The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has swept the elections in the eastern federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, where it has remained at the gates of an absolute majority. The AfD has obtained 43.8% of the votes, more than double that of 2021 (20.8%) and only three seats away from being able to govern alone.

The most feared forecasts for Brussels have come to pass. For the first time since the fall of Nazism the German far-right has real options to govern a state. The results in Saxony-Anhalt have fallen like a bucket of cold water in the community capital, where the victory of Alternative for Germany (AfD) is read as a harbinger of the penetration of this intolerant ideology not into the hemicycle –where it has long had a few seats reserved– but into the front line of executive power. A reading contrary to that made by the most populist leaders, who see the results as a political springboard.

The German intelligence services have classified Alternative for Germany as an extremist organization, the far-right party that this Sunday swept the elections in the eastern federal state of Saxony-Anhalt with 44% of the votes. If it ultimately comes to govern (it fell just three seats short of an absolute majority and depends on the support of the pro-Russian nationalists Sahra Wagenknecht), the party wants to impose decisive changes that threaten basic democratic rights. These are the most prominent points of the electoral program that has led the AfD to a historic result and which could allow the far-right to govern a German state for the first time since Nazism.

The entire leadership of the PP and the vast majority of the barons of the party had an appointment in Madrid this Monday: an informative breakfast by Juan Jesús Vivas at the Nueva Economía Fórum. The president of Ceuta traveled to the Spanish capital 39 days after the massive entry of migrants into the autonomous city that still marks the day-to-day of political news, and in the midst of multiplying political tension and crossed reproaches with the Spanish government. The person in charge of introducing him was Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who praised him for having “embodied the dignity of the State like no one else” and for acting as an “ideal president” to defend Ceuta in “times of unrest”. “You have a place in the hearts of millions of Spaniards,” he said.

After the holidays and a resumption of the political term marked by the Ceuta crisis, the courts return to the forefront of current events. This week, Pedro Sánchez will see two executives from Plus Ultra, the manager of the PSOE, and the former director of the Civil Guard file through the National Court in the two investigations that have gained the most momentum in recent weeks and which could shake him the most: those of the Leire Díez and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero cases. What is expected to happen in the coming days and weeks?

Aliança Catalana presented last Wednesday as mayoral candidate for Lleida the lawyer Meritxell Feliu, who went on the Junts lists in the last European elections after having been a member of Unió and Demòcrates. And on Friday, the Islamophobic party announced its latest candidate, Lluís Areny, who will lead the list in Sant Quirze del Vallès. Although in the last elections he ran for an independent list, Areny, the party's communications secretary, was a member of Junts from 2018 to 2021.

On the eve of the start of the school year and a new educational strike, Salvador Illa announced this Monday that, in the coming weeks, the Government will present a complete program to air-condition all educational centers in Catalonia. The president of the Generalitat explained this on Monday in an interview with Catalunya Ràdio: "We will explain to the public where we stand and what we will do to resolve the situation," he said. The measure, he said, will also be implemented in nursing homes for the elderly.

An explosion at the practical laboratory of the Faculty of Chemistry of the Rovira i Virgili University, in Tarragona, has left at least three people injured. According to the Generalitat Fire Department, which received the notice at 9:17 a.m. this Monday morning, the explosion occurred while chemicals were being handled. Seven units are working on the incident at the Faculty, located on Marcel·lí Domingo street. The three workers, who were able to notify 112, have been transferred to the Joan XXIII Hospital and the Santa Tecla Hospital. All three are in mild condition, but one of them requires special medical attention for personal health reasons, according to Carvajal.

At least five people have died and five more have been injured this Sunday at 2 PM (8 PM in Catalonia) after an Amazon cargo plane went off the runway during a landing maneuver at Miami International Airport.

Frit Ravich will allocate 115 million to a new plant in Maçanet de la Selva, where it has its current factory and headquarters, and to a new distribution center in Madrid. The works, which will begin next year, represent "a decisive step" in the execution of the strategic plan of the family business specialized in the production of potato chips, snacks, and nuts, as highlighted by the group. The production plant, where it is expected to create up to 500 jobs progressively, will occupy 33,000 square meters. The Madrid center will be used to optimize logistics and "continue raising service standards in the central and southern area," according to the company.

With the new academic year after the summer break, young Juan Pich-Aguilera Blasco joins the seminary, after resigning as a Vox member in Valldoreix and leaving everything behind to become a priest. He followed the example of his brother Pablo, who has been a priest for seven years. It so happens that they are all descendants of an important Catalan textile dynasty –the Pich-Aguileras–, which began its textile foray in 1886 and still owns the historic company Sedatex. But this lineage not only has these priests, nor has Juan been the only family asset within Vox. What is the dynasty that nourishes the Church and Santiago Abascal's party like?

Enes Kanter Freedom, the controversial former NBA player who caused an unexpected storm by declaring himself eligible for the draft of the WNBA, continues to fan the flames. The Turk has filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Sky and the owners of the Wintrust Arena, who threw him out of the arena for causing a disturbance.

An inscription engraved in Roman capitals with the letters EN and others that are only hinted at. Jardí has chosen for his profile picture a fragment of a tombstone from the National Archaeological Museum of Tarragona, which could –could, he says– coincide with part of his name.They told me I was affected for writing with certain fonts.

The polls were already warning about it, and yesterday the results confirmed it resoundingly. The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has swept the elections in Saxony-Anhalt and could end up governing if it finally achieves an absolute majority in seats – at the last minute it was at 44.6% with 95% of the vote counted – or if its potential partner, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party, which for the moment exceeds the 5% threshold of votes that allows for representation in the regional Parliament, supports it or abstains in the vote. Be that as it may, what is clear is that it was voted for by an overwhelming majority of citizens of this federal state, one of the 16 into which Germany is divided and which has a population that just barely exceeds two million people. In fact, the first thing that has been surprising today is the spectacular increase in turnout, which exceeds 70%, more than ten points higher than that which occurred in the previous elections of 2021.

Tomorrow school begins, and it will start with the teachers' strike that the unions already announced when the school year ended, around Saint John's Day. The Government has not managed to deactivate the strike, even though it has had two months to do so. The unions feel strong and are carrying momentum based on real shortcomings, dragged on for a long time, and this protest speed of the unions cannot be stopped with a standard negotiation. Education in Catalonia needs a top-to-bottom reformulation, and the turbulence that will begin tomorrow will continue for several months. We already said it here last week: if there is any public service that requires a generous, country-wide pact, it is education. But today all the front-page headlines are for the victory of Alternative for Germany in Saxony. The far-right wins in a German state talking about closing borders, expelling criminals, and reclaiming Germany for the Germans and not for immigrants. The reasons for this victory resonate here: voters who feel abandoned by the traditional parties, who have become impoverished, who have seen the street landscape change, resentful of what they consider the failure of reunification, who pay many taxes that do not improve public services, etc.This resentment based on real events, but which is conveniently stirred up by the verbal violence of social networks, ends in a protest vote, the one that hurts the most, against the system.The problem is that these parties do not have solutions for these problems, and in the long run they only end up making things worse. And behind the anti-immigration discourse there is an anti-democracy discourse. This vote is an invitation to gradually change democracy for an authoritarian and violent system (Russia, China, Trump's United States) that seems to solve problems because it does not accept the limits of these trifles called laws or human rights.It is true that the usual parties do not provide the best answers either, and for a long time, the normal, ordinary people who used to vote for them have become fed up because they do not listen, and because they do not notice that the wonders they explain during the campaign improve their lives. Agreed, the solution to serious problems is never quick, but the lifelong parties or ideological spaces are more comfortable with dialectical fighting than defending people from powerful private interests. An example: this morning President Illa was interviewed on 3cat and he assured that the government of the Generalitat is assessing whether to take the leader of Aliança Catalana to the Prosecutor's Office, Sílvia Orriols, for her tweets about the fatal attack in Manresa.Ricard Ustrell: Will they report Sílvia Orriols' tweets to the Public Prosecutor's Office as a hate crime?Salvador Illa: Whenever it is observed that there are behaviors that violate the legal framework and that incite hatred, the Government will act. We are assessing it, and if that is the case, in this instance and with everyone we will act the same.

The nightmare of this atypical and historic heat is numbered. This Monday we will no longer reach 40 °C in the Ponent area, although it will still be very hot. The drop in the thermometer will be slight, around 3 or 4 degrees in some places, enough so that no more records are set. However, it will still be hot, with highs around 38 or 39 °C in Ponent and in the interior of the Ebro. From this Sunday it is worth highlighting new exceptional values, not at all common in the month of September, such as 42.5 °C in Vinebre and 42.3 °C in Torroja del Priorat.

A high-mountain journey as a routine gesture to get to school. In isolated indigenous communities, the right to education is measured in kilometers of mud, rivers without safe crossings, and paths with dangerous terrain. Meanwhile, classrooms endure in precarious conditions, sustained by teachers who multiply resources where public investment arrives late or only halfway, and families convinced that taking their children to school is both a right and an obligation. Every day is an epic, a reflection of a structural gap: the physical distance between remote areas and opportunities. What real options do children have when the first obstacle is the environment itself? This photo essay focuses on the determination of the families and the slowness of the solutions that puts the children of the Ngäbe-Buglé comarca, in western Panama, near the border with Costa Rica, at risk.

The chef of the restaurant Semproniana Ada Parellada returns to the ARA. Every week she will prepare two recipes for us, which you will find on the newspaper's website and on social media. What type of recipes? She summarizes it like this: "Real cooking with homemade ingredients". Precisely, the first dish she brings us is a local classic of what in English is called comfort food: traditional, simple and comforting food. Let's start the week with some macaroni au gratin.

Eva, my eldest daughter, got married before the summer and, if I were still writing The Worst Mother in the World, I would have liked to explain the impact and the emotion I felt seeing her take that step. I would confess that I cried like a baby. Perhaps soon it will be your turn to write The worst grandmother in the world.

Until January of next year, when you buy a preserve labeled as zamburiña you will likely be purchasing Pacific scallop, Galician scallop, or variegated scallop. All three have an affordable price, and have traditionally been passed off as a more expensive mollusk: the variegated scallop, zamburiña in Galician. However, all this will end in January, because a new law will force canning companies to label with the correct name: they will not be able to pass one off for the other, neither in the name nor in the labeling photograph. Meanwhile, they have these remaining months of the year to finish the preserves that have the erroneous labeling, the one that tries to pass off as something grand what it is not.

Sergi was 36 years old when he lost everything. A bakery on Passeig Maragall, a rotisserie on Ronda del Guinardó, and a Mediterranean cuisine restaurant in Lliçà d'Amunt. But "a bad turn of events" pushed him to live on the street: he lost his businesses and the bank foreclosed on his house. But what cost him the most to recover was his identity. He had gone from having 38 employees and a business under his charge to having nowhere to take shelter. For six years, he lived inside ATMs, under restaurant awnings, looking for shelter inside parking lots in Nou Barris and the Paral·lel. But his worst enemy came inside a glass bottle. "I was drinking about twelve liters of alcohol a day. By the time I realized, it was already too late," he explains. But he did it, and his life has taken a turn. Now he runs the kitchen at the Arrels Foundation workshop, where he prepares breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snacks. "What do I cook? Whatever they give me," he says with a smile.

Aisha stays on the sidelines, sitting on a stone between the rubble and the new houses that are under construction. In front of her, her village community is celebrating an Amazigh wedding. Even though it is a festive day, her thoughts are anchored to a pain too deep to let go. She holds it between her hands, tightly interlaced over her skirt, before lifting her head and telling me: “Life goes on, but my heart still hurts.” The earthquake took the older of her two children, who died while sleeping under the rubble of the house, of which now only the memory remains. Since the earthquake, three years ago now, she has lived in a tent in a camp without basic services. Water arrives intermittently, and electricity depends on a few solar panels that are often covered by the dust and debris stirred up by the strong winds of the high mountains.

The Israeli army announced this Monday an airstrike against a building in the town of Deir Azharani, in southern Lebanon. According to Israeli authorities, the block was allegedly linked to Hezbollah.

Les glaceres de l’Himàlaia, que abans eren d’un blanc resplendent, estan cada cop més cobertes de contaminació procedent dels tubs d’escapament dels vehicles, les centrals de carbó i les fàbriques. Quan aquesta capa negra es diposita sobre la superfície de les masses de gel, fa que absorbeixin més calor del sol i es fonguin més de pressa, adverteixen els científics. Això és especialment evident en regions d’alta muntanya com Langtang, al Nepal, on el despreniment recent d’una glacera va provocar inundacions sobtades devastadores. Malgrat el seu paisatge idíl·lic, la regió es troba a sotavent d’alguns dels corredors més contaminats del sud de l’Àsia.

White House emissaries, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met this Sunday in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an attempt by the Trump administration to revive peace talks after more than half a year of deadlock, since the United States and Israel launched their offensive against Iran. It is the first time that the two White House envoys have set foot in Ukraine, while they have been to Moscow several times. This same Saturday they made a stop in the Russian capital to meet with President Vladimir Putin.

Catalonia recorded a 10.1% increase in housing purchase costs between April and June 2026 compared to the same period last year, according to the housing price index, updated this Monday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). The increase, although it is slowing down slightly compared to figures recently recorded –with rises above 11% in some quarters of last year–, remains among the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic, and has chained rises above double digits since the end of 2024. In fact, the increase between April and June is the third highest in the historical series, only surpassed by the second quarters of 2007 (+10.3%) and 2025 (+11.6%).

The academic year has begun with alarms ringing in the unions, but also in the public administration, after the Volkswagen group put the Seat brand in play, which has placed the Martorell factory in the crosshairs. "Martorell will not disappear," stated the secretary general of CCOO, Unai Sordo, this Monday morning during an intervention at the Ateneo de Madrid. The message seeks to provide reassurance, especially to the employees, and the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, and the Minister of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo, also joined in this Monday. In fact, they have all rushed to defend the Seat brand: "It is historic," Sordo affirmed. "It is a product that must continue to be championed," he reiterated.

Artificial intelligence has already slipped into practically every crack of social life. In recent years, since the entry into play of the first versions of ChatGPT, experts and promoters of the technology have asserted that the ceiling for the implementation of AI solutions is exponential; and that the productivity gains they will generate in the short term are incommensurable with other technological disruptions. In a recent speech before Catalan business leaders, the president of Telefónica, Marc Murtra, asserted that "in thirty years in the world of technology, I had never seen such a rapid impact" as that of AI.

The academic year has begun in Catalonia with a substantial change at the helm of Parlem, one of the key companies of the business independence movement of the last decade. Furthermore, the end of summer marks, for all intents and purposes, the starting point of Marc Armengol's tenure as CEO of Banc Sabadell, with various organizational changes and a focus on digital activity. In the chamber sphere, the Association of Real Estate Agents (COAPI) has chosen its representative to the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce; while the Spanish government has appointed a new Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Agenda.

Miquel (a fictional name) is 36 years old and is about to buy an apartment in Barcelona, in the Sarrià neighborhood. His mother "has paid quite a bit more than half of the apartment" and he will take out a mortgage to secure the rest of the financing. "Without my mother's help it wouldn't have been possible, and we had to have many meetings with the bank to see exactly how we would do it," he explains to the ARA.

This Tuesday will be the sixth time that Catalan teachers have been called to strike across Catalonia in less than a year. In fact, if all the territorial strikes that were organized at the end of last school year are taken into account, a teacher or professor in the Catalan educational system who has participated in all of them will have been on strike for almost ten days – and, therefore, without pay – this 2026. Nevertheless, USTEC and the CGT, the two unions on the board calling for the stoppage – joined by the Intersindical and COS – and the brand new Catalan Educational Assembly (AEC) clearly see that the strike for the first day of school is "necessary", since, in their view, the Government has not properly reopened negotiations following the teachers' rejection of the pre-agreement in May.

Salvador Illa has assured that the Generalitat government is considering whether to take the leader of Aliança Catalana, Sílvia Orriols, to the Public Prosecutor's Office over her tweets regarding the fatal attack in Manresa.

A man is in critical condition after jumping from a fourth-floor balcony in Barcelona. The man had stabbed three people inside the home. One of the injured is in serious condition. The events took place this Sunday at a residence at number 162 Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, in the Sants-Montjuïc district of Barcelona.

After 35 days in Ceuta, Aiman is returning to Morocco. He crossed the border shortly before the massive entry of thousands of people in late July with the hope of achieving a better life, but he has not endured the blockade situation experienced in the city. He says he is exhausted after having spent a month sleeping on the street and this Thursday, finally, he decided to make the journey back. Like the majority of immigrants who remain trapped in the city, he is dirty, wears flip-flops, and carries a small bag where he keeps everything he owns. Although he tried, he did not manage to enter any of the temporary accommodation resources provided by the State, saturated by the high demand of people who are still in the city, and he has fed himself mainly on the food distributed by social organizations. On some occasions, he has even taken food from the trash.

Barcelona is preparing for the final sprint before the municipal elections in May. With all the runners in their positions once the uncertainties regarding the heads of the lists for Junts per Barcelona and Barcelona en Comú have been resolved, and the entry of Aliança Catalana into the capital confirmed, everything is ready for the start of the final political term before the elections. A short term—less than nine months—but with burning issues such as housing, the increase in homelessness, or the recent shootings in the city that will surely condition the plenary that emerges from the polling station.

The President of the Government of Catalonia, Salvador Illa, has responded to the statements made by Isabel Díaz Ayuso during the second session of the State of the Region debate regarding financing in Catalonia, where she asserted that Madrilenians "will not pay for the nationalist party of four nobodies".

The Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, has criticized the statements by the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, regarding the situation in Ceuta: "A leader who aspires to preside over the government must also be responsible when in the opposition".

The Deputy Secretary of Health and Social Policy of the PP, Carmen Fúnez, has lashed out at the Spanish government for "insisting on imposing a camp" at the port of Ceuta, a fact that, in her opinion, generates "uncertainty" and intends to sideline a problem "that affects and worries everyone".

The massive influx of immigrants into Ceuta last July 30th has triggered an unprecedented crisis in the city itself, but also in Spain and Europe. ARA journalist Albert Diumenjó has produced numerous reports on this crisis from Ceuta. He will explain what he has seen and what has surprised him, accompanied by the Head of International News, Francesc Millan, who will offer a geopolitical perspective. Both will answer the questions that readers have sent us.

We live surrounded by notifications, photos that disappear in 24 hours, and messages that are forgotten in seconds. But this summer, we suggest you take a break. How? By sending us a postcard. We want you to write to us from wherever you are and tell us how you are experiencing your holidays. We will read them one by one.

Premium subscriber Xavier Quer i Riera calls my attention to a secular debate in the journalism of stateless nations: valuing more or less the news that happens beyond their borders, and specifically those that happen in Spain or in the rest of the State, according to perceptions. He writes:“My first time complaining to you is about the handling of the Almeria fire. Why have you sent two reporters more than 800 km away and, on the other hand, have you not sent any to the fire in Northern Catalonia which has burned 5,000 hectares for a week?I know you'll tell me that in one there have been deaths and in the other there haven't, but I think in this case the border line has weighed more.Thank you very much for your dedication”.I have forwarded the complaint to the deputy director, Ignasi Aragay, who explains the newspaper's version:“As the reader implies, the essential element in the case of the Almeria forest fires is the tragic and high number of fatalities. It is, in effect, what made the difference. Neither in the fires in Catalonia, nor in Northern Catalonia, nor in Bordeaux have there been any deaths. Regarding Bordeaux, we have also reported extensively on it due to its size (100,000 hectares burned) and its proximity to a large metropolis, but we have not sent a journalist from the house.Undoubtedly, in the coverage of Almeria, an added factor is the media landscape in which we work: our first circle of proximity is Catalan, the second circle already includes the Islands and the Valencian Country (in both areas ARA has a professional presence), and the third circle is the Spanish state (we have an editorial office in Madrid, where many political and economic issues affecting Catalan reality are decided; also in Brussels, where we have a permanent correspondent).In the case of the recent fires in Vall d’Uixó, we covered them with our correspondent in the Valencian Country (Daniel Martín) and with a piece by our Valencian deputy director, David Miró, a native of the area. As for the fires in Madrid, Ávila, and Toledo, we covered them from the Madrid newsroom.When we send journalists outside of Catalonia –he concludes–, they always look for their own perspective, which in this case brings the tragedy closer to local readers, as in the report «The story of the Australian firefighter and the grandmother from Granollers who tried to stop the Almeria fire», by Cesc Maideu and Pere Tordera”.In the Ombudsman's opinion, a first consideration, in general terms, is that a major news event, in this case fourteen deaths and more than five thousand hectares burned, blurs boundaries, and that news outlets with aspirations of the highest professional level use correspondents or special envoys to cover these events. Not doing so, beyond the media actor itself, would verge on confusing national journalism with provincial journalism or becoming local press – very respectable, that's another matter.There is, then, beyond administrative divisions and legitimate political considerations, the “media framework” that defines Aragay. The idea of rewriting spaces according to established systems, and also controversial nomenclatures, was implemented by lehendakari Ibarretxe in his proposal for a new confederal statute (2004), rejected by Congress, by postulating a “Basque area of decision”. Without leaving the Basque ecosystem – like the Catalan one, very well equipped in reflection on the national question – Martxelo Otamendi, a great journalist, in the newspapers he directed, Egunkaria, closed by the National Court, and Berria, was clear that the news had to be given from wherever it was – he himself travelled half the world – and that the differential fact was not the origin but the perspective, which the deputy director also emphasizes: the world, from six hundred to six thousand kilometers, seen and explained from the Basque point of view, with the grammar of its language and the semantics of its culture, which are what certify the character of an “identity publication”, not the neglect of information from outside Euskal Herria.The “media framework” or “journalistic sphere” thus allows for a transversality that politics certainly does not hesitate to limit, a panoramic view, which is seen in the informative patterns of ARA and clearly manifests itself in the Opinion section, which shows the palette of ideologies that make up our democratic society. Catalanism, on the other hand, has always had a cosmopolitan potential that begins with the most kilometer-close but is long-sighted; the theory is prolix over time and can go from Joan Maragall to La pell de brau by Salvador Espriu, national poet of Catalonia par excellence, which can be considered his poetic treatise. Before he died, Espriu planned to retrace the route of Don Quixote, I attest to this in the first person because I had accompanied him to various travel agencies... Which, in current terms, was mind-boggling. If we add affective proximity to territorial proximity, we will find many Spanish roots in current Catalan-speaking generations, many of them from the places of the wildfire, given that half of the population of Spanish autonomous communities living in Catalonia is of Andalusian origin, according to various statistical sources.Journalistic pragmatics complements syntax and semantics with a universal discourse seen from different focuses, and the call for diversity that Tzvetan Todorov proclaimed in his book – for me essential – Nous et les autres [Us and the others]. Todorov, in a conclusion with clear inspiration from Bach (“A Well-Tempered Humanism”), says that one's own nation should not be impermeable to other nations, that exclusion usually ends badly and that, without renouncing who one is – final phrase –, learning to live with others is part of wisdom.In conclusion, all things considered, the coverage of the Almeria fire was journalistically correct, and at the same time I thank subscriber Quer for allowing us to think aloud about our model of journalism in the foreign field: the same, among many others, as that of The New York Times, The Economist and the content platform Project Syndicate, with which we have a reciprocal article relationship. In the depths of the archive, among notable contributions from newspaper mastheads and journalists, the immense chronicles in La Veu de Catalunya by Eugeni Xammar in interwar Germany, which was hatching Nazism, those of Josep Pla in the Spanish Cortes of the Republic, or the literary journalism of Montserrat Roig about the siege of Leningrad – today Saint Petersburg – which culminates in the book L’agulla daurada, National Prize for Catalan Literature.The Reader's Advocate takes note of doubts, suggestions, criticisms, and complaints about the newspaper's content in its digital and paper editions, and ensures that the handling of information is in accordance with deontological codes.To contact the Reader's Ombudsman you can send an email to eldefensor@ara.cat or record a message of no more than one minute to WhatsApp number 653784787. In all cases, identification with name, surnames, and DNI number is required.

The topic of the week has been the regularization of half a million immigrants. Although you might think it's not an economic issue, it's a topic that comes up in all my economics classes.

The team from the Archaeological Museum of Ibiza and Formentera (MAEF) has carried out the reception and transfer to its archaeological warehouse of a set of approximately 26 Roman amphorae and 17 boxes of fragmented ceramic material. It is a fairly homogeneous set from a typological point of view, Dressel 20 type Roman amphorae for the transport of oil, but, in this case, with a multitude of stamps and marks that will provide a lot of information in their study.

One random morning, the universe sets a trap for Nofre Canadell, and when he comes to, still dazed and with the word spricka tattooed on his thigh, he gets in touch with his wife and children and realizes that, without knowing how, fifteen years have passed. "His life will never be the same again –anticipates Ramon Mas (Sant Julià de Vilatorta, 1982), who this September publishes the novel Sempre és massa tard (L'Altra)–. I have been turning this story over in my mind for a long time. I must have had the first idea seven or eight years ago. It revolved around a father who could not regain contact with his children or his wife after falling into a temporal rift".

In Teoria de gèneres, the second book by Josep Girós (Tarragona, 1968), the architect and writer focuses on a temptation as old as the human being: to classify what they do not understand. Literature does not escape this either: novel, poetry, essay, thriller, autobiography, science fiction... Genres, subgenres, labels or compartments that promise to guide us before opening a book and that, often, only serve to tell us what we should expect from them. Girós writes precisely against this need to put everything in its place. The author plays with the very idea of classifying until it wavers. And he does so with a paradox that runs throughout the book: he plays at classifying while questioning classification. Instead of accepting the academic divisions of genres, he proposes his own view, deliberately eccentric, and turns literary taxonomy into a playground. The book does not seek to resolve what a novel, a poem, or an essay is, but rather to ask why knowing it calms us. Classifying a book is also domesticating it: anticipating it, reducing its mystery. Girós seems to suspect that literature begins to lose something just at the moment we believe we have understood it. Theory of genres moves away from the solemn literary essay, the kind that seems to demand that the reader maintain a certain gravity even when talking about books. Here, there is no desire to build a definitive system or to erect a new Bible of classification. The proposal is more interesting when it resists being turned into doctrine. And here one of its best weapons appears: humor. Not as an ornament, but as a way of thinking. Girós uses the joke to dismantle the formality with which we often speak of literature and culture, this ridiculous need to turn any reading experience into an operation of prestige. Leave room for error and surprise

Theory of genres is less a manual than a provocation. It does not offer a compass so that the reader does not get lost, but rather suggests a much more uncomfortable idea: perhaps getting lost is, in fact, the best way to read. The paradox is delightful: to rebel against classifications, Girós must manufacture others (unfinished narratives, admirably incomprehensible narratives, narratives translated more than once into Catalan, etc.). The game also has rules, but these do not intend to imprison literature, but rather to demonstrate that every border is provisional, artificial, and revisable.This awareness saves Gender Theory from becoming a mere catalog of eccentricities. Beneath the game lies a deeper question: what happens when we stop reading to confirm what we already knew? In an era in which algorithms increasingly decide what we read, leaving room for error and surprise is almost an act of resistance. Josep Girós does not ask us to abandon genres, but rather not to turn them into borders. The most vibrant literature has always been a bit of a smuggler: it enters territories that do not belong to it, mixes registers, steals forms, and disobeys the labels that try to contain it. After all, the book starts from an apparently modest question and ends up touching on an essential issue: to what extent do we need to order the world to be able to inhabit it? Girós responds with a proposal that prefers the crack to the wall, curiosity to certainty, and disorder to the tranquility of having everything classified. Perhaps reading does not consist of knowing which shelf we should put a book on. Perhaps it consists of taking it off the shelf and seeing what happens.

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"In a complicated, hostile moment with little hopeful news, this year we want to reclaim the act of celebrating," says the director of Fira Tàrrega, Anna Giribet. The event, one of the most relevant in the world of performing arts in Catalonia, will take place from September 10th to 13th and will host almost sixty shows by established artists and emerging talents. We have chosen 10 that focus on the theme of this 46th edition: the party and the gathering.

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The American actress Susan Sarandon, who in February received the International Goya in Barcelona, denounced this Sunday in Venice, where she presented the film The echo chamber, having been excluded from some projects due to her criticism of Israel and her support for Palestine.

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The last quarter of the year is one of the most powerful in terms of series premieres. With some titles still pending announcement, platforms have already shared some of their aces up their sleeves for the coming months. The proposals from streaming services confirm that book adaptations –and if they can be classics, better– continue to be a trend. We review those series that have caught our attention the most.

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The 2026 Concurs de Castells now has the definitive list of participating groups. With the classification closed, it is now known who will compete in each of the three days of the event, which will be held on September 27th and October 3rd and 4th in Torredembarra and at the Tarraco Arena Plaça.

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Fireworks to say goodbye to Mestalla (0-5). Barça, which has put all its repertoire of offensive tricks on the table, has thrashed Valencia in a match in which it was favored by the calamitous state of a rival that, normally, used to make things difficult. Now it is experiencing an internal civil war that is bleeding it dry, with the fans fed up with a management that is sinking them. If Barça lives relatively happily, Valencia does not. And the match, which could be Barça's last at Mestalla pending a possible duel in the Cup, has highlighted this reality. In fact, attacking as it has done today, Barça would also have won at the Mestalla of before, the one where all rivals suffered greatly. Barça has scored five goals and did not even need to play at 100% during the second half.

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Scandalous victory for Barça in their latest La Liga visit to Mestalla that we all know (0-5). The 'culers' imposed their law from the first minute against a Valencia side that looks very poor. Below, some hot takes:

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A few days after the assault suffered by a minor Barça fan at the Elche stadium for carrying an estelada, Europa has reported a similar case during the match that pitted the Gràcia team against Alcorcón, a Primera RFEF match that ended without goals (0-0).

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Since March 17, 2024, the day Manolo González debuted on the blue-and-white bench, Espanyol has changed its president and owner, its sporting director –Garagarza, on leave, keeps the position, but his duties are performed by Monchi– and, even, its division. One of the few things that has not changed is, precisely, the coach. A Manolo who yesterday managed his 100th match in charge of the first team.

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The Italian Andrea Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), leader of the championship, has won the Italian Grand Prix, the thirteenth of the Formula 1 World Championship, at the Monza circuit. Antonelli, 20 years old, who had started nineteenth, has achieved his seventh victory ahead of his teammate, the Englishman George Russell.

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The Belgian Wout van Aert (Visma) has won the fifteenth stage of the Vuelta, held between Palma del Río and Córdoba, covering 110.2 km, in which the Mallorcan Enric Mas has kept the red leader's jersey. Van Aert has beaten the Italian Alessandro Romele (Astana) and the Belgian Thibau Nys (Lidl).

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While more foreign tourists than ever arrive in Catalonia, domestic tourism is falling. Excursions and trips by Catalans within the territory are down 25.6% compared to before the pandemic, 2019. According to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) compiled by ARA, trips are down 19.1%, and day trips are down 28.3%.

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He leaves the tent, which by midday must already be an oven inside. “No problems, no police,” he says, looking from side to side. From the dozen tents in this corner of the ronda del Litoral, between L'Hospitalet and Barcelona, no one peeks out when they hear a strange voice. At the door of each one, there are trainers and pool flip-flops that reveal that the owners have preferred to remain oblivious to what is happening outside and avoid problems. They are afraid that making themselves visible will force them to move again. This group has settled in a vacant lot between roads, having come from evictions at the airport, the Ciutadella, and the Zona Franca. “They are looking for the periphery,” illustrate those from the organizations, who point out that they opt to go more unnoticed by the police and also by the neighbors.

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In sexuality, normality does not exist. And, furthermore, people lie quite a bit about what they do and don't do in bed: we come from a historically taboo subject that, at the same time, confers a certain status. Saying you have a lot of sex continues to be a strong selling point. Many times this creates "what's expected" to be a kind of "collective mirage" created from lies and exaggerations.

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All testimonies in this report are real cases that have preferred to remain anonymous.If you don't play with me, I won't invite you to my party. If you want me to do that, you'll have to give me a euro. Now I'm angry (and I won't talk to you for days). You are my best friend (but I only play with you when we are alone, when we are at school, I ignore you or I even promote a vote to see who dislikes you in the class). These are seemingly innocent and typical phrases and situations for children – more so for girls – that can be a warning sign of a controlling relationship disguised as friendship. 

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The artificial intelligence has been the engine of stock market success in recent years. The tech companies leading the AI market have reached unimaginable heights, to the point where the club of companies worth more than a trillion dollars is no longer an exclusive affiliation. Nvidia exceeds $5 trillion in market capitalization, while both Alphabet (Google) and Apple are above four trillion.

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It is seven in the evening on an August Wednesday in Barcelona. Under the Arc de Triomf, hundreds of young people summoned by social media participate in a phenomenon that in recent weeks has jumped from TikTok to radio talk shows, television, and all kinds of conversation spaces. These are the aura battles, with the goal of farming aura, a practice as simple as performing actions designed to project an attractive, interesting, or simply different personality.

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Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, a few minutes from Washington D. C. Donald Trump and his assistant, Natalie Harp, step off Marine One, the helicopter of the President of the United States, to board Air Force Onebound for Houston. The photograph shows a scene very typical of presidential routines. These are iconic moments of power representation: the epic of the leader preparing to act, to demonstrate his strength. The photograph does not seem to have any particularity. However, the political context makes the image not innocent. Trump walks in the foreground, moving across the tarmac with his heavy gait. But Reuters photographer Kylie Cooper makes him appear blurred. Instead, she focuses on the secondary character: Natalie Harp. A former television presenter turned advisor and personal secretary. Her silhouette is perfectly defined, her confident smile is visible and the vivid green of the dress catches the observer's eye. She walks gracefully and with a firm step, in the background. On the day of the photo, August 27th, it had been only two weeks since the Washington Post had revealed that Trump, on his trip to Turkey, secretly abandoned the official plane at Ankara airport by hiding in a catering truck. He flew secretly in another aircraft while Air Force One, with journalists and part of the cabinet on board, served as a decoy in the face of a supposed dangerous situation due to threats from Iran. The press, which believed that Trump was traveling on the same aircraft, received the order to lower the blinds to prevent the light from inside from making the plane more visible during the flight.The Washington Post revealed that Natalie Harp was one of the few people chosen to accompany the president on the secret flight. Faced with a great threat, Trump prioritized his assistant over higher-ranking politicians. The opposition has taken advantage of this proximity of Harp to the president to make sexist insinuations about a possible sexual affair. On social media, images have circulated accusing her of being the trigger for an argument between Trump and Melania.Power, information and influence

The photographer has captured the moment when Natalie Harp walks under the large 'United States' sign, personifying that idea of dominance it represents. The secretary witnesses confidential conversations and meetings of the president. For some time, the press has dubbed her "the human printer" because she is the one who selects and provides Trump with emails, messages, news, and documents, always in paper format. In the image, Harp is the only one carrying a black bag that seems very full: the zipper does not quite close. She holds it tightly by the handle. The symbolic weight of the information she manages.This photograph hints at an influence that has nothing to do with official hierarchies. Despite her angelic pose and advertising-style beauty, the photographer points out the woman who holds great sway over Trump. Or perhaps a new weak point of the President of the United States.

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On the ship Winnipeg, the children were the only privileged ones. The ship set sail in August 1939 from France bound for Valparaíso (Chile) with more than 2,200 exiled republicans supported by the poet Pablo Neruda. It was a cargo ship that was only intended for a hundred passengers. The exiles slept in the belly of the ship and had to work to keep the ship running. The Winnipeg was also the playground for Lola Patau, a five-year-old girl who now, at 92 years old, tells the story of her parents, who fled the Francoist repression after the Spanish Civil War. Patau narrates the years of exile with a smile. Chile became "a home”, she says, while holding a folder full of old press clippings and yellowed photographs.

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Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente was the voice of the wild world for an entire generation. Now his youngest daughter also dedicates her life to explaining the wonders of nature, assuming her father's legacy, but in a very different context, both due to the media environment and the critical situation that natural life is suffering. Odile Rodríguez de la Fuente is a biologist, science communicator, and president of Rewilding Spain. She wrote Félix: un hombre en la tierra, four years ago, when the 40th anniversary of the iconic naturalist's death was reached, and now she publishes Som natura to try to instill in new generations the enthusiasm for nature that she herself inherited from her father.

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Lately, when I try to buy a bikini, I have to face the search and capture of an increasingly difficult piece to find: one that covers my entire buttocks. While the part that covers the breasts is not problematic, when we get to the bottom part, it seems that we only have at our disposal the minimum expression of what a panty should be. Among the available options, the thong is quite present, which mysteriously disappears between buttock and buttock, given the apparent comfort of the user, and front panels so minimal that I myself wonder how it is possible to fit the entire pubic area into such a narrow strip without it protruding from either side. Suddenly, wanting a panty that generously embraces the buttocks and lower abdomen has become almost an extravagance. It is paradoxical that this occurs in parallel with the clear retreat of the topless, caused by the increase in aesthetic pressure and rising conservative values but, above all, by the threat of camera phones, capable of forever archiving your breasts on social media without your consent. But why do these fears, which have caused the liberation of women's breasts to recede, not have the same effect on the buttocks?

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Imagine entering the website of an appliance store to buy a refrigerator. The company, through your personal data, knows if you live in a rented property or if you own your home, detects your zip code, and recognizes if you have children. It also knows what you do for a living, what brand your mobile phone is, and how many times a month you go to a restaurant. Taking all these variables into account, it shows you a price just for you, different from what might appear to the neighbor next door or your friend who lives three streets away. In the end, the goal is to charge you the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a product according to the calculations of an algorithm. It is what is known as surveillance pricing.

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With the end of the summer holidays and the arrival of autumn, the debate on workplace absenteeism will return. One of the highlights will be the white paper that at the end of this month (it could be the 28th or the 29th) Foment del Treball plans to present, and which is being prepared by a group of experts. The group is headed by Jordi García Viña, who is a professor of labor law, as coordinator and president; and the rest are Fernando Casado, who is the president of Asepeyo; Pedro Pablo Sanz, who is the director general of the association of mutual insurance companies, Amat; Daniel Torró, CEO of Geseme, dedicated to occupational risk prevention; Antonio Salas, who is a great specialist from Madrid, within Amat; the lawyer Manel Silva and Yesika Aguilar, who is the director of labor resources at Foment.

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"Things have changed. It is now more common for women to access positions of responsibility in family businesses. They tend to be better because it is harder for them to get there." This is the statement of the president of a large Catalan company who handed over power to a daughter to run the business. And this is no longer as unusual as it was a few years ago, although there is still a way to go. The fact is that family businesses in Catalonia "are clearly more inclusive of women".

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I hope you have had a good summer. An inflation rate of 4.3% in August is the prelude to an end of the year that will make us all poorer. To put it simply, especially for those of you who do not like risk, it would be like a stock falling by 4.3%. Doing nothing with our money makes us lose purchasing power. The main cause? The high price of fuel. And do you know who wins no matter what happens? A VAT and personal income tax collection (if wages rise) that is at historical highs. The more expensive the supermarket is, the more VAT we pay.

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Should wealth be taxed with a progressive tax? The debate is international. Some warn that it may encourage the relocation of the wealthiest taxpayers; others defend it to reduce the concentration of wealth and complement the taxation of capital in the personal income tax (IRPF). But what is it supposed to complement, if savings returns are already taxed through the savings tax rate?

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How many times have we heard all kinds of prophecies about the apocalypse of cinema in physical format? Dozens, hundreds, thousands of times? Most likely. “Today everyone watches movies and series on streaming platforms,” is the trendy catchphrase that has been around for years. Well then, if you visit number 79 Carrer dels Tallers, they will give you a good handful of reasons to understand that this truth that seems so irrefutable is much more refutable than you think. 79, yes, the store takes its name from the street number it occupies. And it already has seventeen years of history, bumpy and unstable at the beginning and completely consolidated and going strong in the present. Countless are the times that we cinephiles have visited it and it is always a pleasure to drop by, browse the new arrivals shelf, the promotions table, the sections of the genres you feel like watching to discover or revisit films in DVD, Blu-ray, or the most recent 4K format. At 79 they have it all.

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Després d'anys d'estudiar com escriuen els éssers humans, el psicòleg cognitiu Ronald T. Kellogg va concloure que redactar un assaig elemental era tan esgotador mentalment com cavar una rasa ho és físicament. Escriure requereix un domini de vocabulari, ortografia i gramàtica. Obliga els escriptors a comprendre un tema, examinar la memòria de treball, organitzar i planificar. És tan difícil que una persona immersa en aquesta tasca gairebé no pot fer res més.

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The diversity we find in the classrooms of educational centers is a reflection of the society in which we live. However, in these contexts, this plurality is not defined only by different social and geographical realities or backgrounds, but also by the skills, aptitudes, attitudes, and learning rhythms of each student. Good classroom management requires taking this diversity into account at all levels, although, in some cases, the lack of resources or other situations that may arise lead to solutions that can affect this heterogeneity to a greater or lesser degree.

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The afternoon is very hot in Washington DC, but that is not the reason why you do not see children or elderly people. The city is usually like this. As the seat of the federal government, Congress, and so many companies and institutions around it, the American capital is a magnet for recent graduates and young professionals who lower the city's average age and turn its landscape into almost that of a TV series. Retiring here is not the most common thing, but Carmen and Ralph Van Roy wouldn't change it for anything.

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Orelletes is a rabbit who is starting preschool (I3) and experiences it with the same intensity as many children who are entering a school for the first time. He cries, he doesn't like saying goodbye to his parents, he finds it hard to share toys, and he prefers to play alone, so he hides in a corner. With a lot of tact, the teacher helps him to breathe, to be calm, and he ends up joining the circle with the rest of the group. He is the protagonist of Orelletes at school, a story that aims to help experience this process from a kinder and more conscious space. Self-published by preschool teacher Meritxell Casanova, the story empathizes with the child and gives advice to parents to make these first weeks of schooling easier.

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Well, that's it. This week we are going back to school and even though, for the sake of appearances, teachers and students keep saying "how lazy we are and how little desire we have," the reality is that we are always excited (even if just a little bit) to start over. Starting a new school year is like falling in love again: new clothes, organizing plans, the desire to do it well. This year, yes.

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Siblings dressed the same: the same t-shirt, the same trousers and matching shoes. Sisters with the same dress and the same hairstyle. In many families, dressing siblings the same has a practical, almost logistical, sense, although it often also responds to an aesthetic issue.

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The Costa Daurada is an exceptional place to walk, and even more so if the itinerary allows for a visit to a restaurant in the area. From Cambrils to Torredembarra, passing through Reus and Tarragona, the territory offers diverse gastronomy where establishments that preserve seafood cuisine and commit to local produce coexist with more modern ones that look towards contemporary cuisine and incorporate influences from all over the world.

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The company Blai Peris, from Bot (Terra Alta), wants to demonstrate that innovation can also be applied to the food that has civilized humanity since ancient times, olives. “The idea of personalizing them came to me while thinking about what we could do with our olives to take a step further in the market. Then I proposed to my cousin to try it with his laser machine, and the surprise was to verify that yes, it worked on the first try,” explains Àlex Peris, who together with his brother Blai is at the head of the business. As he explains, olives have the particularity that they are packaged in a liquid that protects them from the outside, a fact that allows them to be preserved even after engraving their skin. And that is how they have made olives with the Barça logo, which they served on the day of the team presentation through the catering offered by the company Cal Blay. “This innovation, which no one had done before, we have not been able to patent, but we hope that we will be able to do so soon, since we are working on a process that will help to better visualize the engraving: olives dyed with natural dyes and personalized,” continues explaining Àlex Peris.

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Josep Bordes (Ulldecona, 1978) is the singer of La Colla Pirata and Pepet i Marieta, a group that is performing its final tour closing concert this Friday. From the Terres de l'Ebre, Bordes took with him a vermouth recipe in five steps and the memory of a bottle of white wine from Batea that he hated as a child and now adores. ARA has interrupted —a mortal sin— his Monopoly game with his son.

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Until now, Denmark has been a country recognized for its prestigious interior design firms, its pioneering commitment to sustainability and renewable energy, and for hosting some of the best haute cuisine restaurants in the world in the city of Copenhagen. Probably, when we think of a Scandinavian country, the first image that comes to mind is not that of tasting a glass of wine produced in a local winery. However, due to the effects of climate change, the countries of northern Europe are gaining prominence in wine production, where they see that they have a promising future.This is the case for Danish viticulture, which in the last five years has experienced a notable qualitative leap, driven by a handful of daring and visionary producers pushed by curiosity, who for the first time are managing to produce high-quality wines. This is reaffirmed by the journalist and wine critic for the Danish newspaper Politiken, Thomas Ilkjær, who asserts that the Danish wine sector “is today at a very exciting moment”. 10 years ago, wine production in cold climates like Scandinavia was considered a losing bet, but now the sector is in turmoil: “I believe that in 50 years we will look back and see that we are at the exact moment when everything began to grow,” says Ilkjær.Until now, the long, cold, and dark winters typical of the latitude of the Nordic countries had been the main obstacle to wine production. But global warming has caused the producing countries of southern Europe to face overripe grape berries with a high alcohol content, while Denmark has opened the door to the production of wines "with a marked acidity, a lot of minerality, and great freshness," asserts Ilkjær, a fact that is increasingly convincing gastronomic critics and restaurateurs.Regarding the number of Danish wine producers, in the last two decades it has gone from 10 to 150 professional wineries (with more than 1,000 amateur winegrowers) and new ones emerge every year. This has meant that in just six years the production of Danish wine has tripled and the sector is clearly on the rise. All this, despite the fact that Denmark's history as a wine-producing country only began in the year 2000, when the commercial cultivation of vineyards was approved under European Union regulations.According to the University of Copenhagen, the area dedicated to vineyards in the Nordic country is 250 hectares, of which 90% produce wine certified as organic. But although the production of Danish wine has increased and the quality has improved, the wine industry is still in its early stages, especially if we compare it with other countries like Catalonia, where there are 55,000 hectares of vineyards planted.In our country, a trend among Catalan wine producers to overcome the challenges of heatwaves and unpredictable weather is to relocate wine production by seeking cooler climates, for example by cultivating vineyards on higher mountain slopes, such as in the Pyrenees. In this sense, Danish producers feel they have the effects of climate change in their favor, as climatological studies predict that within 50 years the climatic conditions of the Nordic country could resemble areas of northern France or the Champagne region, with a cool climate, abundant rain, sporadic spring frosts, and warmer summers.Even with the clear effects of global warming, it does not mean that it is now easy to produce wine in Denmark, but "climate change has made it possible, or at least it has helped to improve the quality of the wines," says Ilkjær. Currently, the growing season in the Nordic country begins in April and the harvest does not take place until October, when the grapes have already ripened. During these months, the average temperature is about 13 degrees, an increase of 0.8 degrees compared to the 1960-1990 period. Regarding this, it is estimated that sunshine hours have increased by 15% on average, a decisive factor for producing wine. However, "we still have a cool climate, with the risk that some years it may be practically impossible to make wine, therefore, it is a challenge that one cannot fully rely on the climate, and this makes it difficult for producers to risk everything in a business as uncertain as wine production in Denmark," asserts Ilkjær.Most of the vineyards in Denmark are located no less than 10 km from the Baltic Sea and North Sea coast, spread across the country, from the Jutland peninsula to the island of Bornholm. The most used variety for white wine production is Solaris, appreciated for its resistance to cold weather, as well as for its early ripening capacity. Regarding red wines, the Rondo variety stands out especially, widely spread in Germany and the south of England. But if Danish wines are achieving greater projection it is thanks to the production of sparkling wines, which already represents nearly 20% of the country's total production.“A dream and a challenge to make wine here”

Amidst a green landscape, winding roads that cross small villages, and ancient stately castles, the island of Funen (Fyn) holds a postcard charm. In this bucolic location lies the By Stokkebye estate, a family winery that produces 20,000 bottles of one of the country's most prestigious sparkling wines each year. “It all started as a hobby in 2009”, for me it was like a dream and a challenge to be able to plant wine here, but I was sure I could achieve it, says Jacob Stokkebye, who runs the winery together with his wife, Helle. However, the path was not easy, and in the beginning, they had to throw away the wine because the quality was not good enough. This led Jacob to seek advice from French wine producers, who have helped him craft a wine inspired by the traditional champagne method.Today, the winery is one of the few that chooses to plant the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay varieties, even though they are less adapted to the rainy climate and frozen winters: "Part of our success is that we are located next to the sea where the wind always blows, this helps to dry the rain from the vineyard quickly," says Jacob.

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In Galicia there are three things that, when well combined, form an almost unbeatable trident: octopus, coffee liqueur, and bread. Eduardo Pereira was lucky enough to be born in Carballiño, in Ourense, a land where these three things are not just gastronomy, but almost a way of understanding life. After knowing the secrets of Galician cuisine by heart, he decided, about fifteen years ago, to do something that, for a Galician, is almost as risky as leaving an empanada untouched: coming to Catalonia. He arrived in Barcelona eager to learn. He wanted to discover what was being cooked here, what the Mediterranean products were, and what lay beyond what he already knew. After a few years of learning, he decided to open his own restaurant. That is how Bicos was born, on Passeig de Sant Joan. The name is not accidental. "Before, this place was like a small house and, when you enter and leave home, you give a kiss. Bicos means kiss in Galician," explains Eduardo. And so, between an entry kiss and an exit one, a gastronomic adventure began between two lands that know very well what it means to eat well. It hasn't had it easy. It has gone through a pandemic and coexists with tram works that seem to have more lives than a television series. But Eduardo is happy and, above all, grateful for how the neighborhood has welcomed him.At Bicos they champion Galician gastronomy, but without pretending that Barcelona does not exist. Product and memory from there, with small gestures from here. Like some zamburiñas (variegated scallops) finished with allioli, an almost perfect bridge between two lands that have more in common than it might seem. "We want you to know where you are and to give value to the product. This is the motto of our menu," he explains. The octopus 'a feira' arrives, the traditional one, on a wooden board, with oil, salt, paprika, and the inevitable toothpicks. Without potatoes, just as it has always been eaten at Galician fairs. When the product is good, it doesn't need much more. They also make another version with prawns and suquet (stew), making the octopus travel towards the Mediterranean. There are cockles from the estuaries of Noia and Muros, opened with lemon, white wine, and bay leaf, and finished with ajada oil. And cod with allioli and a sweet touch of chestnut honey. As if joining Galicia and Catalonia on the same plate were the most natural thing in the world. And it works. Also extraordinary are the rock mussels and the lacón carpaccio. And, to finish, a spectacular board of Galician cheeses. One of those that makes the coffee able to wait calmly.The 'homesickness'

Eduardo and his partner, Marta Baliña, have achieved what they set out to do: for Galician and Catalan gastronomy to meet under the same roof. At the end of the conversation, inevitably, the word that every Galician carries built-in as standard appears: morriña. "We Galicians are always saying maybe yes, maybe no... But I just bought a flat here," he says while laughing. The land, however, pulls. Always. And Eduardo does not rule out that, one day, this story might make the return journey. It would be another bico. Perhaps the most difficult one of all.But, for the moment, it seems there is no need to worry. Between the octopus, the cockles, the cheeses and this particular encounter between Galicia and Catalonia, there is still a lot of history to tell. At least for the moment, we will continue kissing each other in Barcelona.

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It's funny when you've been in a property, let's say at friends' apartment, and you return some time later when other people live there. It's inevitable that your mind starts playing the game of differences, seeing what is there and what is no longer there. The same happens with restaurants – aggravatedly, I would say – because Barcelona's voracity for opening and closing businesses is greater than that of Saint George's dragon eating sheep. So you often go to places where you've been before, but with other tenants and other furniture. Today we are in a place where we've been when it was called Tickets, when it was called Teatro (a more modest change, as it was as if someone from the family had taken it over) and now, it's called Osteria Condal, and it's starting a new chapter. They have done extensive renovations, and if it weren't for the fact that it's on the same corner of Paral·lel, we wouldn't recognize the space. The investment has been significant. We see it in all the details, from the menus to the imposing open kitchen.

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The original version of the title, London falling, is as apt as it is untranslatable because, besides being almost homonymous with one of the most important albums in English music of the 70s of the 20th century – London calling by The Clash – it manages to bring together two of the main axes around which the new and brilliant journalistic investigation by Patrick Radden Keefe revolves: two falls into the void, two decays. The first fall and the most obvious one is that of a nineteen-year-old boy from the balcony of a luxury building into the waters of the Thames, a victim of a web of lies and scams that he himself helped to generate, and the second is that of the city of London, surrendered years ago to the total liberalization of the economy and thus converted into a free landing strip for foreign millionaire oligarchs with plenty of money to launder and no scruples. Mirroring the London of the Industrial Revolution that Charles Dickens novelized, Radden Keefe portrays the London of the 21st century, a glass city that has built mountains of wealth on empty buildings that act as a screen for capital investments of criminal origin, a city where investors dine in five-fork restaurants while looking for the next victim to sell a block of flats in Abu Dhabi.

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The impression is that Tash Aw (Taipei, Taiwan, 1971), an English writer born to Chinese parents who grew up in Malaysia, has conceived and written his latest novel, The South, as a compendium of many of the frictions, contradictions, and clashes that define the vast, heterogeneous, and highly complex world of Southeast Asia.In the just under two hundred and fifty pages that the novel has, generational disputes and discrepancies, class conflict, instability and the changes brought about by the rapid transition from a society with an eminently rural economy to a society with a mostly urban economy, a sexual awakening that does not fit into the prevailing rigid social codes, the gaps between tradition and modernity, the ravages of an incipient but already severe climate emergency all play a central role... Although, as I have already said, the novel does not reach two hundred and fifty pages, it has a panoramic ambition and a totalizing breath that are quite considerable. Perhaps because, as the author has announced, it is only the first volume of what is to end up being a tetralogy.Epic of detailism

The plot premise of the novel is literarily and humanly flammable. An old Malaysian farmer has just died and has bequeathed the family farm to his daughter-in-law, Sui. The farmer has willed it this way partly because Sui is a clever and resolute woman, but also because he had two sons, one with his wife, the other with his mistress. As if all this were not complication enough, the farmer's legitimate son, Jack, Sui's husband, abandoned the farm years ago and has worked as a teacher for decades in the city, while the illegitimate son, Fong, is the one who, with great effort and toil, breaking his back from sunup to sundown, has kept the farm from becoming an unproductive desert. Melodramatic? That is nothing. It turns out that Jack's son, Jay, and Fong's son, Chuan, who could not be more different – Jay is a sensitive and educated seventeen-year-old from the city, while Chuan, two years older, has been raised wild – are attracted to each other, and they desire each other and get involved.Melodrama materials, all things considered. But it is well known that, in literature, it is not the materials that matter but the way in which they are approached, worked on, directed, and made expressive. From the plot of The south, one could just as easily make a daytime TV movie out of it as a Faulkner novel. Tash Aw is closer to Faulkner, although it would be a Faulkner of sensitivity and self-awareness queer, less violent and more intimate.Set between the past of the 90s (the farm plot) and an indeterminate present, and narrated by one of the protagonists, Jay, who shifts from the first person to the third, The South grows and unfolds based on a kind of epic of detail. It is a detail that explores precisely and intensely both the awakening to life of a pair of adolescents and the frustrations and failures of a group of adults forced to live in a world shaken by economic and climatic crises, but who nevertheless strive to try to find meaning in life, even if it means clinging to a dry and inhospitable piece of land.

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The Venice Film Festival dressed up this Saturday and enthusiastically applauded the return of Nanni Moretti, one of the great Italian filmmakers of the last few decades. It had been thirty-seven years since the director of Caro diario had stepped onto the historic stage, since 1989 when his film Palombella rossa –which offered an acidic portrait of the bewilderment of the Italian left– was excluded from the Official Selection supposedly for political reasons; the film ended up being presented in a secondary section of the festival, the Critics' Week. However, Moretti has not shown any resentment during the presentation of Succederà questa notte, which is competing for the Golden Lion this year. In fact, the filmmaker wanted to downplay his almost four-decade distancing from the festival: “It is not true that I had anything against Venice; simply, in all this time, my films were never ready in the summer, which is when the festival is held. This time, instead of filming in the spring, I did it in the autumn and, therefore, it seemed natural to present the film there”.

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Many times the artists' desire to maintain creative freedom can exceed the expectations of an official commission. When the French General Tourism Commissioner, Charles Duprat, invited eleven Catalan and Spanish photographers to spend time in Paris, his goal was to obtain "artist images," but it backfired. Those artists, among whom were Joan Colom, Gabriel Cualladó, Eugeni Forcano, Paco Gómez, Ramon Masats, Oriol Maspons, and Xavier Miserachs, did their own thing rather than the pleasant photographs he expected. In the midst of the Franco regime, those artists were captivated by the life and freedoms of the Parisians, who could kiss in public, which captivated Joan Colom, and protest, a sovereign activity that caught the attention of Ramon Masats.

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Before becoming one of the founders of the iconic group Skatalà in 1985, Josep Manel Pugés—who has died at age 66 as a result of a "serious illness," as announced by the band—played drums and guitar in several pioneering bands of the Barcelona punk scene. Since the late 70s, Pugés was linked to Clinic Humanoyds, Attak, Ruidos Molestos, or Shit S.A.

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The good run of Catalan artists at Olympic venues continues. This year, after Rosalía filled the Palau Sant Jordi four times and El Último de la Fila played the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium twice, now it is Aitana's turn, with everything sold out for four concerts at the Palau Sant Jordi: the first one this Friday and the other three on September 5, 7, and 8. And in October, Oques Grasses will say goodbye with the feat of four performances at the stadium.

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The announcement of adjustments and staff cuts at the Volkswagen group last week – the first of this magnitude in the 89-year history of the brand– will be accompanied by a historic restructuring of the models manufactured by the group to reduce production costs and maintain the competitiveness of the brands.

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With the price of fossil fuels through the roof for several months, due to political instability in the Strait of Hormuz, more and more European drivers have opted to buy fully electric vehicles, also thanks to the boost from institutions, in the form of aid for the purchase of electric cars.

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Eleven years after the outbreak of the diesel engine emissions fraud scandal, or Dieselgate, which fully implicated the Volkswagen group, one might think that bringing back a diesel engine in the second half of 2026 for the Golf – the German brand's star car – is an extraordinary and out-of-place measure. This is because the German industrial group wanted to accelerate fully on the path of electrification to leave the ghost of emissions behind, with an ambitious roadmap that planned to fully electrify the Volkswagen brand before 2030, with the arrival of the ambitious ID product range, technological and fully electric vehicles.

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Salvador Illa arrived at the Palau de la Generalitat with the motto of "uniting and serving". To leave behind once and for all the years of the 'Procés', which he considers "divided" the country, and to dedicate himself above all to the management of the Catalan administration. These were supposed to be his main strengths. Halfway through the term, nothing suggests that the pro-sovereignty aspirations are reviving, but he has faced one crisis after another and has already suffered –for the moment– the farewell of a minister and three general secretaries in recent weeks (two just this week). And this start of the school year, which began with an important photo for Illa with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, also does not augur a calm second half of the term, which will be marked by the municipal elections and the shadow of electoral polls showing a PSC stalled or even with a slight loss of support.

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With a beer in his hand, on his luxurious boat, he defended the arguments of the ultra-flotilla that sailed to Ceuta to "support" the autonomous city, claim its "Spanishness," and blame the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, for the migration crisis. It was Marcos de Quinto (Madrid, 1958), a former Coca-Cola executive and former deputy for Ciudadanos, who left politics six years ago but enjoys living in controversy.

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The new financing model has passed the first vote in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF) with the support of Catalonia and the Canary Islands (in addition to the Spanish government) and the vote against it from all the autonomous regions governed by the PP and the PSOE. The Minister of Economy and Finance, Alícia Romero (Caldes d'Estrac, 1976), is satisfied.What future awaits the new model now?

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A charismatic 35-year-old man travels through the towns of a German state aboard a blue 1975 Simson, the legendary motorcycle of the former East Germany. At every stop, thousands of followers with his face printed on their t-shirts shout his name and queue up to get a photograph or an autograph before he climbs back onto the bike and resumes his journey. What might seem like a rock star's tour is, in reality, the election campaign of Ulrich Siegmund, the politician who aspires to make Saxony-Anhalt the first German state governed by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

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After more than half a year with peace talks stalled due to the conflict in the Middle East, Donald Trump seeks to relaunch negotiations to reach an agreement that puts an end to the war in Ukraine. His emissaries, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, landed this Saturday in Moscow, where they met with Vladimir Putin, and this Sunday they will be in Kyiv for the first time to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The visit takes place in the midst of an escalation of long-range cross-bombardments and with the Russian president less willing than ever to make concessions. Despite this, both sides have ended up accepting a three-day ceasefire over the two capitals to ensure the safety of the American diplomats.

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The United States military attacked three Iranian oil tankers this Saturday, according to the Central Command (Centcom) in a statement, in which it justified the action as a response to attacks by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard against two US warships patrolling in the region's waters. This episode of cross-attacks represents an escalation of the conflict, which remains deadlocked after more than half a year.

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The Spanish government has announced that it is assuming control of the port of Ceuta for the "humanitarian care" of migrants in tents and other spaces, as provided for in a resolution by the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility.

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The fight against hunger is part of the daily life of many people in Ceuta. Although many of the immigrants who crossed the border illegally at the end of July have decided to return to Morocco and many others are already in temporary accommodation resources set up by the State, there are hundreds who are still trying to make a living as best they can in the city. They queue in front of supermarkets, restaurants, and bars in the hope that someone will give them something to fill their stomachs, they ask for money, fish, or even take food from the trash. At El Trampolín beach, a couple of boys have improvised a grocery store; they buy food and then resell it at the settlement. "Now we work for Mercadona," joke Ayoub and Imad, who show the purchase receipt to prove that they have not stolen anything. There are so many mouths to feed, however, that the help of neighbors and the solutions they come up with are not enough, and it is the social entities that are ensuring that these people can eat every day, weeks after their arrival in the city.

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For nine months, Collserola has been emptied of hikers and cyclists who found it a quick escape from the city. The outbreak of African swine fever (ASF), which already totals 384 positive cases, has forced extreme measures to be taken to prevent the virus from spreading, and to reinforce the closure of the natural park when the infections reached Barcelona. Aside from farms and slaughterhouses, a sector fully affected by this situation are the restaurateurs accustomed to serving breakfasts and lunches to cyclists and hikers who have not made an appearance for months. Despite the aid approved this week, the restaurants that ARA has spoken to agree in explaining the difficulties they are going through, some to the point of considering closing, and which they all describe as more serious than those caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

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Public debt yields have experienced a significant climb in recent weeks, reaching levels not seen in two decades. Fears of inflation and, therefore, the forecast of new interest rate hikes have driven sales of these assets. The fact is that if the cost of living becomes more expensive, the fixed interest paid by a bond loses purchasing power and, consequently, investors sell the securities they hold in their portfolios and demand higher profitability on new issues.

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Since the arrival of Marc Armengol as CEO of Banc Sabadell last May, practically everything has been positive for the Vallesan entity. During the last four months, the executive has presented almost record-breaking half-year results, with skyrocketing revenues and a net profit of 971 million euros, has exceeded the stock market value prior to the distribution of the extraordinary dividend from the sale of the British subsidiary TSB and continues to boast of its capacity to grow independently after the failed takeover bid by BBVA. Backed by his predecessor, César González-Bueno, and by the group's chairman, Josep Oliu, it is now that Armengol faces his real acid test. This September 1st, the new organizational structure of the bank designed by Armengol himself came into operation. It is the gala lineup with which the former CEO of TSB must now command the fourth largest entity in the State by volume of assets. The composition of the management committee—formed precisely by eleven members, like soccer teams—remains unchanged, but notable changes have been applied in some business areas. Known for his techie profile, Armengol has wanted to make his preferences clear.

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In 2018, with Luca de Meo as president and Wayne Griffiths as vice president of marketing and sales, Seat took the step: it launched a new brand, Cupra. Only two years later, Griffiths, already president of Seat, said that the new brand would close that year, 2020, with a turnover of 1 billion euros, practically 10% of the entire group. We journalists received it with skepticism, but that is how it was. From that moment on, Cupra has not stopped growing. And last year, in 2025, the new brand already sold more cars than the historic –it is over 70 years old– Seat.

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Before being known for the program El foraster, the actor and television presenter Quim Masferrer (Sant Feliu de Buixalleu, 1971) had already exhibited his acting facet. Founding member of the company Teatre de Guerrilla, Masferrer premiered fifteen years ago within the framework of Temporada Alta the play Temps, a monologue that starts from the following premise: what would you do if you had 90 minutes of life left? The show, which was seen in 2014 at the old Barts hall in Barcelona, is now being performed at the Teatre Borràs from September 9 to October 18.

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Focus reaches 40 years in a golden moment. Last season, the four theaters of the Focus Group, the Romea, the Condal, La Villarroel and the Goya, reached a record figure in attendance (534,000 spectators) and revenue (14.7 million euros). 68 shows were presented there, with 1,402 performances held. "There have already been five years of good fortune and on this journey, from record to record, today we have added a new challenge that forces us not to lose our stride, maintain the pace and reach next August with the satisfaction of a job well done," said the group's president, Daniel Martínez, this Friday. "In moments of peak social and political discontent, culture and, especially, theater, offers us moments of emotional rationality and intelligent entertainment, which allow us to take a breath to endure all this series of existential crises that make up our day-to-day life," added Martínez.

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I have noticed for some time that, especially in romantic movies or series, actions are detached from the characters. That is to say, when a character falls for someone, they love them no matter what they do. Thus, lies, abandonment, or cruelties never dissolve the infatuation, because what is loved is an essence and behaviors are just background noise that, at most, is annoying. In fact, it is the same mechanism behind astrology or the decision to vote for a political party because we trust more in what they say they do, rather than in what they actually do. If we want to fight against this bad habit that is uncritical or magical thinking, but we do not know where to start to truly get to know a person, we are in luck because literature can give us a hand. Researcher Annalyn Ng and her team carried out a study with the aim of finding out to what extent the books we choose to read say something about who we are. To do this, they took more than 24,000 tags that Goodreads readers placed on their readings and crossed them with the personality profiles of 61,662 people, measured with the big five, five independent dimensions, each understood as a continuum (that is, we all place ourselves at some point in each of them): openness is intellectual curiosity and attraction to novelty; conscientiousness would be organization and discipline; extraversion is the need for social stimulation; agreeableness would be empathy and cooperation; and, finally, neuroticism, which is the tendency to experience negative emotions.What are the most open-minded readers looking for?

They found that people with openness sought philosophical novels, university readings, and classics, while those who were less open preferred light fantasy and easy-to-digest content. Neurotic individuals chose narratives that reflected their own state, such as sad endings, mental health themes, or alternative realities that allowed them to escape. In contrast, emotionally stable individuals gravitated toward self-help and non-fiction. Responsible people read to educate themselves, and those who were less so sought humor and young adult books. Extroverts preferred social themes, such as memoirs and romance novels, while introverts liked fantasy, science fiction, horror, and manga.The highest correlation of the entire study was with the back-burner tag group, those placed on books that have been shelved: the titles that most people start but do not finish were precisely those that appealed to people with greater openness.So, to start knowing what the person in front of us is like, it will no longer be enough to know if they like to read, but we will have to ask them what they read and also which books they leave unfinished. Literary Sherlocks or astrologers: choose your fighter.

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Gabriel Jesus is the big news for the visit to a struggling Valencia at Mestalla (4:15 PM, Movistar) in a squad list that also sees the return of Gavi, who had missed the last two matches due to injury. The expectation is that the Brazilian could make his debut with Barça in the second half. This was detailed by Hansi Flick in the press conference, where he said he was satisfied with how the former Arsenal player had trained, even though he is not yet at 100%. Jesus landed in Barcelona on Monday, was presented on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, since the team had the day off, he trained alone. On Thursday he took part in part of the training with the group, and on Friday and Saturday – with a lower workload because it was the day before the match – he did complete both full sessions with his teammates. His compatriot Raphinha is acting as his master of ceremonies. He also knows Cancelo, Rodri, and Eric Garcia from his time at City.

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Two matches, two routs. Barça does not forgive on the Sevilla field and continues with a firm step in this start of the Liga F thanks to the goals from Esmee Brugts, Clàudia Pina, Marta Torrejón, and Vicky López (0-4). Graham Hansen was once again the protagonist with two assists in a special match for Pere Romeu. 727 days after sitting on the bench for the first time as head coach of Barça –with a 0-3 victory on the field of Deportivo de la Coruña–, the Catalan coach managed his 100th match at the helm of the blue and garnet team. Throughout these two years, Romeu has lived very sweet moments –such as the triumph in Oslo against his former coaching staff colleague, Jonatan Giráldez, to lift the fifth Champions League of the season– and more bitter moments –such as the defeat a year earlier in Lisbon in the Champions League final against Arsenal.

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Girona is finally starting to fire on all cylinders and has secured its second consecutive league victory at Sporting's ground (0-2), placing them in the upper part of the Second Division standings. Standout performances came from top scorer Yáser Asprilla, Carles Pérez, who opened his account with a fine goal, and Paulo Gazzaniga, who made amends for past performances. The Girona players survived a very hostile atmosphere with professionalism and efficiency.

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A user on X uploaded a video after the Betis - Real Madrid match on Friday in which a group of Betis fans could be seen shouting the typical, not-so-subtle anti-government chant of "Pedro Sánchez, son of a..." So far, so normal. The internet is full of them. The surprise comes when we see that the official profile of El Español writes to them: "Hello, good evening! We have seen the video and would like to share it on our social media. Would you give us permission? Obviously, we would cite you and mention you as the author. Thank you very much and best regards".

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The 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has generated premieres on platforms to commemorate, above all, the victims. There are affected and tearful tributes, such as the one proposed by Netflix with Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror, a production that tries too hard to argue that a transformative social legacy remains from that tragedy. They are interviews with young people who were children on the day of the catastrophe and also survivors and relatives of victims who explain how their lives changed. A dispensable option for being forced and sensationalist.The Disney+ platform has released a three-episode series from National Geographic. Each 9/11 anniversary, this label seeks an alternative approach to the attacks. 9/11: One Day in America retells the experiences of the Twin Towers and Pentagon survivors in a very emotional way. It encourages the reunion between rescuers and the rescued amidst the chaos and panic. Each episode collects several unheard-of stories, those that make one shudder but have a, at the very least, moderately happy ending. Each witness separately explains the hours leading up to the catastrophe, remembering what seemed like it would be a normal workday until the planes crashed into the building where they worked. The stories will intersect in the midst of the desperation. There are incredible ones, where you notice how the most insignificant detail becomes a providential fact for the resolution of the drama, such as a window cleaner entering the elevator of one of the towers at the last minute. The reunion after twenty-five years brings a bit of comfort to the harshness of the tale. The insistence of the music, which tries too hard to underline an emotion that does not need embellishments, is unnecessary. It is very likely that you will need a few tissues before finishing each episode. In the documentary, a psychological emotional response that runs through all the productions commemorating the tragedy appears repeatedly: survivor's guilt. An irrational reaction that the protagonists often mention as an aspect that has hindered their ability to recover. Despite this, 9/11: One Day in America has the ability to speak to us about the possibility of rising from trauma through real examples. In the productions, terms like jihadism, Bin Laden, Mohamed Atta or similar are never mentioned, so the trigger for it all is deliberately erased.If you are still in the mood for more air disasters, Netflix has released this summer the British miniseries based on true events Lockerbie. An excellent recreation of the 1988 terrorist attack that blew up a plane flying from London to New York and crashed over the town of Lockerbie. A key precedent for understanding some aspects of the management of 9/11. The rigorous reconstruction of the investigation, the clarity with which the events are exposed, and the actors' performances make the series an addictive option that, furthermore, manages to provide a humanistic reading of great tragedies in a very pertinent way.

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In mid-August, the American entertainment world was stunned by the news of the death of actress Hayden Panettiere, who was only 36 years old. She was well known for the series Heroes and Nashville, but she had been working in film and television since she was 5 years old. She had grown up in front of viewers, like many other child actresses, some of whom have also met a grim fate. Besides Panettiere, in the last year three other former child actresses have died: Michelle Trachtenberg, aged 39; Sophie Nyweide, 24, and Daveigh Chase, 35. In all cases, the deaths occurred after years of struggling with addictions and various psychological problems. Another constant in most cases is difficult relationships with parents, especially when one of them is involved in their children's careers.

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Fermín could not go to summer camp because of some inopportune mumps. He was devastated. It was his greatest wish. He spent his holidays at his grandparents' house, in Peñíscola, where in 1961 the film El Cid, starring Charlton Heston, was filmed. Now, fully recovered, he has settled back into his parents' home in La Barceloneta. He is tanned, blonder, with curly hair, without the shaved sides he had been wearing lately. The beginning of a mane, like his friend Ferran, who changed schools this year, has been wearing for some time.

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The Catalan clothing brand Desigual has once again pulled a Juan Carlos in Botswana with its now iconic "I am very sorry... it will not happen again." The reason? The latest campaign, in which, with a clearly sarcastic and mocking treatment, it makes gentrification, touristification, overcrowding, rising prices, and insecurity in Barcelona the central theme to promote its latest collaboration with the Berlin brand Ottolinger. A campaign that has ignited social media and received a mostly negative reception. Firstly, because many have perceived it as a trivialization of the problems that currently stifle the Catalan capital. Furthermore, this treatment, beyond the fact that a brand based in Barcelona is shooting itself in the foot by ridiculing the city's image, does not aim upwards as a form of denunciation. What we must be clear about is that not all irony is a critique. And if, in addition, all of this is done to sell a few t-shirts, it is even harder to find any real desire to question anything.And I say that they have pulled a Joan Carles again because it is not the first time, in recent times, that Desigual has had to rectify its advertising campaigns. The most recent one, in 2025, starred actress Ester Expósito wearing the slogan Not a doll(I am not a doll), with an apparently feminist intention of women's empowerment. The problem is that, in parallel, the t-shirt campaign Protect the dolls was taking place, to support the trans community following the attacks and harassment by Donald Trump's American government. A campaign that, in no case, was minor, but rather had a great reach, with the adherence of renowned figures such as actor Pedro Pascal, singer Troye Sivan, or designer Haider Ackermann. The campaign itself could have been good, provided it had been carried out in a parallel world. The problem is that contexts are fundamental and seeing Expósito proudly wearing a t-shirt with the phrase "Not a doll", at that moment made the reading go from feminist to transphobic.In December 2012, it launched the campaign Tengo un plan, composed of three advertisements in which three conventionally beautiful women dressed up, in a sexy and uninhibited attitude, in front of the mirror while they explained their future plans. The first, to travel to Thailand to have sexual adventures and leave her life behind, including her boyfriend. The second, to tell her family that she had a female partner. And the third, that she had decided to sleep with her boss. A campaign that, despite wanting to empower women, fell into a false representation of equality by the adoption, on the part of these three women, of behaviors traditionally associated with men.The most serious one, however, was released following Mother's Day 2014, titled Tú decides. A normatively sexy girl, after putting a pillow under her dress to see what she would look like pregnant, took a strip of condoms and poked holes in them. An advertisement that clearly treats women's freedom of choice in the clumsiest way, since, apart from ignoring the other person's reproductive consent, it disregards the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.Seeing, therefore, the promotional trajectory of Desigual, we could think that at the head of the marketing department they have a monkey at the wheel, with a total disconnection from the world and what is cooking. But, seeing the repeated blunders, perhaps what they have is a clever person who, in the face of a company that is struggling with sales, has opted for the old formula that says "let them talk about us, even if it is badly". A dangerous tactic that must be executed very well so that it does not end up being bread for today and hunger for tomorrow.In any case, perhaps the latest campaign regarding the touristification of Barcelona is better thought out than we locals have been able to see. With a brand owned by the Swiss Thomas Meyer and sales directed mostly to the international market, perhaps the campaign was not intended to amuse the people of Barcelona. Perhaps, precisely, its audience was those who experience the city from the other side: as a backdrop to visit, consume, and, now also, wear.

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The ARA proposes some plans throughout the country for this weekend.

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He died on August 28th and until September 9th he has been and will continue to be news. It seems like an eternity for a heart that no longer beats, but the demands inherent in burying a king seem not to allow it to be done with more haste. And even more so in the case of a king like Harald V of Norway, a monarch loved by his people and who was in office for 35 years. Perhaps if the farewell were faster, Norwegian society would view it negatively. For this reason, the funeral rites for the late king will have all the necessary pomp and circumstance. Including 21 cannon shots and a whistle from his royal ship.

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Designer John Galliano, one of fashion's great icons, has announced that he is renouncing the exhibition and gala that the Metropolitan Museum of New York (Met) had prepared for him as a tribute, driven by strong public opinion questioning his anti-Semitic past. As he himself published on social media, he has decided that the exhibition will not take place "after much reflection and discussion with those involved".

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Far-right British activist Milo Yiannopoulos has been deported to the United Kingdom, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Yiannopoulos was arrested last Thursday by several agents of ICE to the Louisiana airport. According to CNN, the reason for deportation is having stayed in the United States longer than permitted on his visa. A judge issued the final expulsion order at the end of July after Yiannopoulos failed to appear at the hearing. The DHS has explained through a statement on X that the influencer legally entered the country in May 2019, but remained residing there once his authorization expired.

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Some people look for their roots to try to understand who they are. Carles Lalueza-Fox (Barcelona, 1965) looks for them to decipher where we come from and better understand our past as a species. For more than two decades, this paleogeneticist from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE-CSIC-UPF) and current director of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences has been reading the history of humanity in ancient DNA and is one of the world's leading experts. He has contributed to demonstrating that modern humans carry Neanderthal DNA and has reconstructed migrations and interbreeding of prehistoric populations. He has just published Identidad (Crítica), where he delves into a murky terrain: what DNA can explain about who we are and what it cannot.

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Xia Quan was a highly valued Chinese doctor. And for this reason, in 1411, when he died during the Ming dynasty, he was buried with some of the instruments he had used. It was a common practice in China, both to honor his skill and so that he could practice his craft in the afterlife.

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It is the largest observatory ever built, it will have a field of view a hundred times larger than that of the already mythical Hubble telescope and it has already left Earth. This Sunday morning –at 11:26 a.m., Catalan time and 7:26 a.m. in the United States–, NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman telescope aboard SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, the company led by Elon Musk. The rocket took off from NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in an operation that has already been considered a success.

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