tourism sector has to adapt to the situation we are experiencing, which is absolutely abnormal," a member of the Catalan government told the Financial Times in an article published on April 18. "It is a very important sector, but with the same rights and the same obligations as any other."

Barcelona beat Real Madrid 3-0 in a fiercely contested friendly match on July 29 with an early strike from Ousmane Dembele and late goals from Fermin Lopez and Ferran Torres.

The result was harsh on Carlo Ancelotti's team, who struck the woodwork five times and created plenty of opportunities. But Spanish champion Barcelona's more clinical finishing proved to be the difference.

Barcelona has announced that Turkish firm Limak Construction will be in charge of remodeling Barcelona's home ground, Camp Nou.

The work is expected to begin in June, the Spanish club said after board of directors' meeting.

Jordi Fauli is the seventh chief architect of Barcelona's iconic Sagrada Familia since Antoni Gaudi began work on the basilica in 1883, and he had been expected to oversee its long-awaited completion.

Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias confirmed on Tuesday that of the 263 passengers that  returned from Madrid and Barcelona on Sunday and placed in isolation at a central Athens hotel, 21 have tested positive for Covid-19.