Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, Gary Lineker, World Cup, Football, Media, Sport
Title – Gary Lineker to appear as special guest on ITV during World Cup broadcast | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/matthughes
Link – Gary Lineker to appear as special guest on ITV during World Cup broadcast | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-19T21:51:46.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/19/gary-lineker-to-appear-as-special-guest-on-itv-during-world-cup-broadcast

Gary Lineker has been booked to appear as a special guest on ITV’s World Cup coverage of Germany v Côte d’Ivoire on Saturday evening in his first appearance on terrestrial television since leaving the BBC 13 months ago .

The former Match of the Day presenter is in New York recording daily episodes of The Rest is Football podcast, which is being shown on Netflix, and has agreed to make a one-off appearance in ITV’s Brooklyn studio.

Booking Lineker is another coup for ITV who, as the Guardian revealed on Friday have taken an early lead in the TV ratings battle with the BBC by recording four of the five highest viewing figures for matches in the first week of the tournament.

Lineker presented coverage of six World Cups for the BBC, more than any other BBC broadcaster, but has been highly critical of his former employer’s approach to this tournament, particularly their decision to anchor their coverage in Salford.

Lineker left the BBC after 26 years in 2025 after repeatedly clashing with executives over his use of social media, and alleged breaches of their editorial guidelines.

Keyword – Books
Trefwoorden – Fiction, Books, Culture
Title – A Little Bit Bad by Cassandra Neyenesch review – a sparkling, subversive debut | Fiction | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/daisy-hildyard
Link – A Little Bit Bad by Cassandra Neyenesch review – a sparkling, subversive debut | Fiction | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-18T06:00:03.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/18/a-little-bit-bad-by-cassandra-neyenesch-review-a-sparkling-subversive-debut

The plot of A Little Bit Bad sounds like the setup for a joke: “Like, this white lady lusting after her hot Chicano roofer?” Perdita Jungfrau, the narrator, is describing her own situation. “Yuck.”

It’s 2009 and Perdita is 39 when she meets 25-year-old Nando, who is working on next door’s roof. “Burned out” after a decade as a hospital social worker, she’s a stay-at-home mother to a toddler, and pregnant again (though she doesn’t know it yet). She isn’t happy. Her husband is critical of her for quitting her job, and won’t look after the children: “Babies scare me!” Perdita is out in her San Diego backyard on the day that Nando falls from a ladder propped up against the neighbour’s house. She sees it happen, calls an ambulance and sits beside him on the grass to wait.

“You know when someone is either handsome or wild-looking, and you don’t know which it is?” Nando’s face is freckled, with two little bumps where his nose has been broken twice. He describes himself as an “anarcho-Marxist” and is “opinionated in a calm, deadpan way”. He reads The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon on his lunch break, but has “somehow missed out” on college and is struggling to make a living in the post-crash economy.

Perdita and Nando should make an odd couple, but they don’t. They’re both raw and fragile, and they share a sense of delight in the abyss. (When Perdita’s son bites the face of another child at toddler group, Nando totally gets it: “He just likes the taste of human flesh”.) Their attraction feels real – there’s a sense of something tense and secret between them when they’re alone. When their differences come between them, that also feels realistic.

A Little Bit Bad is the debut novel from New Yorker Neyenesch. It’s released in the wake of Miranda July’s very successful All Fours , another story of a middle-aged California wife who discovers an intense desire for a younger man, and absconds. Where July’s novel concentrates on the “unleashed life” of the perimenopausal woman, Neyenesch’s takes a different turn. A second plot strand, set one year on in 2010, runs in parallel to the story of the affair. Nando has been murdered, and Perdita is trying to solve the case (she’s devastated, and also a fan of true crime).

Like All Fours, A Little Bit Bad has a careering plotline, flying between the everyday drudgery of mom-life, and a heightened, surreal or imagistic mode. My favourite character is an owl with the face of a woman who appears occasionally to Perdita and addresses her in the voice of the man who works at the local pawn shop. Beyond or via their fictional flights of fancy, All Fours is concerned with the politics of biology and the “true self” of a woman in midlife, whereas A Little Bit Bad is more interested in societal injustice. The military-industrial complex, the “good Obamaverse” and the carceral system all feature. At its sharpest, the novel poses questions about the structural violence of a culture that privileges the normative nuclear family. To some extent, it pulls back from a focus on the middle-class mother to ask who really feels that violence.

It’s also very funny. I was reminded of the heroines of Halle Butler’s novels – Perdita could be their older sister, another ferocious dork with a genius for behaving inappropriately. ( Of course her son bites faces.) Neyenesch’s comic excellence and sharp insight occasionally come at the cost of blunter things, such as emotion. When Nando falls off the ladder and lies on the ground between life and death, Perdita, kneeling beside him, sees the blood coming out of him as “exit-sign red”. There’s something here that could be felt by the reader as serious, but the narrative chooses a smart humour, and those feelings never get too close.

There were points at which I wondered whether Neyenesch was deliberately satirising All Fours, or more broadly the trend for frantic fictional celebrations of older women going rogue. Certainly, she is having a laugh with California-flavoured ideas about self-expression. One chapter is wonderfully titled “The Roofer Holds Space for My Feelings”.

At heart, this story is tragic. The touch of satire pulls it back from the abyss, and it’s probably for the best. I absolutely enjoyed every single page. The plot is constructed for compulsive reading: the two storylines are told in interspersed chapters, and as the affair begins to cool, the murder mystery gets going. The central couple are sparkling and adorable. At an open-mic night on their first date they get up on stage. Perdita raps, while Nando, at her side, does “an Irish clog dance”. The audience is delighted.

A Little Bit Bad by Cassandra Neyenesch is published by Fig Tree (£16.99). To order your copy, go to guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Keyword – Books
Trefwoorden – Society books, Books, Disability, Culture
Title – Disability by David Turner review – a revelatory new history | Society books | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/lucy-webster
Link – Disability by David Turner review – a revelatory new history | Society books | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-19T06:00:25.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/19/disability-by-david-turner-review-a-revelatory-new-history

Y ou could take two outwardly contradictory lessons from the historian David Turner’s new book on disability in the UK. First, that alarmingly little has changed for disabled people since the beginning of the modern age (the book’s first few stories, of 17th-century men and women having to prove they were disabled enough to receive parish support to avoid starvation, will be familiar to anyone who has tried to claim the personal independence payment). And second, that absolutely everything has changed – from the closing of asylums to the advent of prosthetics to the eventual, belated enshrining of disability rights in law.

But the central argument of Disability helps to reconcile these two narratives into a coherent whole. Turner, a professor at Swansea University, shows that while public and political attitudes to disability have remained poor, disabled people have challenged them at every stage, wresting progress out of even the most unpromising circumstances. This is not a story of rights and dignity bestowed from on high, but of the people and communities clawing them into being.

The sweeping perspective is anchored by incredible personal stories. We meet Duncan Campbell, an aristocrat who, at the turn of the 18th century, became a sensation as a deaf psychic, trading on myth and rumour relating to his disability to boost his fame and credibility at a time when deafness was equated with being childlike and ineducable. Or, two centuries later, May Billinghurst, the infamous “cripple suffragette” who used her bespoke hand-operated tricycle to break through police lines and commit acts of civil disobedience. Or, later still, Megan du Boisson, a 1960s housewife who campaigned for the first disability benefits awarded solely on the basis of impairment, when existing schemes only covered those injured at work or in war, leaving out almost all disabled women.

What they, alongside many others in the book, have in common is that they not only resisted the material limitations society imposed on them, but also rejected the assumptions that went with them. The cumulative picture is therefore not of a downtrodden minority but one defined by ingenuity, determination and grit. This may be a new perspective for many nondisabled readers, but members of the community will find themselves recognising the attributes of they and their friends in people who lived hundreds of years ago. It is welcome to see this understanding of disability so well articulated in a book for a general audience.

One sign of the devaluing of disability activism and history is the fact that none of the personalities in the book are household names. May Billinghurst surely deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the Pankhursts, and we ought to know that it was Vic Finkelstein, an anti-apartheid activist who applied what he had learned in South Africa to the UK disability rights movement, who first articulated what would become known as the social model of disability in the early 1970s, paving the way for activism that went far beyond calls for better financial support.

We should know, too, the name of 18th-century MP William Hay, whom Turner describes as the first person to write about disability as a personal identity, just as we should know the names of Barbara Lisicki and Alan Holdsworth, the punk couple who kickstarted the successful 1980s and 90s campaign for the UK’s first comprehensive disability rights law. All fought loud battles with governments and societies that wanted them to be quiet. Hopefully this book goes some way to giving them the status – and voice – they deserve.

In showing how disabled people throughout history have rejected the narratives foisted upon them, Turner in turn rejects another false narrative: that disabled people are passive recipients of both discrimination and help. This book tells another, truer story: that we have always resisted and always fought to make things better.

Disability: A History of Resistance by David Turner is published by Bodley Head (£25). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – Venice, Italy, Overtourism, Europe, World news
Title – Venice’s new mayor seeks to raise day-tripper fee to up to €50 | Venice | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/angela-giuffrida
Link – Venice’s new mayor seeks to raise day-tripper fee to up to €50 | Venice | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-19T11:36:12.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/19/venice-entry-fee-rise-day-trippers-new-mayor-simone-venturini

Venice’s new mayor has said he hopes to raise a controversial entrance fee for day-trippers to the lagoon city to as much as €50 (£43).

Simone Venturini, the rightwing former tourism councillor who was elected as mayor in late May, said the proposal was aimed at further discouraging arrivals “during periods of heightened tourist pressure”.

In 2024, Venice became the first tourist city in the world to charge people to enter, introducing a €5 fee on 29 peak dates between April and July.

The levy returned in 2025 , with an expansion to 54 dates and charging last-minute day-trippers double. This year, the initiative covers 60 dates .

Although the scheme has had little impact on visitor numbers, it did rake in €2.4m for the city’s coffers in its first year, much more than expected, and Venice authorities still believe it will eventually contribute to helping the Unesco world heritage city tackle overtourism.

Venturini pledged during his election campaign to raise the fee to between €30 and €50, depending on the dates.

He said the council was studying a proposal that it intended to present to the national government seeking permission to increase the entrance fee “on certain days and when specific booking thresholds are exceeded”.

The toll is payable online , and in return visitors get a QR code that they must present to stewards hired to patrol the city’s main entrance points, such as Venezia Santa Lucia train station.

Anyone who books an overnight stay in Venice is exempt from paying the fee, as are tourists from the wider Veneto region, which is where most day-trippers come from, as well as children under the age of 14. But even if a visitor has booked a hotel room, they are still obliged to register their presence on the website.

Venturini said: “The admission fee is currently the only effective tool to control daily visitor numbers. We are therefore working on a proposal to make it more effective on high-traffic days, with the aim of finding a new balance between the needs of residents, workers and visitors.”

He said the funds generated from the fee would be used “to finance city services and support the maintenance and protection of a unique city, built on water, whose costs exceed €100m each year”.

Keyword – Games
Trefwoorden – Twitch, Games, Culture, Social media, Digital media, Media, Technology
Title – ‘Streaming gave me a space to be myself’: Twitch creators on what it’s like to grow up on the platform | Twitch | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/keithstuart
Link – ‘Streaming gave me a space to be myself’: Twitch creators on what it’s like to grow up on the platform | Twitch | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T08:30:16.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/jun/16/twitch-gamer-creators-twitchcon-rotterdam

A imee Davies, better known as Aimsey to their fans, is 24 but looks much younger. Sitting in a bland meeting room above the annual TwitchCon event in Rotterdam, they’re a barely contained whirl of energy in a beanie hat and T-shirt, all smiles and lightning-fast chatter. Aimsey (who uses they/them pronouns) is also a Twitch veteran, having started streaming eight years ago at the tender age of 16. A million subscribers tune in every week to see them chaotically play Minecraft and share snippets of their life. They have grown up, from teen to young adult, carrying a vast audience with them into maturity. What is it like to experience that?

“When you’re 16 you want to tell everyone everything about you,” they say as music blares from the event below. “When I came out as a lesbian, I told the world. Every part of my identity, my mental health struggles … I thought if I could help one person feel like they weren’t alone, I wanted to do that.”

For several years Aimsey was in a relationship with another content creator, Guqqie, and it played out in front of their fanbases with very little filtering – until it ended. It’s a situation common to streamers – they’re young and naive, they build an audience through sharing personal details with few boundaries, then the pressures of endless invasive attention take a toll. “Honestly, for a long time, the lines got blurred,” says Aimsey. “Streaming would seep into my real-life friendships, where I thought the only way people would be my friend was if I could give them something – because that’s obviously how it is on a stream.”

Recently however, Aimsey has learned how to step back and be a little more guarded. “I’ve been so open all my life, but I was falling into these cracks where I was like, God, who am I? I felt like I couldn’t figure that out. I think that in the last few months something switched in my brain. I’m living a little bit more of a reserved life. I’m still myself when I stream, but I’m trying my best to keep some things private – at least for now. I surround myself with people who definitely remind me that I’m not just content.”

Fellow Twitch star Sweet Anita is older at 35 years old, but she too is a veteran, having streamed since 2018. As a sufferer of Tourette syndrome, the platform has been a kind of emancipation. “Streaming has changed me a lot,” she says. “I used to be a timid person and quite apologetic – obviously I’d learned to be after a lifetime of dealing with Tourettes. I feel like streaming really gave me a space to be myself without constantly having to apologise to people. I have a lot more fun, I reach out to more people, I’m a lot more sociable now.”

It concerns her that so many children are now listing content creator as their ambition. “When I was a kid, it was astronaut or fireman, but now they desperately want to be in my position,” she says. “But it’s a little bit of a trap because once you’re here, people don’t forget you. You could leave tomorrow and someone might continue stalking you for the next 10 years. Once you’re in, you’re in. The only difference is how much security you can afford.”

For its part Twitch recognises the vulnerability of streamers. It has set up guilds to help specific minority groups navigate the platform and communicate concerns to the executives. It has created an AI-driven AutoMod feature, which polices chat during streams to delete abusive messages. “We’ve invested heavily in moderation tools so streamers can define what safety looks like to them,” says head of community Mary Kish. “It is going to be very important to be familiar with how you can protect yourself. I’m worried about anyone who might think on a whim, I’m going to go live. You need to be prepared – you need to have mods, or at the very least, turn Auto Mod on, you need to set your community up. We have a little work to do to make sure that anyone making their first stream understands what they’re getting into.”

Tellingly, neither Aimsey and Sweet Anita have plans to stop streaming any time soon. “Honestly, my vision is I’m probably always going to be streaming,” says Aimsey. “It’s something that’s been so consistent in my life and I adore it. That could change. But I’ve got so much more stuff I want to do with Minecraft – I want to do events, I want to do more stories and role-play, and there are so many more ideas in my head that there’s no point in even thinking about stopping.”

Sweet Anita has plans to move on from video games, at least some of the time. “I used to do animal rescue before this and I haven’t done enough for animals – that’s what I’d like to do next. I hope I get to go to animal sanctuaries, I hope I get to show people endangered animals. I’d love to do some rehab again, release some wild birds, that was the core of my existence before all of this.”

The maturation of both streamers and stream watchers is certainly something Twitch itself is thinking about. A huge majority of streams used to be about playing and watching video games, but recently categories such as Just Chatting and In Real Life (IRL) have become more popular. Streamers are getting out of their home studios and taking their viewers on days out, to restaurants, on walks, and beyond – top creator IShowSpeed has been streaming while scuba diving. Shayanelhawk literally sent his Twitch chat into space.

“Right now our biggest age group is actually 25-34 because people have aged up while using it and they keep using it,” says CEO Dan Clancy. “We’ve seen this in the growing diversity of content because as creators get older, they have new interests and their community stays with them. So I think we’ll see continued diversification. I’ve often conjectured that when the so-called Twitch generation gets to 60-70, we’ll see all these knitting and crochetting streams. As you get into retirement – the issue of looking for connection that you had as a teenager comes back, because the kids have left home, you’re looking for people, for community – and you have time. As we saw during Covid, Twitch is a platform that explodes when you have time.”

The one massive gamechanger lurking on the horizon is AI. There is already a successful AI avatar streamer, Neuro-sama, a cutesy anime girl with 1 million followers. Will Aimsey be part of the last generation of human teens who’ve had the chance to become, and grow up, as streamers? They think not. “No matter what happens there is always going to be an audience for human-made things. It doesn’t matter what we do, it doesn’t matter how big AI gets, there’s always going to be people who need that human connection to feel real.”

Keyword – Games
Trefwoorden – Games, Role playing games, Culture
Title – The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales review – a playable love letter to Zelda | Games | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-regan
Link – The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales review – a playable love letter to Zelda | Games | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-18T11:15:01.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/jun/18/the-adventures-of-elliot-the-millennium-tales-review

Y ou can’t help but wonder if developer Team Asano is in a private competition with itself to come up with the most ridiculous name for a video game. Following Project Triangle Strategy and Bravely Default: Flying Fairy we have this mouthful: The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. It’s a playable love letter to the Zelda adventures of yesteryear rendered in the studio’s trademark glorious 2D-HD art style, melding evocative pixel sprites with modern visual effects.

From west Philabieldia, born and raised, our hero is adventurer Elliot. The antagonist making trouble in the neighbourhood is a king’s dastardly aide intent on summoning an ancient evil. The story is pure after-school-TV schlock, fully voice-acted but still unafraid to make you sit through reams and reams of text, and the action comprises treasure-hunting, temple-roaming and dispatching monsters. It’s part Chrono Trigger, part Oracle of Seasons as our almost obnoxiously upbeat hero journeys through the ages in order to solve puzzles, tip his fedora and of course, save a princess.

In each of the world’s four time periods, your surroundings change to suit the age you’re in, helping you uncover new abilities and the realm’s mysteries. While there is potential for a darker tale to be told, this is all stupendously saccharine stuff. It’s a world where everyone is pure of heart except for the mustachioed villain. Side quests have you saving cats and running errands for orphans.

Luckily, it’s a blast to play. What starts off as a straightforward exercise in Zelda worship later possesses a surprisingly deep and customisable combat system. Equippable gems allow you to modify your weapons and mix up your gameplay, boosting a sword’s critical hit ratio or adding flames to your arrows; combining these different fun effects can result in total grin-inducing carnage on screen later in the game. Even the weapons themselves are fairly inspired. Alongside your quintessential classics such as a shield, sword, bow and boomerang, there is a wildly swinging scythe and utterly devastating hammer.

Some friction is introduced by refreshingly challenging late-game bosses, but everything else on this adventure is designed to speed players along to the credits. With Breath of the Wild-esque temples spread out across the map, fast travel and constant hints about your next destination, Team Asano sacrifices retro mystique for satisfying forward momentum. A controllable fairy companion helps you solve puzzles by, for example, bursting into flame to light candles, but she also constantly remarks on each new dungeon and cave, advising you on whether it’s worth exploring. Such constant good-natured assistance may make Hollow Knight players scoff, but Asano has made the decision to keep the good vibes rolling, also ensuring that younger players are never hopelessly lost.

The Adventures of Elliot is not especially ambitious. It is a comforting balm during turbulent times. If you can stomach its occasionally nauseating earnestness, this rich fantasy world is a cosy one to retreat to. And despite my instinctive reaction to the off-puttingly cheesy dialogue, this charming world eventually began to warm even my cold, cynical English heart, thanks to some inspired dungeons and rewarding, customisable combat.

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is out now; £49.99

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – Spain, Overtourism, Europe, World news, Travel
Title – Beyond the beach: Spain pushes offbeat regions as tourist numbers nudge 100m | Spain | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/samjones
Link – Beyond the beach: Spain pushes offbeat regions as tourist numbers nudge 100m | Spain | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T07:00:03.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/20/spain-offbeat-regions-tourist-numbers-overtourism

Spain is redoubling its efforts to push its tourist appeal beyond the familiar “sun and sand and coast” model as it prepares for another record-breaking year in which the number of foreign visitors could reach 100 million for the first time, the country’s tourism minister has said.

Speaking to the Guardian, Jordi Hereu rejected suggestions that Spain was now saturated with tourists but said it had become clear that the “old formulas no longer work”, especially amid growing concerns about overtourism and the effects of the climate emergency.

Hereu, the minister of industry and tourism, said the steady growth in tourist numbers – which could be further boosted this summer by uncertainty over Middle Eastern destinations after the US and Israel’s war on Iran – could be managed sustainably and responsibly.

Last year, the number of foreign tourists rose by 3.2% to 96.8 million, while the value of their spending grew by 6.8% to hit €134bn (£116bn). Figures from the first quarter of this year show tourist numbers up by 3.4% and revenue up by 6.7%.

“With that growth, we could reach 100 million,” Hereu said. “But I’d like to point out that that doesn’t worry us or obsess us … [We favour] what I call calm growth – in other words, growth that can be easily managed. And this year, despite what’s happening and the demand diversion effect, I think that in general, for the moment, our forecast is for moderate growth.”

While tourism has long been a pillar of the Spanish economy, making up more than 12% of its GDP, its rapid and unchecked growth in many parts of the country over recent years has triggered protests and a furious backlash . Overtourism , not least the proliferation of tourist flats, has changed the face of entire neighbourhoods and cities, priced locals out of the housing market and increased pressure on public services and natural resources.

Asked if the current rates of tourism were sustainable, Hereu said: “Yes, if we do our homework, and no if we don’t do anything.” The minister, a former mayor of Barcelona, praised his successor in that role, Jaume Collboni, a fellow socialist, for pushing ahead with a decision to ban tourist flats in the Catalan capital by 2028 , but he said Spain’s highly decentralised nature made it hard for the central government to drive local change. He also contrasted the different approaches of leftwing and rightwing administrations.

“I think there are places in Spain that are now seeing the effects of not regulating anything,” he said. “But I also want to be very clear, because this is also influenced by political stripes. The left is more in favour of regulating tourism than the right, because the right holds the view that we should allow freedom because the market will self-regulate, which isn’t true, and in many places it’s clear that it isn’t self-regulating.”

Hereu said that while he believed anti-tourism feeling was “very much a minority thing” in Spain, it was becoming increasingly clear that a new approach was needed and that local and regional authorities needed to properly limit, regulate and tax their tourist offerings.

“What I do believe is that in some places there’s a demand for better tourism in the sense of a better model,” he said. “But the culture I see throughout Spain is a culture of a country that knows how to welcome people. Our key principle is that we’re in favour of transforming the model to keep ahead and that we’re working humbly to transform that model because the old formulas no longer work.”

Although he defended traditional beach tourism, which still makes up 37% of all visits, and said Spain had to be open to “all sectors” of the market, he noted that people were now seeking experiences beyond their sun loungers.

“It’s very interesting to see in the qualitative surveys that people who come basically because ‘hey, I’m here to relax, sun and beach, etc,’ also start asking for add-ons – like ‘beach plus’,” Hereu said. “I think this is also a good trend, because what we need is to add value.”

The minister said Spain’s socialist-led coalition government was committed to the socially, economically and environmentally sustainable principles set out in its 2030 tourism strategy.

“One is decentralising destinations over time and we’re also working towards deseasonalisation,” he said. “The third, very clear principle is the diversification of our offering away from all those decades of sun and sand and coast, which is where the [Spanish tourist industry] was born, and which is still the dominant offering.”

Although Spain has been pushing the summery charms of its eastern and southern coasts for decades, Hereu argues that the key to sustainable tourism lies in making it less seasonal, less beach-fixated and more geographically and culturally diverse.

The country’s current advertising campaign, called Think You Know Spain? Think Again , swerves sun-kissed costas to focus instead on images of churches, paradores , orange groves, folk festivals, food, wine, lakes, green spaces, handicrafts and brown bears. It even features rain.

“You don’t see any coastal beaches; instead, it’s inland Spain and the green Spain of the north,” he said. “So, it’s about decentralising and discovering other realities. And what’s happening? Low and mid season are growing much more than high season, and the inland, green Spain is growing much more than the majority segment.”

Spain’s reliance on tourism was laid bare during the Covid pandemic. In 2020, international visitor numbers dropped by 77% to just 18.9 million. That led the government to invest €3.4bn of EU next generation funds in a plan to modernise and transform the sector.

According to Hereu, that investment has allowed less visited areas of Spain – such as Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country and Navarre – to develop their tourist markets.

“There’s a lot of potential there, and that’s where we need growth to happen,” he said. “Because, for example, on the Mediterranean coast, especially now, in the high season, there are limits.”

The minister believes that diversifying and decentralising the tourist industry can help Spain tackle depopulation by ensuring that young people don’t have to leave their home towns in search of work elsewhere. Lengthening the season would also help to provide more stable employment, he added.

“Before it was June, July, August and, at most, September,” he said. “But now people open in April, May or June, and we have more stability. October is also very important now, and the truth is, in some cases chains tell me they’re open almost all year round. This also gives us more job stability, and it’s obvious that salaries also have to increase, right? You have to attract people to the sector and retain them. And that’s good news because it also brings social stability and a redistribution of profits.”

Hereu said the government was also seeking to help the industry adapt to the effects of the climate emergency, which are becoming ever more evident in Spain in the form of droughts, heatwaves, forest fires, floods and rising sea levels. He said renewable energy, efficient water use and good waste management could all help mitigate the consequences of the crisis.

It was now abundantly clear, he added, that sticking to the old model would be a mistake. “We’d have the opposite of what we have now – we’d be growing the number of tourists rather than the spending value,” he said. “And [now] we are growing more in value than in number.”

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – Spain, Football, Sport, World Cup, Arsenal
Title – David Raya: ‘When you lose a Champions League final it destroys you inside’ | Spain | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sidlowe
Link – David Raya: ‘When you lose a Champions League final it destroys you inside’ | Spain | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T11:00:04.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/20/david-raya-when-you-lose-a-champions-league-final-it-destroys-you-inside

“N o, no, there’s someone else,” David Raya says, leaping out of his chair at Spain’s training camp in Chattanooga, Tennessee, pulling his phone from the wash bag sitting on the floor and starting to scroll. Ah, look, here it is,” he says eventually, reading from the screen: “‘… the goalkeeper, who played in yesterday’s match, was at Southport on loan from Oxford United…’ Yeah, Max Crocombe. I think that is right”

And so then there were four, another name to add to the list. Peter Withe, Stan Mortensen, him, and now New Zealand’s No 1: the men who played for Southport and went to a World Cup .

The first senior competitive game Raya played was in front of 1,405 people away at Macclesfield in the Conference; the last was in front of 61,035 at the Champions League final in Budapest , making him only the third footballer to play non-league football and the biggest club game of all. The other two, in case you’re interested – and Raya is – were Steve Finnan and Chris Smalling. Four days later, via an open-topped bus parade with the Premier League trophy, he joined the favourites to win the World Cup. The best days of his career, he calls them.

Those ones, not these ones. “That time took me where I am now,” Raya says. He was 18 when he joined Southport. “I was with the Under-21s [at Blackburn] and there were no demands, no pressure, no sense that the three points really mattered,” he says. “I told the club I needed minutes in professional football to experience what it means to have to win. I couldn’t go to League One obviously – I didn’t have the level – but going to the fifth tier shaped me.”

The opportunity to play came when Liam Roberts, who a decade on is at Mansfield, got injured. It didn’t go well, not then. “If you talk to the chairman or anyone else on the board at Southport they would tell you they were thinking: ‘who have we signed here?!’” Raya recalls. “I was 18, 19 years old, playing in a league that was so, so physical. I had been used to playing in the Under-21s where it was all on the floor, playing nicely, and suddenly you’re being crashed into by 30, 35-year-old men who instead of going for the ball are going for the goalkeeper.

“But once I got used to the league, earned my teammates’ trust, those were the three or four best months of my career in terms of learning.” At the end of the season he headed back to Blackburn; arriving at Southport that summer was Crocombe. Playing at Ewood Park was still not certain – behind Jason Steele, Raya played only five games the following season – but he had changed and he was ready, mentally and physically.

“You learn that it’s not as easy as when you are used to things being done for you. It’s people trying to make it to the end of the month. You have teammates who need the win bonus to pay the mortgage. You play midweek, five or six hours away, and they’re up at 6am to go to work. You see the reality, what football is, and it shapes you; you take nothing for granted. And I enjoyed it a lot, a lot – even if they did smack me all over the place. I had black eyes, pain everywhere, but I liked it and I’m so grateful. And here I am.”

Just across the level crossing where the Chattanooga train passes, through the trees, is the World Cup base that Spain have set up at the Baylor prep school, three miles outside the city. Training has finished for the day and teammates are waiting for the goalkeeper to join them on the golf course before returning to the hotel opposite the aquarium downtown. They have been together for two weeks already, starting in Las Rozas, 25km northwest of Madrid; if all goes well they will have another five together ending in New Jersey, rivals before, all on the same team now.

“Those at the Champions League final had a few more days, so I got there on the Wednesday night,” Raya says. “I arrived a bit before Fabián [Ruiz]. I was saying hello to some of the others in reception when he arrived. I went to say congratulations; that was almost the first thing I did. I couldn’t really talk [to him] after the final; I just didn’t have it in me. The next day we talked about the game properly. Just two mates chatting … I was happy for him that he could lift the trophy for a second time.”

Happy might not be the word, exactly. “The thing is that when you lose a Champions League final, when you get there for the first time in 20 years and then you lose on penalties, it destroys you inside,” the goalkeeper admits. “I left there with my head held high because of the work we had done all year but I was broken inside because we were so, so, so, so close … “

There’s a pause. “You don’t know when you’ll play another one or even if you will play another one,” Raya says. “When I went home, I was broken. We stayed [in Budapest] over night and travelled the next morning. That night is very, very hard. The following morning too. [But] then you reach the Emirates stadium, you see the fans and that lifts you. When you come out on the bus with the Premier League trophy and see all the people, what it means to them, you realise what you’ve done.

“Personally, those were very, very hard moments but you take a step back and look at it with perspective. You think about the way the club was a few years ago and the way it is now, how each year we got better in the Champions League, how we won the league for the first time in over 20 years … and that gets a smile out of you. That’s when you think next year we can do better, and win the Champions League.” Now to try to win the World Cup like his idol, Iker Casillas.

Despite being the best goalkeeper in the Premier League and arguably Europe last season, a Golden Glove winner for a third year running, Raya did not start Spain’s first game against Cape Verde . Nor did Joan Garcia , La Liga’s best. Instead, it was Athletic Club’s Unai Simón who did. That Simon has been No 1 for six years now did not prevent that from becoming the one debate that surrounds a stable, successful selección.

It is also a debate that, in truth, has tended to be turned more towards Garcia than Raya, certainly until reaching this year’s Champions League put Raya front and centre: not being at Madrid or Barcelona means not having a lobby. The day he named his squad, tired of all the Simón/García talk, Luis de la Fuente asked: “Why aren’t we talking about David Raya? It’s unbelievable. It’s terrifying.” Raya appreciated the support, he says. Being in England, perhaps he had been forgotten? “Maybe so, maybe not,” he replies. “It’s natural with Joan and Unai being in Spain. I’ve been away a very long time. I remember the first time I came to selección , people asked who I was.”

It is no exaggeration. Back then, in March 2022, “who is David Raya?” really was the headline in AS, ABC, Cadena Ser, El Periodico, Sport, La Razon and the rest. Well, he had spent his whole professional career in England since leaving Cornella at 16 and was called up having played just 15 top-flight games. He could even have played for England. “The idea never crossed my mind,” he says. “I always wanted to play for Spain and never thought about [England]: I wouldn’t have felt it, I would have felt an outsider. However long I was in England, I feel Spanish.”

“Some look for a debate or a headline, but competition is good,” he continues. If there is a word he keeps coming back to it’s naturally . How do you deal with the debate? Naturally. How do you deal with not being first choice for your country, forced to play a different role, knowing you’ll probably be away for six weeks without playing a single minute? Naturally. How do you and your teammates relate to each other knowing you’re competitors? Naturally. He’s seen it before. Remember the debate when he signed for an Arsenal side who already had Aaron Ramsdale? Even when Raya arrived at Southport he was one of eight goalkeepers.

He’s laughing now. “I don’t think there was a debate then,” he says. The scrutiny is different now, another kind of pressure. “That one is harder, quite honestly,” Raya replies. “Here, you’re exposed to the world, but you don’t have the pressure of wondering if you’ll make it to the end of the month. Media and public exposure comes with being a footballer and if you’re going to play at this level you have to be ready. I don’t find it difficult. I know I’ll make mistakes. Not everyone is going to like you. I’ll leave the debate for others.”

“Sure, it’s different with goalkeepers: only one can play. But we work together every day and we’re close. We help each other. The position is in very good hands, whoever plays. You come with an open mind, try to help – whatever your role. I’m very competitive but I always respect what the manager asks.”

“You treat everyone the same way,” Raya adds. “When you’re first choice you can’t treat anyone badly; when you are second or third choice you can’t treat anyone badly either. I have a good relationship with Kepa [Arrizabalaga], with Unai, with Tommy Setford, and with Joan, just as I had with [Álex] Remi[ro]. If a teammate’s down, it’s up to you to pick him up. They do the same for you. People say [competing] goalkeepers don’t get on well: I have always got on well with my teammates and I hope I always will. If the atmosphere wasn’t good, it would be very hard to work.

“It’s joy to be here. It’s my second World Cup and it’s a dream. I’ve had a successful year at Arsenal: I won my third Golden Glove and the Premier League. When you’re little you think about the World Cup. I was 15 when Spain won it in 2010 and I live this with total happiness and enthusiasm. It’s not every day you can be at a World Cup.”

It’s not everyone who can be, either. Still less starting out at Southport. But here’s David Raya. “And Max Crocombe,” he says.

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – Albania, Europe, World news
Title – People in Albania: share your thoughts on the recent ‘not for sale’ protests | Albania | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/guardian-community-team
Link – People in Albania: share your thoughts on the recent ‘not for sale’ protests | Albania | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T14:13:14.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/16/people-in-albania-share-your-thoughts-on-the-recent-not-for-sale-protests

For the last two weeks, Albanians have been protesting against a planned luxury resort backed by a company linked to Jared Kushner , the son-in-law of Donald Trump , near Vlora.

If it goes ahead, the development would occupy parts of an environmentally sensitive area which includes the uninhabited outcrop of Sazan and wetlands and coastal habitats in the surrounding marine national park – home to the Mediterranean monk seal and more than 200 bird species – including flamingos and Dalmatian pelicans, according to BirdLife International .

On Saturday, villagers from Rrjoll, located in an area of sandy beaches and pine forests in north-western Albania , protested against another development project , saying it was being built on their confiscated land.

We would like to hear from Albanians about what they think about the development project.

f you’re having trouble using the form click here . Read terms of service here and privacy policy here .

Keyword – Film
Trefwoorden – Film, Italy, Europe, World news, Culture
Title – Bologna’s niche festival of forgotten films captures the streaming generation | Film | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/angela-giuffrida
Link – Bologna’s niche festival of forgotten films captures the streaming generation | Film | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-19T12:00:33.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/19/bologna-italy-festival-forgotten-films-il-cinema-ritrovato

Bologna will be transformed into an open-air museum of cinema on Saturday as a nine-day festival dedicated to restored, rediscovered and overlooked films – some dating back more than a century – gets under way in the northern Italian city.

Now celebrating its 40th anniversary, Il Cinema Ritrovato, or “rediscovered cinema”, has evolved from its niche origins into an influential international gathering captivating a new generation of cinephiles.

Last year’s edition, which included the resurrection of Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 film The Gold Rush, drew a record 140,000 people, who crowded into Bologna’s Renaissance square, Piazza Maggiore, and other locations in the city’s historical centre for screenings of film classics.

In an interview with the Guardian, Gian Luca Farinelli, who co-founded the festival and is now one of its four directors, compared the experience to “walking through the ruins of the past”.

A similar number of visitors is expected this year. But it was not always this way. Farinelli conceived the idea for the festival at 19 with two friends from his cinema club, Michele Canosa and Nicola Mazzanti, after being introduced to Bologna’s Cineteca, a film library formed in 1963 that today includes a laboratory regarded as one of the world’s most influential for the restoration of films and documentaries.

Delving through Cineteca’s archives, the three friends “began to discover many things that we did not know”, Farinelli said. “We wanted to find an audience to show these jewels to.”

They found that audience shortly before Christmas in 1986 when the debut edition joined forces with another film festival held at Cineteca’s Lumière cinema.

Enno Patalas, the German film historian and a pioneer of film restoration, brought the 1931 cinema classic M and Metropolis, both by the director Fritz Lang, to the event.

“From the outset it was clear that this was an extraordinary field,” said Farinelli, who since 2000 has been the director of Cineteca. “We also very quickly understood that there was a void in Italy – nobody was really specialising in restored films, and so this is how we created the [Cineteca] laboratory.”

Although it steadily grew each year, Il Cinema Ritrovato remained largely the preserve of classic film enthusiasts until 1995 when the festival shifted to a summer slot. “This made our work much better known,” Farinelli said.

The regular attendance of a host of international film directors, among them Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Wes Anderson, as well as the Italian director Alice Rohrwacher has also helped to enhance its profile.

In more recent years, attendance has soared. “Another extraordinary aspect is that we have seen the younger audiences explode,” Farinelli said. “For younger people, cinema of the past is a great surprise. Yes, they know the [streaming] platforms and all the series, but in Bologna they discover that cinema has a long history. They also discover the pleasure of watching films together in a square with other people.”

More than 500 films from world cinema will feature in the festival’s 40th-anniversary edition , ranging from silent films to 1980s Hollywood greats and restored films that were long buried.

“This year we will present various films that nobody has ever talked about, so it’s like seeing a film for the first time,” Farinelli said.

Among them is A Spring for the Thirsty, a black and white 1965 surrealist film by the Ukrainian director Yuri Ilyenko that was censored by Soviet authorities for its alleged “ideological perversions” before finally being released in 1987. This will be its first significant airing after being painstakingly restored by Fixafilm in collaboration with the Dovženko Studio in Kyiv.

“I have seen a huge amount of films in my life, but seeing this one was shocking – I have never seen a film like it,” Farinelli said.

Retrospectives will be dedicated to the Italian director Luchino Visconti, including a restoration of Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), as well as the screen legends Barbara Stanwyck and Josephine Baker.

Farinelli said: “When someone organises a festival, you can only hope that it will grow. But what is quite unique about Il Cinema Ritrovato is that it has grown while maintaining its principles – that is, to go in-depth and show films but also the complicity, richness and contradictions of the history of cinema.”

This article was amended on 19 June 2026. An earlier version said Spring for the Thirsty was restored by Cineteca. In fact, it was restored by Fixafilm in collaboration with the Dovženko Studio in Kyiv.