Joan Gamper Trophy

The Joan Gamper Trophy is an annual pre-season football competition hosted by FC Barcelona. It is named in honour of Joan Gamper a founding member, player and later president of the club and was inaugurated by Enric Llaudet, one of Gamper’s successors as club president. It is one of several summer trophies played for in Spain and considered much more than a pre-season "friendly". This year's game takes place tonight, 29th August, and FC Barcelona will play Inter Milan and looks to being a great game. The home team with their fantastic record at the Nou Camp against last year's runaway Italian champions of Serie A. Although both teams have just started their respective league campaigns, each will produce a strong team as both teams will definitely want to win the Joan Gamper trophy. All the Barça stars will be there like Henry, Ronaldinho, Messi, Xavi and also Inter's stars like Ibrahimovic, Crespo, Viera and Materazzi
The game kicks off at 22.00 at the Nou Camp.

Getting There
If you are staying in a Barcelona hotel at the moment are thinking of going to the game then getting there is easy. Either you can take the metro (blue line) to Collblanc, or (green line) to Maria Christina. From there the stadium is well signposted and you will probably here the roar from a good distance.
Ticket prices range from €25 to €120

For a more comprehensive Barcelona guide.

Barcelona Metro Yellow Line Open Again

Finally the metro is back in operation along L4 yellow line! It has been a long couple of months but now everything is back to normal especially for tourists renting Barcelona accommodation near the beach.
From 26 de June a stretch of Line 4, between Ciutadella / Vila Olímpica and La Pau stations, were closed while work on the track took place. An investment of 7.1 million euros was put into the project which involved renovating the track between Bogatell and Selva de Mar, in order to reduce the vibrations caused by passing trains and stop water seepage. Work will also took place to improve the stations on this stretch.
A temporary shuttle bus was introduced to replace the closed metro stops which would travel the same journey as the metro normally would. This however still was not enough for those staying in Barcelona apartments and wanted to go to the beach, due to the fact that it was peak season for thousands of tourists flocking to the beach.

Typical!
Another fantastic piece of Catalan common sense to undergo such a huge upheaval in the middle of their peak tourist season.
However this lasted till 27 August and the affected eight stations are now thankfully, again in operation.

For a more comprehensive Barcelona guide.

Barcelona Blackout

Yesterday at about 11.00am about a third the city of Barcelona was shut shut down due to a major power cut across many parts of the city. Over 350000 Barcelona apartments, homes and businesses were affected at some point due to faulty cables which fell, catching fire which damaged a transformer, eventually knocking out the electricity. Barcelona's firefighters received a flood of calls of people who had been trapped in elevators and hundreds of people were stuck in the Barcelona metro lines which also lossed power. The police were summoned to direct traffic at the major intersections of the city due to failed traffic lights, causing chaos around the city. One of the city's major hospitals, Hospital Clinic, was also affected for up to a number of hours. Fortunately the city's airport is located further out fromt eh city and was not affected. Representatives from Barcelona's power grid reported that at least half of homes affected were restored with power after 4 hours, although at least 100000 were still without electricity on Monday night and some officials beleive certain areas could be without power for the next few weeks.

If you want to share your personal experience or opinion about the blackout then feel free to leave a comment.

For more information, look for a Barcelona guide online.