The cave is never happy. They roared so much against the disintegration of Spain by separatist movements, and now that they have the opportunity to demographically consolidate a state with a negative natural growth balance with measures such as the regularization of immigrants and the 'ley de nets', everything is problems. Regarding the newcomers, there's no need to overthink it: old xenophobia is mixed with the legitimate debate about integration, although the harsh (and perverse) reality is that entire sectors of the Spanish economy would collapse if the import of cheap labor were stopped. The 'ley de nets' offers more possibilities, because the PP had supported it. It is true that an instruction has now been introduced that expands cases and allows for easier naturalization. If before it was necessary to justify having suffered family exile, now economic reasons can also be invoked for having left Spain at the time. But behind these economic exiles there was often also the hand of Francoism, which favored its supporters with tobacconists and lottery agencies while silencing and repressing those who returned. Your Face Tomorrow, by Javier Marías, is a very good novel for understanding the ostracism to which many republicans, like the author's father, were subjected.

Iñaki Gabilondo has found himself embroiled in a controversy as the host of the program La gran aventura de la lengua española, on La1, by stating that Spanish was never imposed in Latin America through conquest. It is true that the great Hispanization of these territories came later, when, once they became republics, they opted to promote a state language, and Spanish was the best positioned considering its implementation in structures such as administration, school, or church. I wonder why, of course. Perhaps because from 1550 to 1782, the different kings issued a minimum of 32 decrees that urged education in Spanish for indigenous communities? The will to Hispanize was unequivocal, as a way of imposing religion, even though the harsh reality was that there were not enough personnel to do so, so in the end the priests sent to the New World understood that it was more practical for them to learn the local languages.

The yellow jersey of linguistic hypocrisy is put on for another day The World, with the article: “Illa imposes Catalan at the Tour: ‘It must be your initial language.’”. They are referring to the Volunteer Manual drafted by the Generalitat, which explains that Catalan should be used in the first instance. This is presented by the newspaper with the usual coercive verbs: “imposes,” “forces,” and even mentions the “linguistic doctrine of marginalizing Spanish.” One only needs to walk around the city for ten minutes to know that if there is a language being sidelined, it is not Bertín Osborne’s, but the newspaper applies the same policy as with immersion in schools, which is to maliciously confuse what a document says with harsh reality. Because the abstract volunteer who reads the manual will end up doing what their personal triumph arch dictates, since Salvador Illa – as they personalize it in the headline, we will do so here too – will not be chasing after these collaborators to check if they have prioritized Catalan. Furthermore, as is finally recognized The World in the midst of his convoluted prose of grievances, “the Generalitat grants volunteers the possibility of 'adapting to the interlocutor's language'”. Big fans of the use of grant as a verb, in this sentence, full of intention.

At the end of 2011, Jordi Basté managed to lead morning audiences by a margin of only 1,000 listeners. Since then, he has maintained the top spot, with a tendency to distance himself from Catalunya Ràdio. The EGM wave that was made public this Tuesday marks another step in this direction: if in July 2025 there was a difference of 283,000 listeners between Basté and Ricard Ustrell, on this occasion it is 287,000. However, the gap has considerably narrowed compared to the 352,000 followers there were in the previous wave, in April (comparisons, however, are made looking back a year, as radio has a strong seasonal component). In this way, El món a RAC 1 improves by 33,000 listeners and climbs to 745,000, while El matí de Catalunya Ràdio adds 29,000, jumping from 429,000 to 458,000. It is the second-best figure for the Sabadell native, who achieves the best rating for the public broadcaster's morning magazine since the 2018-2019 season, although the bulk of the radio's audience growth has been capitalized by his rival. If looking at entire seasons, the average gap will have been 327,000 followers, while in the previous one it was 249,000.

Among climate deniers, a very stubborn strain is the one that clings to a particularly hot summer in the past to say that, you see, it has always been hot, some years less, some years more. This is not only done by the stereotypical brother-in-law caricature – brilliantly portrayed by Jordi Soriano in "Polònia" – but also by supposedly serious media outlets that subscribe to this practice. This is the case with the Telegraph, which has been on a worrying downward trend for some years. The United Kingdom is experiencing a hellish week by its standards, with temperatures exceeding 37 degrees, and the newspaper published an article titled “The heatwave hysterics wouldn’t have lasted a day in 1976”. They have chosen to highlight what was a particularly fiery summer to deny climate change, despite the avalanche of data suggesting that, beyond a specific record, the temperature is increasing at lightning speed. In fact, the five hottest summers, globally, are not that 1976, but all belong to the 21st century. And in the 30 years between 1970 and 1999, there were only three summers in which Britons exceeded 35 degrees, while in the 26-odd years we have had since then, there have already been nine in which this temperature has been reached. The same Telegraph, when the historic record of 40.3 degrees was broken in Coningsby in 2022, it rushed to publish an article saying that there were also scorching summers in the Edwardian era. Or we could also talk about that cover of The Spectator from 2019, which showed a drawing of planet Earth having a drink on the beach, with the headline “Relax, global warming is a myth”.

Among the different subgenres of clickbait fishing, one of the crudest is the one that profits from the death of (relatively) unknown people. I was thinking about this in light of this headline from El Nacional: “Commotion over the tragic death of a beloved presenter and actress, hit by a train. She was only 54 years old”. This refers to Ernestina Pais, who had her peak over 20 years ago, in the Argentinian version of Caiga quien caiga. The media explain that she was now participating in the umpteenth edition of MasterChef. In other words, she was someone of no relevance to the Catalan or Spanish reader. But the formulation of the headline is constructed to generate the incógnita of whether it is someone the reader knows. This same headline, stating her name — which in other times would have been an essential requirement — would generate two and a half clicks. Every week there are several similar pieces, and the practice extends not only to experts in trawling but also to prestigious publications. Like when a news report is made about the passing of an actor who appeared in two episodes of Friends; this is trafficking in the morbid fascination with the death of someone you know your audience doesn't care about — it's blunt to put it this way, but we're among functional adults — with the bait of invoking a known brand. But when you don't even have that, a “commotion” and a “beloved” fix it, even if the reader later says an “oh, right” when they read a name or see a face that doesn't even remotely ring a bell. 

The United Kingdom's ministers plan to implement a series of measures to ensure that traditional media outlets appear more prominently in social media feeds. They adopt the arguments of the BBC and other public broadcasters who claim that their content is drowned out by the vast tide of content creators who often spread misinformation. Furthermore, the enormous volume of videos produced in the United States in English makes it difficult for British offerings to stand out. (If the UK, with its splendidly healthy English, is worried... let's stop for ten seconds to think about what state of panic we who worry about Catalan should enter).The idea is as commendable and reasonable on paper as it is impossible to apply in practice. Perhaps it works in the United Kingdom, but here it would be impossible to import. Because even assuming – and that is a big assumption – that the tech giants would allow a government to tinker with their algorithm, the very delicate question of how a medium is given the seal of quality necessary to enjoy this boost in views and how it is denied to the one next to it would need to be resolved. If a government does it, it opens the door to ideological arbitrariness. Can anyone imagine the PSOE deciding who gets on the list? Or a government of the PP and Vox? Would the list be redefined with each change of government? And if it is the sector that validates the media, it opens the door to spurious corporatism, first, and then to partisan biases: one only needs to see who sits in certain television talk shows or which awards the majority of guild entities give to friends, acquaintances and acquaintances to confirm that they are anything but neutral. We will have to follow this British proposal with attention, therefore, but also with skepticism, to see if it comes to fruition. That is, if a prime minister lasts more than ten months, of course.

Telegraphically, as the background could fill the space of three Stop the presses: Alfaguara, Prisa's publishing house, publishes a book by Daniel Verdú, a journalist from El País, about the mysterious deceased editor of the magazine Jot Down, who operated under a pseudonym and electronically due to the agoraphobia she suffered from. It is said that she managed to get the best male signatures by sending suggestive photos of her stunning hairdresser and thus saved herself from paying for collaborations at market price. If the reader is still wading through X, they will have seen that this social network has been colonized for weeks by this serial – of a chicken run – with mutual accusations between one and another.

The pituitary glands are fused from the different humors emanating from the circles closest to Pedro Sánchez, but democracy has guarantor norms that shield governments from diverse impulses. In moments like these, they are perhaps difficult to reason with, but they are there for a reason. That is why I find the constant appeal from the cave to the supposed illegitimacy of the PSOE leader to be dangerous. The latest broadside is delivered by Abc with an editorial titled “A president against democracy”. Placing him outside of democracy is frankly dangerous, because it invites decisive action, torch and pitchfork. Everyone to the Capitol to restore freedom! Coming from a newspaper that lived through the Civil War, it is even more disturbing. And to further inflame tempers, the front page opens with another headline that fuels the offense: “Sánchez despises justice and Parliament”. The narrative from this trench always has the same blind spot: the inability to seriously analyze why the immense majority of political forces in Congress turn their backs on the PP and Vox. Without this consideration, their narrative falls apart: they should explain to their reader that the terrible management of integrations into the state project by right-wing parties forces the perfidious periphery to opt for the lesser evil, however lame the duck may walk.

The European Broadcasting Union has approved this Thursday that the Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation (CCMA) become part of this international body. This satisfies a historic demand from the organization, which had always encountered Spanish resistance to facilitating its entry into a body reserved in principle for state-owned media. To overcome this condition, the EBU has created a specific category, that of auxiliary member, which will allow the CCMA to have access to most of the services derived from membership in this association of public media, which brings together about 70 active members from 56 different countries. However, this auxiliary membership does not facilitate sending a representative to the Eurovision Song Contest, which it organizes annually and which remains reserved for states.

Nineteen men pull the cable that will transport the gigantic corpse of 3,200 fathoms to the tomb. This is the premise of Donald Barthelme's sublime novel, The Dead Father, by Donald Barthelme. The son and his wife lead the arduous expedition, wondering how that omnipresent being can still dictate his law even after death. Because there is a problem: the father continues to give speeches, issue edicts, and unleash his censoring paternal fury.In another order of things, Felipe González today tops two of the Madrid right-wing newspapers' front pages. I'll stick with that of El Mundo, where they highlight this quote of his: “There is a political responsibility: he resigns or calls elections”. This is the man who claimed to learn about the Filesa or Roldán case through the press to the point that this excuse became a recurring phrase to ridicule him. And he is exactly the same man who accompanied former minister José Barrionuevo and former secretary of state Rafael Vera to the prison gate when they were convicted of the kidnapping of Segundo Marey. Genial and true to form, Felipe González now demands the assumption of responsibilities, he who attributed all the rot that surfaced through El Mundo –who would have thought, now such a friendly newspaper– to a media campaign by what he called the crime syndicate. Who would have told him, years to come, that the newspaper founded by Pedro J. Ramírez would be the one to restore his lost moral authority.Returning to Barthelme, in the story Views of my father weeping the last word is “Etc.”. Just like that. It is interpreted that the author wanted to emphasize the cyclical nature of history, the inevitable repetitions, and a certain cosmic impotence. It will be interesting to see if, in thirty years, Pedro Sánchez is hailed as a new hero in El Mundo, criticizing the socialist president of the day and his scandals.

We often talk about the penalty of the news, which is the reputational damage of seeing someone's name dragged through the media mud. But there is also the anti-penalty of the news, which is when the peculiar media system of this region spares you this dragging because, on its game board, you are actually a mere pawn. They have just sent a former minister to prison for a major sentence of 24 years, but the headlines of the right-wing press do not put Ábalos's name in the headlines, but someone else's. Let's see: “Sanchismo, condemned” (Abc), “Unanimous and implacable condemnation of the corruption that arrived with Sánchez” (El Mundo), “First judicial setback for Sanchismo with a historic conviction” (La Razón). To top it off, Pedro Sánchez occupies the photographs of the first two dailies: you would think that he is the one they have put behind bars. Good thing they haven't painted bars with artificial intelligence. Time will tell.

There is a scene from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining that always chills my blood. The cook Halloran is talking to the child Danny about the sinister hotel where he will have to spend the winter, cut off from the world. In the background, half out of focus, are some knives hanging on a column, and the composition of the frame subtly makes them point towards the poor child's head. It's one of those details that you might overlook on a first viewing – even though your subconscious picks up the sense of threat – but afterwards you can only see those points directed at the innocence embodied by the little character, and it's unbearable.

“Never say of that water I will not drink nor of this priest he is not my father”. The traditional saying my father often repeated to me (!) and I always keep it as a vaccine before writing a prophecy. But we will agree that the probabilities of Begoña Gómez kicking the bucket towards Pernambuco while her husband is president of Spain are frankly remote. Therefore, her passport withdrawal by order of Judge Peinado has caused surprise in the press, even in the right-wing press. Some even venture a Machiavellian maneuver: they overturn this provision, which is harmless despite everything, the system is reinforced as a guarantor and they can now attack the core issue, which is to try to send her to jail. Over the top? Never say of that water, etcetera. In any case, it was surprising to see this subtitle in El Mundo: “The instructor prohibits Begoña Gómez from leaving the country and indignates the police by stating that her escorts can help her escape”. It is revealing that the newspaper shows more loyalty to the police force than to the magistrate. Even in the ecosystem of the sewers there are hierarchies and deference among the ranks. Another relevant right-wing voice that has criticized the judge in question is José Antonio Zarzalejos. In a column in El Confidencial he says: “Peinado's resolution seems to be the outburst of an irresponsible magistrate who compromises not only his reputation but also offers a recital of poor technical competence and diminished personal judgment”.

Carles Tamayo's ideas are bubbling and he speaks at 1.5x speed. We meet at La Calàndria cinema in El Masnou, his town, which is where the LASAL photography festival, which has invited him to participate, is being held. But the place has more significance: the manager of the hall he used to go to as a child was the protagonist of his most famous documentary, Cómo cazar a un monstruo, in which he shows the arrest of this pedophile. We talk about ethics, his infiltrations in cults, betrayals, the meaning of journalism, and how he only wanted to make children's films.

Someone zoomed in a lot and left a couple of diopters to explain that Lamine Yamal, on his World Cup boots, wears small flags of Morocco (for his father) and Guinea (for his mother), but not that of Spain. It doesn't matter that the team's crest and flag appear everywhere: the essentialists do not forgive him this betrayal of the homeland. This is how Cristian Campos captures it in a column in El Español" titled "I don't care what Lamine Yamal's ID card says". The author assures – without having asked the interested party – that if Morocco were a football power, the Barça player would then wear the Arab (and Amazigh) country's jersey. Yes, they are right to open the windows, because the Islamophobic stench is starting to be noticeable and it is not pleasant. Campos considers Ilia Topuria, born in Germany and of Georgian origin, more Spanish than the one from Rocafonda. That the fighter is a sympathizer of Vox is a contextual detail that perhaps helps to understand the peculiar reasoning of the article.“What does your ID card say?

Newspapers can be analyzed for what they say but also for what they leave unsaid, hide, silence, or minimize. Front pages are often more eloquent than editorials, both for what they include and for their omissions. The European Court of Human Rights has endorsed the imposition of 25% Castilian as a vehicular language in schools, against any sociolinguistic criteria that analyzes the reality of Catalan in classrooms, playgrounds, and streets. Not long ago, this humble typewriter would expect to be buried by raging headlines from the cave, hurtful columns, and various proclamations. But this Friday morning, only El Mundo among Madrid's newspapers includes a small mention on its front page. The interpretation is clear: the issue of Catalan is considered won, one only needs to look at usage statistics and the dwindling mobilization capacity of Catalanist initiatives. Europe, which neither looks at us nor listens to our language, has made a pronouncement without legal consequences – what counts will be the Constitutional Court's ruling – but in other times with much less fuss, the usual newspapers would have manufactured a whole Easter candle about the persecution of Castilian in schools.

So it has happened: a former Spanish prime minister, who is now no longer dared to be remembered by the nickname Bambi, has declared as an accused for the first time. The newspapers digest it and the headlines are, almost unanimously, critical of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero because his explanations, partial and ethereal, convince no one, starting with the judge. That the cave would go for the jugular was taken for granted, but it is that even this disappointment seeps onto the front pages of newspapers usually friendly to the PSOE like La Vanguardia (“Zapatero denies receiving payment for the Plus Ultra rescue, but does not convince the judge”) or El Periódico (“Zapatero does not convince the judge, but keeps his passport”). There is only one newspaper that sides with him, El País, with “Zapatero declares that he did not influence the rescue: ‘I ask for trust’”. It is the only newspaper that does not mention the magistrate and the indications of corruption that remain. There are headlines without judicial gluten and this is one of them. With the addition of a small trick: the phrase in quotes does not correspond to the declaration before the magistrates, as it might seem, but is a phrase extracted from the subsequent press release. And it is an empty phrase, which appeals to trust out of the blue, or out of the eyebrow (but the public's eyebrows are even more angled than his, after details of the investigation were leaked).

The TV3 works council has decided to lower its claim of a partial strike during the two Telenotícies on June 30th. After holding an assembly, a proposal was voted on that requested a ten-minute stoppage, at the beginning of each of the two news editions. The decision was made with 75 votes in favor, 2 against, and 1 abstention out of a total of over 2,500 workers.

The various discontents of the TV3 staff with the management of the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (CCMA) have culminated in a call for a partial strike that will affect prime time for the midday and evening news on June 30. Tomorrow, a workers' assembly will be held to address the different reasons that have led to this protest measure. In the call for the meeting, the first reason cited is the "numerous appointments of positions of free designation with selection processes and professional profiles that have not had the acceptance or participation of the works council." Staff representatives complain that "the majority have no experience in either radio or television" and that they have "many shortcomings in team management, which has put the occupational health of colleagues in the affected departments at risk."