Special correspondents

Portugal is situated in the southwest of Europe. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west and south and by Spain in the north and east. Portugal has 92.345 km2 of area.

Portugal has about 10.600.000 inhabitants. The capital city is Lisbon.
The government of this country is a parliamentary republic. Its president is Aníbal António Cavaco Silva who won the elections on 22 January 2006.

The main language spoken there is Portuguese. Mirandese is also considered a co-official language in many parts of Portugal.

The major religion in this country, with an 84%, is Roman Catholic.

Portugal belongs to the European community since 1986.

This country has four international rivers which make it a very important and interesting country.

If you ever go to Lisbon don’t forget to ask for a dish with bacalhau. Porto Wine, which is known for its sweet taste, is also very common in Portugal.

Portugal is one of the nations, with Austria and Sweden, that most invest in solar renewable energy sources. This new aim of renewable energy will place the country in the frontline.

On the other hand Portugal was the main point of attention for several months in May 2007 due to the kidnapping of a 3 years old English girl called Madeleine Mc Cann.

Martí Arias Ortega 1r C
Mireia Boher Massaguer 1rB

Italy became a nation-state in 1861 when the regional states of the peninsula, along with Sardinia and Sicily, were united under King Victor EMMANUEL II. An era of parliamentary government came to a close in the early 1920s when Benito MUSSOLINI established a Fascist dictatorship. His alliance with Nazi Germany led to Italy's defeat in World War II. A democratic republic replaced the monarchy in 1946 and economic revival followed. Italy was a charter member of NATO and the European Economic Community (EEC). It has been at the forefront of European economic and political unification, joining the Economic and Monetary Union in 1999. Persistent problems include illegal immigration, organized crime, corruption, high unemployment, sluggish economic growth, and the low incomes and technical standards of southern Italy compared with the prosperous north.
Roma is the capital of Italy, and the flag of the county is green, white and red.
The area of Italy it’s 301,230 km2. And has a population of about 58,145,320, and most of the people follow the Roman Catholic religion.
The President is Berlusconi.
The oficial language is the Italian and the currency is the €.
The’re a lot of organitzed crime like camorra, la cosa Nostra, la mafia and the ndrageta, it’s the most important problema of Italy.

Eloy Micó Boldú
1Batx A

LOCATION, EXTENSION AND INHABITANTS
Republic of Cuba is a country located in Caribbean sea. It is an archipelago that their largest island is the “La Isla de Cuba”. The archipelago is completed by “Isla de la Juventud” and other small islands. To the north are the U.S.A and “Las Bahamas”, Mexico to the west, south Jamaica and Cayman Islands and the southeast “La Española”. Cuba has 11.236.790 inhabitants, and 110.860 km² of extension.
PECULIAR THINGS
A peculiarity of this country is her name, it is come from a word of Taína language “Cubao” what it means “where fertile land is plentiful” or “Coabana”, his translation is “big place”.
EVENTS IN RECENT HISTORY
With a brief history of Cuba we point out the Cuban Rebolution in 1959. Then was constituted the communist regime of Fidel Castro. After 47 years of dictatorship, in 2006, Fidel Castro ceded the presidency to his brother Raúl Castro. Some people was seen this as a hereditary transfer of power and it is anti-democracy. But , for other sector of people are a "socialist transformation" promoted by Raúl Castro, where he began a series of reforms to democratize.
CAPITAL CITY
La Havana is the capital of the Republic of Cuba and the provinces of “Ciudad de la Havana” and” La Havana”. It was founded on November 16 of 1519 by the Spanish conquistador Diego Velazquez de Cuellar. Its historic center has been declared a” World Heritage Site” by Unesco. The city/province has 2.1 million inhabitants, and the urban area over 3.5 million, making Havana the largest city in both Cuba and the Caribbean region. The city extends mostly westward and southward from the bay. Its has three main harbors are: Marimelena, Guanabacoa, and Atarés.
POLITICAL SYSTEM
Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution (1959), according to the constitution of 1976 the political system in Cuba has been a republic with a system of dictatorship of the proletariat, with nationalization of the means of production. This constitution was replaced by the Socialist Constitution of 1992, the present constitution, which was guided by the ideas of José Martí, and the political ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin. The Supreme Court of Cuba serves as the nation's highest judicial branch of government. The President of Cuba, who is elected by the Assembly, serves for five years and there is no limit to the number of terms of office. Fidel Castro (who is the president of PCC: Communist Party of Cuba) has been in government since the adoption of the Constitution in 1976 when he replaced Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado. The communist regime instituted by Fidel Castro in 1959 has managed to dismantle the colonial economic structure of Cuba, although its international isolation and excessive rigidity
of its policy in this area have prevented a greater economic development.

RELIGION
There is freedom of worship, dominate the Catholic religion and the Santeria, the syncretic religious beliefs African and Catholicism.
LANGUAGES
The official language of Cuba is Spanish, they haven’t got any dialects in the country, but they use some words of the African language.
IMPROVEMENTS
It is a population with a high level of education because they Education is free and compulsory education up to second.
NEWS
Apparent Calm by Laritza Diversent
January 11, 2008
HAVANA, Cuba – The tranquillity that one might sense at the moment from Cuba’s political landscape is hardly synonymous with calm. The significance of certain facts, which have been mostly overlooked, is evidence of the regime’s fear and insecurity. The stale image of Fidel Castro that displays his biographical information in the massive campaign for his nomination as a national deputy has invoked indignation and laughter.
Long-absent Castro speaks live on TV
Cubans heard their ailing President Fidel Castro joking and chattering as he spoke live for the first time in months on a television show hosted by his Venezuelan ally Hugo Chavez.

Clara Olivella 1BATX B
Mario Cantero 1BATX A

India is the country situated in south Asia surrounded by Pakistan to the west, Nepal, Bhutan and China in the north-east, on the east side with Myanmar and Bangladesh and the Indian Ocean in the south. The Republic of India delineates with the snowy mountains and the valleys of the Himalayas in the north. India is the second most populous country in the world with 1100 million people.
The most important cities in India are Bombay, Calcutta, New Delhi and Chennai and others. The capital city, New Delhi, is located north of the country between the mountains of the Himalayas and the Aravalis and the west side there is the river Yamana.
The climate of New Delhi has a wet season that is summer and a dry season that lasts the rest of the year. Temperatures are mild in winter and higher temperatures are in the spring because there is little precipitation. The capital city of India is one of the most historic capitals of the world and two of his monuments, the Qutab Minar and Humayun's Tomb have been declared a World Heritage Site.

Wildlife of India has enjoyed a privileged and protected position thanks to the ideals religious and the sentiments of the Hindu, Jain and Buddhist, but hunting, deforestation of the forests, poaching, I have only 10 percent of the country is forest.

Especially in the wildlife highlights lions, tigers, leopards, panthers, elephants and rhinos, a wide variety of deer, buffalo, bison, wild boar, jackals, cobras, pythons, crocodiles, toed eagles, owls and peacocks.

The economy of the India has developed rapidly between 2000 and 2006, and for 2007 it hopes that India grows 9.2 %.
The agriculture has been always, and continues being still, the base of the Indian economy. In the nourishment a lot of importance has the rice, which constitutes the principal resource of the regions of Bombay, Malabar, Bengal and Changes direction; the wheat, especially in the populations of the northwest. The millet and the sorghum, essential food for the people of Deccán. The maize and the barley are cultivated principally in the plain of the Ganges. The tea comes in great quantity of the Assam, of the subHimalayan zones and of the coast Malabar. The coffee is cultivated specially in the Deccán; the sugar cane in the plain gangética. In minor it climbs the tobacco and the opium are cultivated. On the other hand the production of fruit-bearing trees and of oily plants (cotton, sésamo, alfóncigo) is also important. There exists a great forest, rich patrimony in precious wood as the teak, the pink stick the sandalwood and, also, the bamboo. The cattle occupies a basic place; the first one with his 176.900.000 heads of bovine, possesses the major bovine patrimony of the world, though for religious motives the consumption of meat is prohibited, since the cows are sacred animals for the hinduistas. The buffaloes come to 55 million heads and are very useful in agricultural labors, specially in the rice-fields. The sheep ones reach 43 millions and the caprinos 70 million heads. The mining resources are based on the extraction of the coal, of iron, of manganese, of mica and of bauxite. The industries, which take advantage of the existence of raw materials and of big hydroelectric resources, have developed rapidly with criteria of modern rationalization. The principal industry is textile (cotton and jute); the refineries of oil follow him the metallurgical one, the mechanics (railway, air material, bicycles), the electronics, the chemistry, the industry wastebasket, as well as industries of the leather, of the cement, food, of oils and of the production of the tobacco. The economic liberalism, the technological industry and the globalization have allowed in the last years to there develop a wide middle class that one presents as a great opportunity for the economic future of the region.
The principal religions practised in the India are:
• The Hinduism is with much the first religion of the India, with 878 million people (79,8 % of the population).
• The Islamism, with about 150 million public inspectors (approximately 13,7 % of the population), does of the India the third Moslem country of the world after Indonesia and Pakistan.
• On the India There are about 25 million Christians (approximately 2,5 % of the population) resultant of an evangelización ,in Kerala,that belongs to one of the most ancient Christian communities of the world. Also are the consequence of the arrival of the Europeans: Portuguese, Frenchmen and englishmen.
• The sijismo is an religion of the India that he includes 18 million of persons (approximately 2,1 % of the Indian population). The majority of the sijs live in the Punjab.
• The Buddhism, which had disappeared towards the 10th century, reappears in the India of several ways, especially, under the form of the practice of vipasana, and thanks to the movement of conversion in mass of dalits (or untouchable), initiated in 1954 by Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and that continues today. The number of Buddhists in the India is estimated today in 7,5 million persons (0,8 % of the population).
• The jainismo is an religion of the India that he includes between 3 and 4 million of people (approximately 0,5 % of the population) and whose most they live in Maharashtra.
• Other Indian religions that existed in the Indian territory ended for disappearing, as the ajîvika.

In India there are over a hundred different languages even though the Constitution officially recognizes 18 languages. The most commonly used language in the upper classes is the English but only 3 percent of Indian citizens dominate this language.

The Indian weddings are much elaborated and the ceremonies last days. Most marriages are among members of the same caste and are concerted for the couple’s parents. Before weeding, the new wife live with husband’s family, its common sees several families living in the same house.
A typical jewel is the rakhi, a bracelet showing the fraternal love. Traditionally is elaborated with a simple cotton thread but now is elaborated with silver, gold and diamonds.
In the literature there are two great works of the Indian literature are the Ramayana and the Mahabhárata. They are two epic poems.
The Dance in India is using the body as a means of communication, the dance expression is perhaps the art form most complicating. It’s one form for inspire love of the future husbands.
India is the first producer of films (more than 1,000 for year) in the several languages of the country. Bollywood is the industrial centre and the most important international.
Items: Romantic, social items, familiar, comedy and even science fiction.
The international Indian sports are cricket and hockey grass.
India has a lot of festivals but we describe a few.
The Shiite festival, Muharram, last ten days and it celebrate in April. It commemorates the martyrdom of Muhammad’s grandson. Characterized for a great parade in which the devout is raging with whips in the religious environment.
The festival of Ganesh Chaturthi, celebrated is August, is dedicated to Ganesh, the popular god with elephants head. Are erected altars, fireworks are launched and clay idols are immersed in the sea.
Is celebrated in November the Diwali or festival of camels, the happiest festival of the Indian calendar. It last five days and pays homage a several gods.

India is the country protagonist of ARCOmadrid

India will be the main protagonist of the International Fair of Contemporary Art ARCOmadrid, with an overview of more than 50 artists commissioned to show the current strength of Indian art.
"We chose India because it is a fascinating country with which we want to establish new ties," he said during the presentation of the event in New Delhi the chairman of the organizing entity of the fair (Ifema), Luis Eduardo Cortes.
Arcomadrid, to be held in Madrid between 11 and Feb 16 2009, aims, according to its promoters, to open a "journey of understanding" between Spain and India, "one of the most emblematic of the world."
"Since 2000, India has had a very high growth markets and collectors, but that is not reflected in our show. Now we hope to consolidate our presence, but also promote the exchange of art galleries," he said on his part The director of ARCOmadrid, Lourdes Fernandez.
According to the organization, the Indian scenario is a "promising", with a steady appreciation of contemporary art and a significant increase of collectors, but the knowledge that Spain has had its artists is "short".
ARCOmadrid has invited thirteen galleries in New Delhi, Mumbai (west), Bangalore (south) and Cochi (southwest) and will complement the film shows, concerts and other cultural activities.



Ana Maria A
Ana Mireia A
Lina Moreno A

Catalonia is an Autonomous Community in the northeast part of Spain. The Autonomous Community of Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an official population of 7,210,508 from which immigrants represent an estimated 12.3% of the total population. It borders France and Andorra to the north, Aragon to the west, the Valencian Community to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the east.
Catalonia is divided in four provinces: Barcelona, Tarragona, Girona and Lleida.

Catalonia is the first tourist destination. The main tourist destination are the city of Barcelona, the beaches of Costa Brava at Girona and the Costa Daurada at Tarragona. In the Pyrenees there are 10 ski resorts.

The capital city are Barcelona, the second bigger city in spain. Barcelona has a lot of monuments and museum, but the representative monument of Barcelona is The sagrada familia.

Catalonia has a lot of cultural traditions for example, it has a tradition called “Castellers”, it consist to make a human tower.

The tipical dance in Catalonia is the “Sardana”. There are two main types, the original sardana curta (short sardana) style and the more modern sardana llarga (long sardana), which is more popular. As a relatively slow, non-performance dance, the sardana does not require special fitness. The dance circle can be opened to a highly variable number of dancers.

The falg of Catalonia is yellow and red like this:




News:

A recently bad new can be this:
Collserola fight against a plage of asiatic trees.

This trees are plant to stop the erosion effect in Collserola but this trees be reproduced very fast and now it ara a plage and it infect a very extensive area of Collserola. But now the tecnics of Collserola parc found a method to exterminated it.

And a recently good new can be this:

In Lleida are retired a franquism monument beacuse a lot of associations gossip it and now the lleida governement retired it.

Damian Bisbal C
Marc Bertran A

At the end of the 2th World War, in 1945, Serbia was one of the countries that formed the Federal Democratic Republic of Yugoslavia, with Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. Since then, Yugoslavia has had many political changes and leaders, and all of these countries have been separating from Serbia.

The last one of them was Montenegro, which got its independence on the 5th of June in 2006. On the 17th of February in 2008, Kosovo declared its independence, too, but it was refused by the Serbian leaders, including the current President Boris Tadić and the Prime Minister Mirko Cvetković.

Daniel Román A

Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil), is the largest and most populous country in South America.
Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of over 7,491 kilometers (4,655 mi).

Population - 2008 estimate 190,132,630 (5th) - 2007 census 189,987,291
Density 22/km² (182nd) 57/sq mi

Ethnic groups GDP (PPP) 2007 estimate - Total $1,837 trillion (9th) - Per capita $9,703 (61st)
49.7% White
42.6% Pardo (Brown)
6.9% Black
0.5% Asian
0.3% Amerindian

POSITIVE
tourism
According to the World Tourism Organization, Brazil had 5.026 million visitors in 2007, is the main destination in South America.
Brazil offers an ample gamut of options for both domestic and international tourists, with natural areas being its most popular tourism product, a combination of ecotourism with leisure and recreation, mainly sun and beach, and adventure travel, as well as historic and cultural tourism. Among the most popular destinations is the Pantanal, a tropical wetland in the Center-West Region; Amazon Rainforest in the North Region; cultural and historic tourism in the States of Minas Gerais and Bahia; beaches and dunes in the Northeast Region; beaches in the States of Rio de Janeiro and Santa Catarina, temperate mountains in the South Region; and business trips to São Paulo city.

Renewable energy
Brazil is the world's tenth largest energy consumer, and the third largest in the Western Hemisphere, behind the United States and Canada. It's energy comes from renewable sources, particularly hydroelectricity and ethanol; and nonrenewable sources, mainly oil and natural gas.Over the past three decades Brazil has worked to create a viable alternative to gasoline.

Comunication
There are approximately 2,498 airports in Brazil, including landing fields. The country has the second largest number of airports in the world, after only the United States.
Roads are the primary carriers of freight and passenger traffic in Brazil.

Varitety of culture influences
A wide variety of elements create a society with considerable ethnic complexity. Brazilian culture has historically been influenced by European, African, and Indigenous cultures and traditions. Its major early influence derived from Portuguese culture because of strong colonial ties with the Portuguese empire. Among other inheritances, the Portuguese introduced the Portuguese language, the Catholic religion, and the colonial architectural styles. Other aspects of Brazilian culture are contributions of Italian, German, and other European immigrants (including several historical waves of Portuguese immigrants) who migrated in large numbers to the country, and their influences are felt closer to the South and Southeast of Brazil. Amerindian peoples influenced Brazil's language and cuisine; and the Africans, brought to Brazil as slaves, influenced language, cuisine, music, dance, and religion.

sports
Football (Portuguese: futebol) is the most popular sport in Brazil. The Brazilian national football team (Seleção) have been victorious in the FIFA World Cup tournament a record five times, in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002.


Bernat Gonzalez- 1r Batx C