Kris Ubach awaits us in the center of Mataró, where she lives. Not far from where she has a coffee, there is the memory of what her life as a lawyer, a career she studied, could have been. “I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to be a journalist. But you know those talks at the Institute to help you choose a career? Students from different careers came to explain their experience. And two guys who were studying journalism told us it wasn't a good idea. And they influenced me,” she admits, laughing. “So, I studied law. I thought choosing a career was a decision that would condition my whole life. When you're young, you think that way. Luckily, afterwards I've been able to make my own way,” she explains. “As a child, I had seen that film, TheGoonies, at the cinema. I saw it twice in a row. I wanted to have adventures. I read about pirates and adventurers. At 19 years old, I went to the United States with a boyfriend I had. At home we had always traveled, but of the four sisters we are, I was the one who became an adventurer,” she recalls.

Anyone who wanted to swim in the sea 100 years ago didn't have it easy. People who lived near the sea still had the bad habit of throwing trash into the water. The factories that had been built on the Barcelona coastline were polluting the sea more and more. Chronicles speak of dead animals, all sorts of debris and industrial waste that deterred many swimmers. The most determined began to go a little further out to sea with "patinadors", modest boats that were essentially a small catamaran, with two canoes joined by a plank. They would climb on board and, by rowing, would go to the clean waters. At the beginning of the 20th century, the bathing clubs of Barcelona and Badalona rented these "patinadors", until someone had the idea of putting a mast with a sail on them. And so was born the most typical vessel of Catalan sailing: the "patí de vela", which has celebrated its 100 years of life in good health.

Marc Miralles (Terrassa, 1997) and Álex Alonso (Santander, 1999) make a good team. One is more reflective and the other has more flair. They may seem different but they share many things. Under 30 years old, both are the captains of the Spanish field hockey team. A responsibility in a sport where, often, the captains are part of established hockey dynasties. Catalan families like the Tubau, Amat, or Freixa have produced three or four generations of international players. This is not the case for these two players. Marc's father played water polo in Terrassa. And the Alonsos used the facilities of a sports club in Santander without wanting to compete. Nevertheless, their sons fell in love with field hockey.

When Jacky Camós explains her feat, it might be hard to appreciate. It's hard to understand and explain what this 55-year-old English teacher has done. "I've done a 6 Split," she says. "It consists of doing three long-distance triathlons on three consecutive days. And then doing a triple ultratriathlon," she adds. A feat that only ten people have achieved, among whom there is only one woman: her. Past thirty, she didn't do sports, but now she's breaking records with surprising willpower.

Joan Riera doesn't stand still. The world is very large, as is his curiosity. When he speaks with ARA, he already has a trip to Equatorial Guinea ready to trace the steps of the Spanish colonial era and interact with the local population. Then he leaves for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This anthropologist from Vallès has specialized in studying and visiting isolated communities. "My father had a great interest in African art and its influence on contemporary art. And this led us to go to Cameroon when I was young. We established a relationship with those countries, to the point that my father would end up buying a house and staying there to live," he explains. It would be logical to think that it was during those periods in Africa that he decided he would be an anthropologist. But listening to himself, Joan has discovered that it is not exactly like that. "I believe that my love for anthropology, for other people and the worlds that end up being born thanks to my grandmother. A farmer's daughter who raised me as a child in a farmhouse in Cerdanyola, in Collserola. She used to tell me stories of a rural Catalonia that I no longer knew. I believe that those nights in her bed listening to what she told me, whether they were tales or lessons on how to know the land, were key." An umbilical cord connects a Catalan farmhouse with the rituals of populations living very isolated in southern Sudan, one of the trips Joan was most eager to take. And which he has finally been able to do and it has moved him.

In 2014, José Manuel Pinto played his last match as a footballer for Barça. The Andalusian goalkeeper, born in El Puerto de Santa María in 1975, won a lot of titles in goal for the blaugrana team, even though he didn't play more than thirty matches because he was usually Víctor Valdés's substitute. A decade later, Pinto doesn't stand still. Five years ago, he announced the birth of P13Fit, a project that unites his two great passions: sport and music. "I thought the best idea was to merge them," he explains. The project consists of an ideal training method "for all kinds of people in which you have a good time", as you jump rope while following a pattern of exercises and movements to the rhythm of music.

At the restaurant of the Reial Club Nàutic de Barcelona, they put up a wooden sign with the name Pere Millet Soler (Barcelona, 1952) when he dines there. A gesture of deference towards one of the historic names in sailing, one of the first Catalan athletes to win an Olympic medal. He did so 50 years ago, on August 8, 1976, with a silver medal in the 470 class at the Montreal Games, partnered with Toño Gorostegui. Half a century later, he recalls that achievement speaking with ARA with sea views.

Some people are born to sail. Like Alberto Mir (Barcelona, 1968). Although he studied economics, he couldn't stop thinking about the sea. “When we were little, we used to sail at the Real Club Nàutic de Barcelona, with some wooden optimists. My parents already sailed and my grandfather participated in the dragon class in the Rome Olympic Games of 1960 – he recalls–. I studied economics and had a job at La Caixa. But I wanted to sail around the world. I looked at the map and had a great desire to do it”. And so it was: sailing would be his life. He would look for jobs taking care of boats or moving them from port for many years. And now he is a ship captain and has sailed around the world a few times. Trained at the English Royal Yachting Association, he has helped many people sail around the world. He knows all the coasts, all the seas, and accumulates experiences and anecdotes. The most special, however, was sailing by sailboat to Antarctica, an experience he recounts in the book La Antártida a vela (Nova Casa Editorial, 2026).

90 years ago, about six thousand athletes arrived in Barcelona to participate in an Olympiad that never took place. Many of those athletes, instead of competing at the Olympic Stadium, ended up fighting against Franco and, in some cases, lost their lives. They were the athletes of the People's Olympiad, a competition designed to combat Nazism that was to be held in Barcelona from July 19 to 26, 1936.

The FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, breathes easy. After a World Cup with a host of fires, it seems he has gotten his way. They booed him and criticized him, true. And he has seen how, especially in Europe, politicians and journalists said he should not be the president of the institution that decides the future of world football. But the criticisms go in one ear and out the other, as he has achieved his goal: incredible audiences, selling the most expensive tickets in World Cup history, keeping Donald Trump happy, and, especially, ensuring he will continue to rule. In the elections of March 2027, he will be re-elected.

It is hard to find someone who conveys as much passion when they speak as Irene Cordón. When she explains everything she has experienced in Egypt, the interlocutor needs to go there. "When I am in a special place, I cry," she says, recalling a trip to Ethiopia to visit the sources of the Nile. She has also cried in Egyptian burial chambers and when visiting the room where Alexander the Great died in Babylon. She cries when she arrives at places where history has been written. Her life has been like this for years, although for a good period of time it seemed it would be quite different.

A new era has begun in world football. Spain sewed the second star as world champion onto their jersey after defeating an Argentina in extra time, who had run out of miracles in the semifinals. The final of a strange and exciting World Cup was always played according to what Spain wanted, turning everything around the ball, attacking with ambition. Glory is theirs after a final in which Messi, very disconnected from the game, ceded the crown to Lamine Yamal. An era ends and a new one begins, personified in the young man from Rocafonda. One man alone cannot win World Cups, but a team can. And Luis de la Fuente's team, a coach until recently unknown, is a block that defends a style. An idea in which the collective rules, even though a lack of accuracy prolonged the agony until extra time. A final decided thanks to an unexpected hero, the Valencian Ferran Torres, who caught a ball inside the area. If in 2010 Spain won their first World Cup with a goal from Iniesta in the 116th minute, on this occasion the goal arrived in the 106th thanks, once again, to a Barça player.

When this Sunday the ball starts rolling in the World Cup final at the MetLife stadium on the outskirts of New York, the city that never sleeps, all eyes will be on two players trained in Barcelona, Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal. The leaders of Argentina and Spain, the two finalist teams. It will be special for a group of people who, searching through old photos on their mobile phones, find some that show these two players when they were much younger: the coaches from La Masia who, in some way, helped them on both their paths to MetLife stadium.

Argentinians cry. They cry a lot, when they talk and play football. It's part of their identity. They love this sport and this national team so much that they cry a lot. And it's beautiful that it happens. Giuliano Simeone, Cholo's son, also cried. He did so talking about Messi. "He's 39 years old. And you see how he plays, how he fights... If he has already won everything. And he keeps fighting," said the excited Atlético de Madrid footballer, who will play a World Cup final, a feat his father did not achieve. "When you see Leo fighting for every ball like that, we have to give our all to help him," added Leandro Paredes. "He suffered a lot with the national team and has given us a lot of glory. We will do it for him," defended Cuti Romero. Lionel Messi plays surrounded by a group of footballers who seem like the praetorian guard of an emperor, ready for anything to defend their leader. But if you ask Messi, he says they are nothing more than "a group of friends", who bond by making barbecues.

In the stands of the Dallas stadium, Miquel Olmo continued to bite his lip and wring his hands as if he were praying. Dani Olmo's father suffers greatly every time he sees his son playing an important match live. All the hours they spent together, the games, the advice, and when his son was young and used to go to the fields where he coached, flash through his mind. In Terrassa, Figueres, Sabadell, or Girona. Miquel sat on the benches of some of the most important Catalan football clubs. He left a good human impression wherever he went. Now he no longer coaches and follows Dani, always attentive to everyone. You see him traveling with Barça in the Champions League and now, at the World Cup, watching his son's exhibition against France live.

On June 13, 1982, the Argentine national team debuted in the Spanish World Cup. The opening match was played at Camp Nou in Barcelona and the opponent was Belgium. "We had arrived a few days earlier. At that time, we were at war with the United Kingdom, the Falklands War. When we left Buenos Aires, the press said we were winning the war. When we arrived in Spain, the press said we were losing it," recalls Jorge Valdano, an Argentine player. Argentina would lose the match 0-1 and just one day later, on June 14, the Argentine army surrendered: it had lost the war. Two defeats in 24 hours.

When he was 7 years old, Carles Gel left the farmhouse near Vilassar de Mar where he lived and, without saying a word, decided he would climb the Creu de Montcabrer alone. Between climbing up and down, he stayed there all day. He was born to explore. Carles (Vilassar de Mar, 1963) still remembers that first peak and the escapades with his parents to Montseny. Or the trips to the Pyrenees with the Salesians of Mataró, where he forged his personality and his desire to travel the world. This man from the Maresme region, who has lived far from the sea for years, would put down roots in the Pyrenees, and currently lives in Andorra, in Pal. Although he studied to be a draughtsman, he ended up working as a mountain guide, as he is not a person destined to live confined in an office. “I could have been a good architect, but there came a point when I told myself that I had to pursue my dreams. We cannot live without dreams,” he explains. He has now been working in this profession for 40 years, which has allowed him to reach peaks on all continents and cross Greenland, a journey that changed him. When he remembers that white immensity, he gets emotional. He speaks of it with the same passion as that boy who, at 7 years old, climbed the Creu de Montcabrer.

The World Cup had its semifinals defined with the four best teams according to the world rankings qualified. Four top-level teams and two with great rivalry. On one hand, France and Spain. On the other hand, England and Argentina, teams that every time they face each other, it seems they play in such a way that the winner can keep the Falkland Islands. Or the Malvinas, as the British call them. But the draw was set and a good part of the debates were not about football. Both Argentinians and English were accused of having qualified thanks to refereeing assistance. In England's case, the debate was surreal: had the ball touched a cable from the camera hanging from the ceiling? Journalists, fans, and curious onlookers debated the ball's trajectory, physics and astrophysics.

Jannik Sinner is becoming the Midas king of tennis. The young Italian, world number 1, has revalidated the champion title at Wimbledon after defeating the German Alexander Zverev. It is the fifth Grand Slam title for the 24-year-old from South Tyrol, who already shone at the All England Club in Wimbledon a year ago, when he defeated Carlos Alcaraz. Today he did so against a Zverev who put up a fight with very solid play similar to what we had seen a few months ago at Roland Garros, when the German won the first Grand Slam title of his career. But Sinner has ended his dream of winning a second major title this season in a final decided in four sets (6-7, 7-6, 6-3, and 6-4).

A wound that has been open for sixty years. A wound that England wants to close in New York by winning the World Cup. For the moment, the team that proudly wears three lions on its crest is already in the semifinals; it's the fourth time it has achieved this. Two goals from Jude Bellingham have allowed the English to defeat a magnificent Norway in extra time in the quarterfinals in Miami, in a match where at times the English have played with fire (2-1). But the team trained by Thomas Tuchel knows how to compete and suffer. Things in life, a German coach excites the English, who will now face Argentina, in a spectacular duel. It will be a new episode of a rivalry that has given us epic matches such as the one in 1966 at Wembley, the one in 1986 in Mexico, or the round of 16 in 1998, among others.