Olympic Games, normal flags and nationalist flags

Today marks one month since the Gelida accident in which a trainee train driver died, which definitively plunged Cercanías into chaos, courtesy of Renfe, Adif and the Ministry of Transport (and which, by the way, significantly affected the AP-7).

A month later, some services still have to be carried out by road and unpunctuality is the norm.The improvement is very slow, which shows how bad things were (and in some ways, still are). Today, Secretary of State Santano, who was sent to Catalonia to personally deal with the chaos, said on TV3 that he's going home now, but that he'll come back to Catalonia once a week. Meanwhile, as we mentioned yesterday, a State-Generalitat consortium will now be approved to oversee the implementation of state-funded investments in Catalonia. This is where things have come to this.

And speaking of how far we've come, today the smiling, happy face ofOriol Cardona, this boy from Banyoles who has won gold at the Olympic Games in the test of skimo, ski mountaineering sprint, which is a new Olympic discipline.

In the stands, at courtside, were family and friends, with Flags and star-spangled banners that IOC security personnel removed on the grounds that they were political propaganda. And politics cannot be done at the Olympic Games.

It goes without saying that this claim that politics and sports cannot be mixed is untenable. Not only because everything is political, but because in a sporting competition where countries compete, flags are raised, and national anthems are played, politics is present every second.

So, what's the difference between a Spanish flag and a Catalan flag? The Spanish flag symbolizes a state. It's a flag with a state behind it. If you have a state, your flag is valid. If you don't have a state, your flag isn't recognized. Similarly, what's the difference between a patriot and a nationalist? If you have your own state, you're a patriot. If you don't, you're a nationalist, a nuisance, a suspicious character, a windbag, and, depending on the context, a potential terrorist. Shame on the International Olympic Committee, which organized the Games in Barcelona where the Catalan flag flew over all the venues and where Catalan was an official language. And make no mistake, a Spanish informant must have warned the Italians that "ugly things" could happen in the stands.

The price we pay is wounded self-esteem for having to explain our existence. And that age-old obligation shapes character.

Mirin, yesterday The Circle of Economy issued an opinion piece on the need to regulate the entry of immigrantsSpecifically, avoiding the low-wage model. At one point in the statement, the Cercle asserts that the arrival of immigrants also entails duties, such as "knowledge and use of the Catalan language, as well as the acceptance of basic democratic values—gender equality, the secular nature of the State, respect for human rights, among others." According to the Cercle, "Catalan identity, understood as an open and evolving civic identity, cannot be imposed, but should be built primarily from a sense of pride in belonging, fostering participation in civic institutions and shared spaces for socialization." Question: Can Spanish identity be imposed? Why this need to say that no one should be alarmed, that Catalan identity will not be imposed on anyone? Spanish identity is not described as needing to be civic, open, and evolving, because Spanish identity is real. It has a national identity card and a passport. If you live here, you end up with Spanish papers. In other words, Spanish identity is imposed by law. It shouldn't necessarily be like that if the State were to assume a plurinational character, but we know that will never happen in Spain.

Good morning.