El Cor de la Ciutat

I remember Laia touching upon Catalan soap operas one lesson, and I thought, seeing as it is such a big part of British culture, with Coronation Street and Emmerdale and all of that [rubbish] ;] i would take a look at the influence soap operas have on Catalan society.

Now, I'm not really a fan of soap operas in the UK, there are plenty of other things that I would rather watch, but it's something different to look at I suppose, and if I'm correct, Laia did mention they were a bit odd!

Oh, and I apologise for the excessive amount of cutting&pasting!

• El cor de la ciutat is a Catalan television soap opera first broadcast on TV3 on 11th September, 2000 and continues to date.
• The show is the most watched fiction program in Catalonia, especially among female audiences, drawing around 28-33% of the audience with as much as 40% during season finales. The show receives almost 800,000 viewers and near season endings some episodes have had over one million viewers.
• El cor de la ciutat follows the lives of the people who live and work in the neighbourhood of Sants and Sant Andreu in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It's full of the usual 'storylines' that British soaps tackle - romance, affairs, gay relationships, personal struggles, family fall outs and all the rest.
• Eight complete seasons have been broadcast up until July 2008, with Season 9 currently airing.Five episodes are broadcast each week, one on each weekday, on TV3. Nearly 1,800 episodes of the programme have been produced, making El cor de la Ciutat the longest-running television series TVC has produced.
• At the end of each season, a special night of programming is dedicated to the soap opera, known as La Nit del Cor (The Night of the Heart)

La Nit del Cor (The Night of The Heart) is an evening of programming and live content associated with the show. The special evening of programming takes place on the Sunday evening following the broadcast of the final episode of a season of the soap opera. The evening begins with an hour-long special episode of the soap opera which wraps up many of the storylines whilst also creating a cliffhanger ending which will be returned to during the next series.
After the hour-long special, a special evening is held at the National Theatre of Catalonia (TNC), Barcelona, which is attended by all of the cast from the series, including a few that will join the series during the next season as new characters Prizes are also awarded to actors, actresses and scriptwriters throughout the evening.

Official website - http://www.tv3.cat/pprogrames/elcordelaciutat/corSeccio.jsp

Is it just me, or are some of the characters all slightly odd looking!?

It's strange to see that the Catalan soap opera is not a continuous story in the way that it is on British television. Yes, the story may continue from one season to the other, but it is not very often that British soap operas take such a long break, sometimes they are even priority, with two or three episodes in one night! I wonder if anyone could tell me how long this break is between seasons? I had a look but found it hard to find any answers!

La Nit del Cor seems similar to the British Soap Awards, with awards dished out left, right and centre!

That's about all from el Cor de la Ciutat, I found it difficult to find any other soaps on Catalan television, I imagine there are many regional ones, but these all fade into obscurity when compared to this very popular programme!

Christina x.