IS THE END OF THE KINGDOM OF THE ANTICHRIST NEAR?

The AntiChrist

Today, The Grandma has got a reflexive day. She has been thinking about her city, a place that she loves crazily, a place that it was started to be controlled by the AntiChrist four years ago.

The Grandma and her neighbours have been living an awful nightmare since that moment and nowadays, they are praying (believers and no-believers) and fighting to finish with this 4-years age of the AntiChrist.

During these horrible four years, The Grandma and her neighbours have suffered stupid policies against them but they are happy today because they have lived enough to have another chance, a new opportunity to change things and live again in this wonderful city without the AntiChrist and her non-sense decisions.

One of the secrets to survive the AntiChrist has been resilience, this capacity of resisting and no surrender and, of course, passive resistance, something that The Grandma has been perfecting.

In Christian eschatology, the Antichrist or anti-Christ is someone recognized as fulfilling the Biblical prophecies about one who will oppose Christ and substitute himself in Christ's place.

The term, including one plural form, is found five times in the New Testament, solely in the First and Second Epistle of John. The Antichrist is announced as the one who denies the Father and the Son.

The similar term pseudokhristos or false Christs is found in the Gospels. In Matthew (chapter 24) and Mark (chapter 13), Jesus alerts his disciples not to be deceived by the false prophets, which will claim themselves as being Christ, performing great signs and wonders. Two other images often associated with the Antichrist are the little horn in Daniel's final vision and the man of sin in Paul the Apostle's Second Epistle to the Thessalonians.

In Islamic eschatology, Al-Masih ad-Dajjal (المسيح الدجال) is an anti-messiah figure, similar to the Christian concept of an antichrist, which will appear to deceive humanity before the second coming of Isa, as Jesus is known by Muslims.

Martin Luther & The Pope

The concept of an antichrist is absent in traditional Judaism, although in some medieval texts the symbolic figure Armilus appears.

Antichrist is translated from the combination of two ancient Greek words αντί + Χριστός (anti+Christos). In Greek, Χριστός means anointed one and the word Christ derives from it. Αντί means not only anti in the sense of against and opposite of, but also in place of. Therefore, an antichrist opposes Christ by substituting himself for Christ.

Protestant Reformers, including John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Thomas, John Knox, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, and John Wesley, as well as most Protestants of the 16th-18th centuries, felt that the Early Church had been led into the Great Apostasy by the Papacy and identified the Pope with the Antichrist.

Luther declared that not just a pope from time to time was Antichrist, but the Papacy was Antichrist because they were the representatives of an institution opposed to Christ.

The Centuriators of Magdeburg, a group of Lutheran scholars in Magdeburg headed by Matthias Flacius, wrote the 12-volume Magdeburg Centuries to discredit the Catholic Church and lead other Christians to recognize the Pope as the Antichrist. So, rather than expecting a single Antichrist to rule the earth during a future Tribulation period, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other Protestant Reformers saw the Antichrist as a present feature in the world of their time, fulfilled in the Papacy.

More information: Learn Religions

Some Franciscans had considered the Emperor Frederick II a positive Antichrist who would purify the Catholic Church from opulence, riches and clergy.

The Protestant Reformers tended to hold the belief that the Antichrist power would be revealed so that everyone would comprehend and recognize that the Pope is the real, true Antichrist and not the Vicar of Christ.

Doctrinal works of literature published by the Lutherans, the Reformed Churches, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Anabaptists, and the Methodists contain references to the Pope as the Antichrist, including the Smalcald Articles, Article 4 (1537), the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope written by Philip Melanchthon (1537), the Westminster Confession, Article 25.6 (1646), and the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Article 26.4.

In 1754, John Wesley published his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, which is currently an official Doctrinal Standard of the United Methodist Church. In his notes on the Book of Revelation (chapter 13), he commented: The whole succession of Popes from Gregory VII is undoubtedly Antichrists. Yet this hinders not, but that the last Pope in this succession will be more eminently the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, adding to that of his predecessors a peculiar degree of wickedness from the bottomless pit.

More information: Some Stories about the Capital Vices I, II, III, IV & V

 The Antichrist will be the infernal prince 
again for the third and last time...

Nostradamus

ERIC CANTONA, AN ENIGMATIC 'MARSELHÉS' IN THE UK

Eric Daniel Pierre Cantona

Today, The Grandma has had breakfast with one of her idols and most admired football players, Eric Cantona. They have celebrated Eric's birthday.

The Grandma loves football and talking about it to Eric Cantona is one of the most incredible experiences she has ever had. She has a Manchester City t-shirt signed by Eric, a shirt that she adores and keep in her particular museum of fantastic things.

Eric Daniel Pierre Cantona (born 24 May 1966) is a French actor and former professional footballer. He played for Auxerre, Martigues, Marseille, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nîmes and Leeds United before ending his career at Manchester United where he won four Premier League titles in five years and two League and FA Cup Doubles. He won the league championship in seven of his last eight full seasons as a professional. At international level, he played for the France national team.

A large, physically strong, hard-working, and tenacious forward, who combined technical skill and creativity with power and goalscoring ability, Cantona is often regarded as having played a key role in the revival of Manchester United as a footballing force in the 1990s and having an iconic status at the club.

He wore the number 7 shirt at Manchester United with his distinctive upturned collar.

Cantona is affectionately nicknamed by Manchester United fans as King Eric, and was voted as Manchester United's greatest ever player by Inside United magazine. Set against his achievements in football was a poor disciplinary record for much of his career, including a 1995 conviction for an assault on a fan for which he received an eight-month suspension.

Eric Cantona & Sir Alex Fergurson, Manchester

Following his retirement from football in 1997, he took up a career in cinema and had a role in the 1998 film Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, the 2008 film French Film, and the 2009 film Looking for Eric.

In 2010, he debuted as a stage actor in Face au Paradis, a play directed by his wife, Rachida Brakni. Cantona also took an interest in the sport of beach soccer, and as player-manager of the French national team, he won the 2005 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup.

Charismatic and outspoken, Cantona was an inaugural inductee into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2002. The museum states: The enigmatic Frenchman was one of the Premier League's most controversial players ever. At the Premier League 10 Seasons Awards in 2003 Cantona was voted the Overseas Player of the Decade. In 2004 he was named by Pelé in the FIFA 100 list of the world's greatest living players.

More information: @CANTONA_276

Eric Cantona was born in Marseille, to Albert Cantona, a nurse and a painter, and Éléonore Raurich, a dressmaker. The family home was a cave in one of the hills in the Les Caillols area of Marseille, between the city's 11th and 12th arrondissements, and it was rumoured to have been used as a look-out post for the German Army, towards the end of the Second World War. The site was chosen in the mid-1950s by Cantona's paternal grandmother, Lucienne, whose husband, Joseph, was a stonemason. By the time Cantona was born in 1966, the hillside cave had become little more than a room in the family's house, which was now up to a habitable standard. Cantona has two brothers, Jean-Marie, who is four years older; and Joël, who is 17 months younger.

Cantona came from a family of immigrants: his paternal grandfather, Joseph, had emigrated to Marseille from Sardinia, while his mother was from Barcelona. Pere Raurich, Cantona's maternal grandfather, was fighting the armies of General Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1938 when he suffered a serious injury to his liver, and he had to retreat to France for medical treatment with his wife Paquita. The Raurichs stayed in Saint-Priest, Ardèche, before settling in Marseille.

Cantona began his football career with SO Caillolais, his local team and one that had produced such talent as Roger Jouve and had players such as Jean Tigana and Christophe Galtier within its ranks. 

Eric Cantona in Auxerre

Originally, Cantona began to follow in his father's footsteps and often played as a goalkeeper, but his creative instincts began to take over and he would play up front more and more often. In his time with SO Caillolais, Cantona played in more than 200 matches.

Cantona's first professional club was Auxerre, where he spent two years in the youth team before making his debut on 5 November 1983, in a 4–0 league victory over Nancy. In 1984 his footballing career was put on hold as he carried out his national service. After his discharge he was loaned out to Martigues in the French Second Division before rejoining Auxerre and signing a professional contract in 1986.

Having struggled to settle at Marseille, Cantona moved to Bordeaux on a six-month loan and then to Montpellier on a year-long loan.

Cantona joined Leeds United, making his debut in a 2–0 loss at Oldham Athletic on 8 February 1992. At Leeds, he was part of the team that won the final Football League First Division championship before it was replaced by the Premier League as the top division in English football.

Cantona left Leeds for Manchester United for £1.2 million on 26 November 1992.

In 1997  he announced that he was retiring from football at the age of 30. His final competitive game came against West Ham on 11 May 1997, and his final appearance before retiring was five days later on 16 May in a testimonial for David Busst, whose career had been ended by an injury suffered against Manchester United the previous year, against Coventry City at Highfield Road.

More information: Manchester United

Cantona scored a total of 64 league goals for Manchester United, 13 in domestic cup competitions, and 5 in the Champions League, bringing his tally to 82 goals in less than five years.

He focused his later career mostly as an actor in French cinema, having had his first role as a rugby player in Le bonheur est dans le pré, shot during his 1995 suspension from football.

In the late 1990s, he accepted a role as a French ambassador in the English film Elizabeth (1998). In 2002, he directed a short film, Apporte-moi ton amour. He guest-starred as a mysterious barroom philosopher in independent British film Jack Says. He co-starred as director Thierry Grimandi in French Film (2009), and is co-producer and a lead actor in Ken Loach's Palme D'or nominated film Looking for Eric (2009). He stars as The Corsican in the Danish western The Salvation, which premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2014.

Cantona called for a social revolution against the banks and encouraged customers of the major retail banks to withdraw their money on 7 December 2010 in protest at the global financial crisis. This proposal then became the base for an online campaign calling for a bank run.

More information: Goal

I see the world become so uniform.

Everybody has to be the same.

I like people who are different.

Eric Cantona

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, KNOWLEDGE & WISDOM

Jordi & The Grandma visited the NYPL, NYC

Today, The Grandma has received the visit of Jordi Santanyí. They have been talking about one of the most wonderful and amazing libraries of the world, the New York Public Library that started to run on a day like today in 1911. Jordi & The Grandma visited this incredible building some years ago and they have been talking about their memories.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States, behind the Library of Congress, and the third largest in the world. It is a private, non-governmental, independently managed, nonprofit corporation operating with both private and public financing.

The library has branches in the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island and affiliations with academic and professional libraries in the New York metropolitan area. The city's other two boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens, are not served by the New York Public Library system, but rather by their respective borough library systems: the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Public Library. The branch libraries are open to the general public and consist of circulating libraries. The New York Public Library also has four research libraries, which are also open to the general public.

The library, officially chartered as The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, was developed in the 19th century, founded from an amalgamation of grass-roots libraries and social libraries of bibliophiles and the wealthy, aided by the philanthropy of the wealthiest Americans of their age.

Jordi Santanyí inside the New York Public Library

The New York Public Library name may also refer to its Main Branch, which is easily recognizable by its lion statues named Patience and Fortitude that sit either side of the entrance.

The branch was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, and designated a New York City Landmark in 1967. At the behest of Joseph Cogswell, John Jacob Astor placed a codicil in his will to bequeath $400,000, equivalent of $11.6 million in 2018, for the creation of a public library. After Astor's death in 1848, the resulting board of trustees executed the will's conditions and constructed the Astor Library in 1854 in the East Village. The library created was a free reference library; its books were not permitted to circulate.

By 1872, the Astor Library was described in a New York Times editorial as a major reference and research resource, but, Popular it certainly is not, and, so greatly is it lacking in the essentials of a public library, that its stores might almost as well be under lock and key, for any access the masses of the people can get thereto.

An act of the New York State Legislature incorporated the Lenox Library in 1870. The library was built on Fifth Avenue, between 70th and 71st Streets, in 1877. Bibliophile and philanthropist James Lenox donated a vast collection of his Americana, art works, manuscripts, and rare books, including the first Gutenberg Bible in the New World. At its inception, the library charged admission and did not permit physical access to any literary items.

More information: New York Public Library

The notable New York author Washington Irving was a close friend of Astor for decades and had helped the philanthropist design the Astor Library. Irving served as President of the library's Board of Trustees from 1848 until his death in 1859, shaping the library's collecting policies with his strong sensibility regarding European intellectual life.

Subsequently, the library hired nationally prominent experts to guide its collections policies; they reported directly to directors John Shaw Billings, who also developed the National Library of Medicine, Edwin H. Anderson, Harry M. Lydenberg, Franklin F. Hopper, Ralph A. Beals, and Edward Freehafer (1954–70).

The Grandma visited the New York Public Library

They emphasized expertise, objectivity, and a very broad worldwide range of knowledge in acquiring, preserving, organizing, and making available to the general population nearly 12 million books and 26.5 million additional items. 

The directors in turn reported to an elite board of trustees, chiefly elderly, well-educated, philanthropic, predominantly Protestant, upper-class white men with commanding positions in American society. They saw their role as protecting the library's autonomy from politicians as well as bestowing upon it status, resources, and prudent care.

Representative of many major board decisions was the purchase in 1931 of the private library of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847–1909), uncle of the last tsar. This was one of the largest acquisitions of Russian books and photographic materials; at the time, the Soviet government had a policy of selling its cultural collections abroad for gold.

More information: NYPL Overdrive

The military drew extensively from the library's map and book collections in the world wars, including hiring its staff. For example, the Map Division's chief Walter Ristow was appointed as head of the geography section of the War Department's New York Office of Military Intelligence from 1942 to 1945. Ristow and his staff discovered, copied, and loaned thousands of strategic, rare or unique maps to war agencies in need of information not available through other sources.

In the 1990s, the New York Public Library decided to relocate that portion of the research collection devoted to science, technology, and business to a new location. The library purchased and adapted the former B. Altman department store on 34th Street.

In 1995, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the library, the $100 million Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL), designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates of Manhattan, opened to the public. Upon the creation of the SIBL, the central research library on 42nd Street was renamed the Humanities and Social Sciences Library.

The first Gutenberg Bible, Lenox Copy, NYPL

Today there are four research libraries that comprise the NYPL's research library system; together they hold approximately 44,000,000 items. Total item holdings, including the collections of the Branch Libraries, are 50.6 million.

The Humanities and Social Sciences Library on 42nd Street is still the heart of the NYPL's research library system. The SIBL, with approximately 2 million volumes and 60,000 periodicals, is the nation's largest public library devoted solely to science and business. The NYPL's two other research libraries are the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture, located at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, located at Lincoln Center.

In addition to their reference collections, the Library for the Performing Arts and the SIBL also have circulating components that are administered as ordinary branch libraries.

More information: The Nation

The New York Public Library was not created by government statute. From its earliest days, the library was formed from a partnership of city government with private philanthropy. 

As of 2010, the research libraries in the system are largely funded with private money, and the branch or circulating libraries are financed primarily with city government funds.

Until 2009, the research and branch libraries operated almost entirely as separate systems, but that year various operations were merged. By early 2010, the NYPL staff had been reduced by about 16 percent, in part through the consolidations.

The NYPL, like all public libraries in New York, is granted a charter from the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York and is registered with the New York State Education Department. The basic powers and duties of all library boards of trustees are defined in the Education Law and are subject to Part 90 of Title 8 of the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations.

The NYPL's charter, as restated and granted in 1975, gives the name of the corporation as The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

The library is governed by a board of trustees, composed of between 25–42 trustees of several classes who collectively choose their own successors, including ex officio the New York City Mayor, New York City Council Speaker and New York City Comptroller.

More information: The New York Times

The library is the temple of learning,

and learning has liberated more people

than all the wars in history.

Carl T. Rowan

EDUARD PUNSET i CASALS, HOW TO DIVULGE SCIENCE

Eduard Punset i Casals

Eduard Punset i Casals (9 November 1936-22 May 2019) was a Catalan politician, lawyer, economist, and science popularizer.

He held a degree in Law from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a Master's in Economic Sciences from the University of London.

He was an economic writer for the BBC, economics director of the Latin American edition of the newsweekly The Economist, and an economist for the International Monetary Fund in the United States and Haiti. As a specialist on the impact of emerging technologies, Punset was a consultant to COTEC, Advising Professor of International Marketing at ESADE, president of the Instituto Tecnológico Bull, Professor of Innovation and Technology at the IE Business School in Madrid, President of ENHER, Deputy General Director of Economic and Financial Studies at the Banco Hispanoamericano, and Coordinator of the Strategic Plan for the Information Society of the Government of Catalonia.

More information: @epunset

Punset started his political career in the Government of Catalonia as Minister of Finance from 1978 to 1980, taking part in the implementation of the State of the Autonomies in Spain. He was a member of Adolfo Suárez's Union of the Democratic Centre, with which party he won a seat in the regional parliament in 1980 and in 1980-81 was appointed Minister for Relations with the European Communities in the Government of Spain from 1980 to 81.

He was elected to the Spanish Congress in 1982 as an independent in the list of Convergence and Union (Catalan nationalist coalition) for Barcelona province, but he resigned the next year.

As president of the European Parliament's delegation to Poland, he supervised part of the process of economic transformation undertaken in Eastern countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

When Spain joined the European Union, Punset was elected to the European Parliament as a member of Adolfo Suárez's Democratic and Social Centre (CDS) in 1987 and 1989. Punset quit CDS in 1991, following Suárez's resignment, but remained an EP member until 1994.

Punset was author of several books on economic analysis and social thought. He was also Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Faculty of Economics of the Chemical Institute of Sarrià, Ramon Llull University.

Since 1996, he directed and presented Redes, a science programme based around interviews with leading scientists, aired on the TVE.

In 2011, Eduard Punset received the Cross of Saint George, the most important recognition of the Catalan Government.

Punset has died today, on 22 May 2019 aged 82. We will miss you, master.

More information: IVoox

When there is no fear, there is happiness.
Majority thinking? I believe that thought is always minority.

Eduard Punset

TOMMASO CAMPANELLA & 'ATHEISMUS TRIUMPHATUS'

Tommaso Campanella

Today, The Grandma has gone to the library to search more information about Tommaso Campanella, the Calabrian philosopher who was accused of leading a conspiracy against the Spanish rule also known as the Inquisition and who died on a day like today in 1639.

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, in Spanish Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición, commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition or Inquisición española, was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.

It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under Papal control. It became the most substantive of the three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition along with the Roman Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition.

The Spanish Inquisition may be defined broadly, operating in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories, which included the Canary Islands, the Spanish Netherlands, the Kingdom of Naples, and all Spanish possessions in North, Central, and South America.

According to modern estimates, around 150,000 were prosecuted for various offenses during the three centuries of duration of the Spanish Inquisition, out of which between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed.

Today, The Spanish Inquisition is more lively than ever and thousands of people continue suffering its illegal rules and antidemocratic ways in a country that belongs to the European Union. Against these attacks against freedom of expressioin and civil rights, the population must adopt a civil resistance taking the figure of Mahatma Gandhi as a inspiration and guide.

Tommaso Campanella (5 September 1568-21 May 1639), baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella, was a Dominican friar, Calabrian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet.

Born in Stignano, in the county of Stilo, in the province of Reggio di Calabria in Calabria, Campanella was a child prodigy. Son of a poor and illiterate cobbler, he entered the Dominican Order before the age of fourteen, taking the name of fra' Tommaso in honour of Thomas Aquinas. He studied theology and philosophy with several masters.

Early on, he became disenchanted with the Aristotelian orthodoxy and attracted by the empiricism of Bernardino Telesio (1509–1588), who taught that knowledge is sensation and that all things in nature possess sensation. Campanella wrote his first work, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, published in 1592, in defence of Telesio.

Tommaso Campanella

In 1590 he was in Naples where he was initiated in astrology; astrological speculations would become a constant feature in his writings. Campanella's heterodox views, especially his opposition to the authority of Aristotle, brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities.

Denounced to the Inquisition, he was arrested in Padua in 1594 and cited before the Holy Office in Rome, he was confined in a convent until 1597.

After his liberation, Campanella returned to Calabria, where he was accused of leading a conspiracy against the Spanish rule in his hometown of Stilo. Campanella's aim was to establish a society based on the community of goods and wives, for on the basis of the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore and his own astrological observations, he foresaw the advent of the Age of the Spirit in the year 1600.

Betrayed by two of his fellow conspirators, he was captured and incarcerated in Naples, where he was tortured on the rack. Even from the confinement of the jail, Campanella managed to influence the intellectual history of the early seventeenth century, by maintaining epistolary contacts with European philosophers and scientists, Neapolitan cultural circles, and Caravaggio's commissioners.

Finally, Campanella made a full confession and would have been put to death if he had not feigned madness and set his cell on fire. He was tortured further, a total of seven times, and then, crippled and ill, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

More information: Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Campanella spent twenty-seven years imprisoned in Naples, in various fortresses. During his detention, he wrote his most important works: The Monarchy of Spain (1600), Political Aphorisms (1601), Atheismus triumphatus (1605–1607), Quod reminiscetur (1606?), Metaphysica (1609–1623), Theologia (1613–1624), and his most famous work, The City of the Sun, originally written in Italian in 1602; published in Latin in Frankfurt (1623) and later in Paris (1638).

Campanella was finally released from prison in 1626, through Pope Urban VIII, who personally interceded on his behalf with Philip IV of Spain. Taken to Rome and held for a time by the Holy Office, Campanella was restored to full liberty in 1629. He lived for five years in Rome, where he was Urban's advisor in astrological matters.

In 1634, however, a new conspiracy in Calabria, led by one of his followers, threatened fresh troubles. With the aid of Cardinal Barberini and the French Ambassador de Noailles, he fled to France, where he was received at the court of Louis XIII with marked favour. Protected by Cardinal Richelieu and granted a liberal pension by the king, he spent the rest of his days in the convent of Saint-Honoré in Paris. His last work was a poem celebrating the birth of the future Louis XIV, Ecloga in portentosam Delphini nativitatem.

Campanella's De sensu rerum et magia (1620) partly inspired the first fully-fledged it-narrative in English, Charles Gildon's The Golden Spy (1709).

Download Selected Philosophical Poems of Tommaso Campanella

The world is the book where the eternal

Wisdom wrote its own concepts.

Tommaso Campanella

PARC AGRARI, FARMERS IN A URBAN ENVIRONMENT

The Grandma visits the Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat

Today, The Grandma has spent her last day in Gavà. It has been a wonderful experience. Gavà is a beautiful place surrounded by amazing sites, a city full of ancient history that lives its present, working very hard for its future but without forgetting its past.

It is very difficult to choose only one place but, a city is the result of a mix between its history and its people and Gavà citizens are unforgettable ones.

The Grandma also wants to check how many expenses she has got during these days and she has decided to use a finantial software to control her money, her purchases and her investments.

The Grandma has bought a quiet parcel in the middle of the Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat to grow her own vegetables and fruits.

After closing this business, The Grandma has also visited the beaches of Gavà with Claire Fontaine and Joseph de Ca'th Lon. These beaches are a wonderful place where they have seen natural dunes, something almost in extinction in the Mediterranean coasts.

More information: FactuSol & FacturaSoft

El Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat or the Baix Llobregat Agricultural Park is part of the Network of Protected Natural Areas, promoted and managed by the Diputació de Barcelona.

The Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat is located in the alluvial plains of the delta and the lower valley of the Llobregat river, in the Baix Llobregat region, which occupy a central position in the metropolitan area of Barcelona.

The territory of the park, of traditional agricultural wealth, is part of fourteen municipalities: Castelldefels, Cornellà de Llobregat, Gavà, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Molins de Rei, Pallejà, Papiol, El Prat de Llobregat, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Sant Joan Despí, Sant Vicenç dels Horts, Santa Coloma de Cervelló and Viladecans, which add up to 730,000 inhabitants of more than 4 million of the metropolitan region. The Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat has an area of 2,938 hectares, delimited by its Special Plan.

 

Joseph de Ca'th Lon contemplates the Parc Agrari

The low valley of the Llobregat is a fluvial plain oriented in the direction of N-NW/S-SE, with the Llobregat river that divides the mountain ranges located parallel to the coast line, until forming an opening delta.

There is a predominance of winds along the valley and during the winter the cold winds of the north penetrate following the direction of the valley. The marinade causes, during the summer, winds of the SSW in the delta and valley above become the S or SSE. At night they calm down or blow up northern terrain, low, near the delta. At the same time the S-SE exhibition allows you to receive a high irradiation, which contributes to a privileged average temperature.

The thermometric data have an average temperature of 15.6° with extreme mean values for the absolute peaks, which are located at 32.2° and for the absolute lowest in -2,1° of the minimum. The average temperature presents the typical Mediterranean distribution, minimum winter and summer maximum.

The joint action of the regulatory influence of the sea, the physical protection of the mountain ridge and the exposure to the ESS ensure climate friendliness with mild winters and prolongs the warm season until the two months of autumn (September- October).

Download Parc Agrari del B.Llobregat-Management & Development Plan

The average annual rainfall is 583 mm. With regard to maximum rainfall, they occur during the months of September and October (autumn) and the minimum ones, during the months of June and July (summer). Precipitations are exceptional in the area of the delta and the low valley.

These climatic conditions are very suitable for crops that grow mainly in the delta and the low valley: orchard and fruit trees in the open air and protected crops.

The Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat presents a significant interest in the diversity of natural environments that originate from an original landscape made up of vegetal communities typical of the coastal sands, considerable extensions of coastal wetlands and riverside forests; landscape that has been, however, deeply transformed by the action of man.

Thus, in terms of primitive vegetation, five domains can be distinguished: holm oak, lichen and palm butter, deciduous forests, coastal halophile and helophytes communities and coastal psammophile communities. These last two groups correspond to wet saline environments and to the coastal sands of the delta.

 

Claire Fontaine visits the dunes in Gavà beaches

From this potential vegetation, different environments have been set up that make up the current landscape: the fields of cultivation, coastal wetlands, the river and the drainage network, beaches or pine forests.

In fact, we can group the vegetal landscape of the territory of the Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat in two main types: the vegetal communities associated with the agricultural area and the communities associated to the flood areas and the coastal lagoons.

However, the particular ecological conditions of some areas and, in particular, the extensive network of irrigation and drainage channels, facilitates the appearance of particular communities and sometimes allows the survival of some species of singular plants.

In this sense, the Llobregat Delta has remarkable botanical and zoological singularities, closely linked to wetlands, which include remarkable species, endangered or bounded by their geographical area of distribution and the existence of important concentrations of individuals breeding, wintering and migratory of many ornithological species.

More information: The Most Ancient Dunes in the 'Delta del Llobregat'

The predominant agricultural landscape maintains some practically testimonial elements of the ancient delta lagoons. These natural spaces today have been modified in part by the enlargement works of the port of Barcelona, ​​the airport and the same diversion of the river.

The landscape of the Llobregat delta in a few years will change radically as it was in the late twentieth century. However, while this radical transformation affects the landscape essence of the lower valley, efforts are also made to conserve and recover the remaining relictual natural spaces.

The agricultural landscape is the guarantee that this immense plain does not become an urban sprawl stuck in Barcelona. At the same time, however, this sea of ​​crops is also a food reserve, a real pantry next to a metropolis that hosts 60% of the Catalan population.

The fresh food produced in the Baix Llobregat is one of the main values ​​of a landscape still not sufficiently valued by the privileged population that surrounds it.

More information: IEC (Catalan Version)

Our farmers feed the world. 

They are up before dawn and work till well after sunset. 

They face any number of challenges they can't control, 

from too much rain to not enough, from disease to insect infestations.

Luther Strange

L'ESTANY DE LA MURTRA, A PARADISE OF ORNITHOLOGY

Tonyi Tamaki visits l'Estany de la Murtra, Gavà

Today, The Grandma is visiting l'Estany de la Murtra in Gavà. This is an amzaing and wonderful place full of species to protect that lives under danger of extinction.

The Grandma has decided to visit this place with her closer friend Tonyi Tamaki, who was born in New Zealand, and who is a great expert in nature and conservation.

They want to observe some bird species that live in this area and they are under protection due to their fragility to survive to the urban environment.

Environment is the most important subject in our lives. We are a little part of this planet and if w don't protect it, we are going to disappear with it. Although the great efforts of some countries to create an agenda to talk about this environmental crisis and try to search solutions, the most part of the countries, especially the most powerful, are not very interested in it.

The Grandma wants to create her own agenda to try to be more eco-friendly and live in peace and harmony with the planet. For this reason, she has started to study how to use Trello, an interesting tool to planificate events.

More information: Trello

More information: Trello Tutorial I & II (Spanish Version)

L'Estany de la Murtra or The Murtra Pond is an ancient lagoon, which currently has the appearance of a channelized stream between crops.

It is one of the most damaged wetlands in the Delta del Llobregat, both due to the proximity and effects of various infrastructures and the alteration of water flows. Several gates regulate the water level and isolate it from the sea.

In addition, it constitutes the drainage path of the irrigation channels of Viladecans and Gavà, use this one that is already mentioned in documents of the Middle Ages.

The vegetation of space is reduced to a narrow strip of canyons, due to the expansion of crops.

As for the fauna, in the Murtra lake, there are species such as the Alcedo atthis, the Ixobrychus minutus and the Aythya ferina. 

Contemplating birds, Estany de la Murtra

This humid area has an area of 22 hectares. The C-31 (Castelldefels road) passes to the southern limit of the space and at its SE end is the Wastewater Treatment Station of the towns of Gavà and Viladecans, as well as several industries.

Water quality is negatively affected by the discharges of the WTS of Gavà and Viladecans, to such an extent that the final section of the space looks like an outdoor sewer. The ecological potential of the space is also altered by the infrastructure of the surroundings as noise,  barrier effect, and by the dumping of waters of agricultural and industrial use.

The space was subject to some environmental improvements for years by the Gavà Museum, Gavà Town Hall and the Department of the Environment of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

This humid zone is included in the space of the PEIN Delta del Llobregat and within the space of the Natura 2000 European Network ES0000146 Delta del Llobregat.

More information: Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona

Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds.

The science of ornithology has a long history and studies on birds have helped develop several key concepts in evolution, behaviour and ecology such as the definition of species, the process of speciation, instinct, learning, ecological niches, guilds, island biogeography, phylogeography, and conservation.

While early ornithology was principally concerned with descriptions and distributions of species, ornithologists today seek answers to very specific questions, often using birds as models to test hypotheses or predictions based on theories. Most modern biological theories apply across taxonomic groups, and the number of professional scientists who identify themselves as ornithologists has therefore declined. 

A wide range of tools and techniques is used in ornithology, both inside the laboratory and out in the field, and innovations are constantly made.

More information: Delta del Llobregat (Catalan Version)

I never for a day gave up listening to the songs 

of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, 

or delineating them in the best way I could. 

John James Audubon