At the desperate table

"A society is measured by how it treats

those who are in the worst situation.

Not because of how it protects empty property,

but by how it protects vulnerable life."

Imanol Zubero

It's difficult, almost impossible, to choose the April Fool's joke of the year. There are too many candidates in a bottomless pit. This 2025, which began with Donald Trump's inauguration—elected by 80 million people—ended with a Pinochet supporter at the helm of Chile and saw the far right in Catalonia surge in the polls. This confirms the era of brutality we live in and cruelty as the fashionable political program. Outside of the global tangle, and given my republican background, a first suggestion for a clear candidate would be the Bourbons. This king, who lives in the East, a Franco admirer, a fugitive from tax justice with impunity, and, as always, bailed out by a segment of the Spanish business community. For him to now present himself as innocent in an autobiographical format is a farce, a massacre of innocents. Even more so in this supposed innocence of the perpetrators that loomed over the commemoration, so out of step with the calendar, of the official slogan "50 years of freedom." As far as we know, on November 21, 1975, nothing had changed, and that was in no way a Portuguese April 25th, but its opposite. Not a single Francoist repressor was convicted because not a single Francoist repressor was ever tried. I don't mention Portugal lightly: the Carnation Revolution began by dissolving the dictatorship's police force and purging the state apparatus. And that is why Portugal is not demanding a historical memory law today: they enacted it that April 50 years ago. A fitting reason to end the April Fool's joke of the first paragraph with the fact that the police station on Via Laietana is still not a center for memory and human rights. 50 years later.

Of what the dust cloud of 2025 took away, Mazón will remain, even if he retains his seat as a deputy and the premonitory message he sent to Feijóo is chosen:This is going to be a disaster, Mr. PresidentBut the fact that time is the best lie detector available—and that nothing lasts forever, neither good nor bad—is evidenced by Nicolas Sarkozy's imprisonment for illegal financing and shady connections with Gaddafi. However, the little Napoleon Spend only three weeks in prison and write Diary of a Prisoner It's neither pitiful nor funny – it's just a terrible, tasteless joke. The real joke is that of a five-year sentence, only 1% of the imposed penalty is actually served. Nothing is new; it all has deep roots: between that "Racaille!"(Xusma!)" which the former French president uttered menacingly during the crisis in the suburbs of 2005 and the "Scum!There's no difference between García Albiol today and now. But there is a distance of 20 years. And the time that has passed between one and the other explains almost everything. Two decades of global democratization, of the undisguised dismantling of the welfare state, of the rise of the global far right, of migration as a scapegoat, and of scapegoating itself. Reissue of the Catalan version ofThe miserable ones by Victor Hugo, published by Club Editor. Who are the truly miserable people today?

Because it's a joke to hear Albiol say that Badalona doesn't have the resources to accommodate homeless people sleeping rough and under a bridge on the C-31 highway: of course, because he was the one who locked the public facility that provided shelter, you innocent fools. Dickens astonished in Badalona and Chesterton fleeing in terror, what will remain etched in our minds at the end of 2025 from Sheriff Albiol's misadventures is the terrible image of a group of people blocking the path of about fifteen poor migrants. Preventing their access to a church that had opened its doors to welcome them and denying what almost defines us as human: compassion—its very possibility. Albiol also leaves behind another image, one of double impunity, like a hawk, frost, and claw. First, by utterly disregarding half of the court order, which, while authorizing the eviction, also indicated that basic social assistance was necessary. And second, much more serious because of what it reveals as a backdrop, the details of that nighttime conversation that will be forever recorded. While some—including some masked individuals—encourage the burning of the hostel, Albiol bluntly states three things: that he is counting on the shouts being made because there are cameras recording, that they should trust him to solve the crisis, and that if he fails—and there is nothing innocent about saying this—they should "do what they were going to do." The counterfactual comparison is necessary. If Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez had said this to the Ministry of Economy in September 2017, they would have lost their life sentences. At the very least.

So, as a Christmas carol, the old dilemma of the guilty sardines and innocent sharks is repeated, in a Christmas so consumerist and commercialized that it has become an extension of the perpetual Black Friday in which we have settled. And what are we being beguiled into? The general charade is what it is, indigestible and never-ending. A convicted attorney general, a president of the Generalitat and two former ministers exiled eight years ago and still awaiting European validation of their amnesty—and still awaiting it. The show must go on....from the latest plot twist with which a Supreme Court member, a regular at the... Santiago and close Spain–There's no need to dwell on which Santiago; it's all too obvious. And also two PSOE organizing secretaries passing through jail, and a plumber named Leire. And a UCO chief who says they don't conduct "prospective investigations." And the Pujol trial, which begins with a clear confession—that they are tax evaders—and in which, paradoxically, some cannot be convicted without also condemning the State itself—or, to put it another way: the first person convicted in the Pujol case was, two years ago, the super-commissioner Eugenio Pino, DAO. But still, under intense pressure, fortunately, and as a bulwark, a judge in Catarroja has given us back the possibility of justice and the concrete fact that law and democracy are not entirely separate.

Finally, like static man, there is that which never changes. In the realm of social inequalities, the year does indeed end devilishly, just as it began, without wafers or nougat. Espriu's Secundina already said that "whoever cuts the cod, one always ends up as the doorkeeper." Straw is expensive, housing is exorbitant, and it seems, blissfully innocent, that the sinister trend is to look down –don't look up—to further blame the poor and completely exonerate those in power. January will be steep, bank profits are already being predicted to be phenomenal—25.417 billion between January and September—and, since there's no longer a risk of choking on the cannelloni, it would be worthwhile to learn to see the country as it truly is. Because the joke is too big. If the country were a single cannelloni, according to Esade data published this summer on wealth distribution, we would find a very unique Catalan self-financing system. One percent of those invited to the table—the wealthiest 1% of Catalonia—would take 27.5% of the dish, and an additional 10%—the wealthiest 10% excluding that first 1%—would take an additional 32%. One hundred percent already gobbles up 59.5% of the dish. Fifty percent of the country, a mere bystander at the table, would have to settle for only crumbs: 5.8%. Meanwhile, another 40% would have access to 34.7%. With these elements, what exactly is our vision of the future? The image, after devouring yesterday's cannelloni, invites us to think collectively about how to stop doinghe cinnamon tomorrow. Or they'll eat us alive.