The hand with which you feel

Last 6 October, the Catalan Minister of Territory, Housing and Ecological Transition, Sílvia Paneque, delivered the opening address for the exhibition ‘Territories and landscape: the perception of change, 20 years of landscape policies’, in the lobby of the ministry building, speaking of the importance of landscape for people’s quality of life. Organised by the ministry in partnership with the Landscape Observatory, the exhibition presents panels and a video aimed at demonstrating the emotional, functional and symbolic relationships that people forge with the landscape. Geographer Francesc Muñoz was also invited to speak about 20 years of landscape policies in Catalonia. [+]

The Council of Europe has published the report ‘Landscape and health’, approved by the Committee of Ministers last February. The document is based on the principles of the European Landscape Convention, which recognise the relationship between health and landscape, contributing across the board to disease prevention and treatment. By discussing several examples of landscape preservation and improvement, it stresses the need to promote connections between health and rational and harmonious landscape management and planning. It recommends that stakeholders build on synergies between all these aspects to improve people’s quality of life.

Most International Film Festival 2025, an event that brings together the best audiovisual production related to the culture of the vineyard, wine and cava, has invited the Landscape Observatory to screen its latest production, Fer i ser paisatge (‘Making and being landscape’), created in 2025 to mark its 20th anniversary. Produced by the Landscape Observatory, the video reviews the thrust of its work over the last two decades and is part of a session on the landscape that will be held on November 14, along with the documentary Les Planes del Vent. La terra asfaltada (Les Planes del Vent: the asphalted land’). Most 2025 will take place between 6 and 16 November in Vilafranca del Penedès and from 26 to 30 November in Priorat.

The 13th Barcelona International Landscape Architecture Biennale, which will take place from 17 to 21 November 2025, announced the eight finalists of the prestigious 2025 Rosa Barba Casanovas International Landscape Prize last August. The eight finalist projects, developed between 2019 and 2024 and selected among candidates from all over the world, reflect the most cutting-edge trends in the discipline and offer creative solutions to contemporary environmental, social and urban challenges. In this edition, the Biennale aims to reflect on how to mitigate climate change and how the landscape can become a primary tool to achieve it. Once again, the event will bring together professionals and experts in landscape design and architecture.

Published in September, issue number 320 of the magazine Descobrir included the manifesto ‘Sense paisatge no hi ha turisme’ (‘Without landscape, there is no tourism’), which reflects on the importance of ensuring the quality of our landscapes. The text is framed as part of the celebration of the Landscape Observatory’s 20th anniversary and the commemorative event held at the Palau de la Generalitat on 27 June. The manifesto highlights the Observatory’s work in documenting Catalonia’s landscapes, reflected in the preparation of landscape catalogues and their application to planning instruments, whilst exploring the relationship between landscape and tourism in depth

The integration of the landscape in the comprehensive regeneration of residential neighbourhoods is the subject of the sixth technical and educational landscape guide in a series produced by the General Directorate of Spatial Planning, under the government of Navarre’s Ministry of Territorial Cohesion. Recently, the different projects and actions to rehabilitate and regenerate residential environments have reflected an effort to improve the quality of homes, buildings and public spaces, and these must go hand in hand with an inseparable transformation of the landscape, perceived and recognised by the community. The six complete guides can be downloaded from the ministry’s landscape website.

Submissions will remain open until 31 December for the fifth edition of the ENFooCA scholarship as part of the Arnau Bartrina Luque awards. This is a residency scholarship for young people aged 18 to 35 who use photography and/or video to work on biodiversity and landscape, broadly speaking, in the Garrotxa region. The Landscape Observatory sits on the jury for this initiative, along with the Natural Park of the Volcanic Zone of Garrotxa and the Escola d’Art in Olot. On 14 November, the annual awards presentation ceremony will take place at the Espai Cràter in Olot, during which the results of the scholarship for the 2024-2025 edition will be announced. The winners are Gemma Jané Tarragó and Núria Montserrat García, with their project ‘El color i el so: revelacions d’un paisatge’ (‘Colour and sound: revelations of a landscape’). Eloïsa Matheu, a biologist specialised in animal sounds, will also give her presentation ‘Els sons de la natura’ (‘The sounds of nature’).

On October 17 and 18, the conference “25 Years of the Council of Europe Landscape Convention: Lessons and Challenges in Governance, Planning, Risk Management, and Landscape Studies” was held in Valencia. The event was organized by the Polytechnic University of Valencia with the aim of reflecting on the main achievements and challenges during the 25 years of implementation of the European Landscape Convention. The first day was structured around four areas of debate: landscape planning and its connection with other territorial, urban, and sectoral planning tools; governance as a framework for integrating social and economic demands and expectations; risk management as a response to territorial vulnerabilities; and the contents and methods for landscape studies. The director of the Landscape Observatory was invited to take part in the conference. On the second day, a field visit was made to the southern part of the Valencia Metropolitan Area to observe the effects of the October 2024 DANA and to reflect on the future of this territory.

In this publication, architects, artists, ecologists, poets and more provide their insights and perspectives, based on the exhibition of the same name organised in Los Angeles (USA) from 12 July to 12 October 2025. The director of the Landscape Observatory of Catalonia, Pere Sala i Martí, also contributes with his own professional viewpoint.

This collaborative mapping project aims to identify the risk perception of the inhabitants of the Valencian Community to define and analyse why certain places are perceived as dangerous, assessing the reasons why and providing useful information to aid decision-making in spatial planning processes.

Carla Andreia Correia Gonçalves. Tesi doctoral, Universitat de Porto, 2025.

Doctoral thesis that analyzes how the conceptualization and integration of the landscape has evolved in various coastal planning institutions in Portugal and evaluates how this development has influenced the evolution of coastal landscapes. The study also presents various recommendations aimed at a future European research agenda on the governance of the coastal landscape.

Lucas Períes (coord). Córdoba: Editorial de la Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Diseño de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2025.

Catalog of a collective exhibition that shows a series of reflections on the city's landscape, from multidisciplinary perspectives and with diverse approaches and formats. The authorship of the selected teams corresponds to members of the National University of Córdoba.

Umberto Anesi. Pisa: Edizioni ETS; TSM-STEP, 2025

Collective work that deals with the historical context and reflections on the future of the terrestrial landscapes of Trentino (Italy). A cultural and productive heritage that can be preserved and safeguarded, and that reveals unique constructive characteristics that transmit aesthetic, landscape, agronomic and environmental values.

Paysages après pétrole et Editions Le Moniteur, 2025

The collective work, with the support of the French Ministry of Ecological Transition, advances in the adaptation of the landscape to climate change. A multidisciplinary reading from agriculture to urbanism, to reinforce the systemic vision of the landscape and contribute to the large challenges linked to climate change, such as energy production or food production. It continues the writings of the reflection group PAP (Paysages de l’Après-Pétrole), founded in 2015 in Paris.

Clara Nubiola i Rosa Cerarols. Vic: Camí de Marges, 2025.

The authors of the publication, which is part of an exhibition of the same name, explore the relationship between the geographical connection and the artistic representation of the territory based on routes to Central Catalonia. They describe the territory from the territory, without ignoring all those elements that form part of the everyday landscape and that make up what the territories are: polygons and forests, roads and rivers, geological sites and semi-detached houses.

José María García-Pablos Ripoll(ed.). Madrid: Ediciones Asimétricas, 2023

More than forty professionals from various disciplines provide a reading on the transformations, reality and challenges of the multiple realities of urban peripheries. A work that allows for a vision from diagnosis to proposals, with workshops or teaching experiences, to act on the infinite dimensions of these urban areas in constant change and evolution.