1. Social democracy must be resurrected. It is a slogan of the moment, in full struggle with a rising neo-fascism, which emanates from the melancholy of the distant times of Europe's rebirth after the Second World War, the so-called "Trente Glorieuses" (1945-1973), which encompass the apotheosis of the sixties, when everything seemed possible. But how should we read it? In the positive version, recognition of citizens' rights, more social spending, dignification of work, and housing for all as shared goals. However, the repetition, as if it were a litany, becomes suspicious at a time when a large part of the citizenry feels stuck or out of play under the weight of constant acceleration, which with its destructive effects actually hinders any sketch of hope. A time when oppression is transferred to machines at the expense of labor, considerably increasing the concentration of power in the hands that manage them. In fact, it is the nostalgia for a time that was actually shorter and more precarious than we have believed, around the United States, Great Britain, France, and liberated Germany, which dressed up the ephemeral myth of a more or less controlled capitalism, with somewhat idealized levels of equity. Frustration and melancholy are now chained together as, with the transition from industrial to digital and financial capitalism, everything seems upside down in the hands of economic and media powers with enormous polluting capacity.

Leo XIV has come to Spain to deliver a speech of inclusion and respect, “the resistance to the imposition of a single meaning,” as Jan Patocka said, although it is hard to believe coming from the highest authority of an institution founded on belief and dogma, that is, the unprovable, and all that follows from it in both theory and practice. But Leo XIV is a pope who gets involved in what is happening in the world, beyond religious debate. He has demonstrated this since his arrival by building his image –in his transition from the American to the global stage– with a clear opposition to Trump and his delusional frivolity.

1. We are completing the transition from industrial capitalism to digital and financial capitalism. And everything – work, democracy, any structural element – must be read from this perspective, if we do not want to be left with melancholy.

Pedro Sánchez misses no opportunity, he always runs where he smells opportunity. This week Leo XIV will parade through Spain and the president has decided to accompany him to the Canary Islands, a territory where many who come looking for work arrive, to directly address the issue of immigrant regulation, which the Pope supports, while the Spanish right (with Vox setting the pace) has made the criminalization of immigration one of the recurring themes of its attacks on the government.

Feijóo asks for help to bring down Sánchez and Junts turns it around: “Mr. Feijóo knows that, if he has to explain something to us, this meeting must be held in Waterloo”, and draws a line that further tightens Feijóo's face, who has been unable to contain Vox's progression and now has to adapt to it. The tug-of-war is delicate at a time when neo-fascist temptations go beyond the far-right, with a contagious effect on the entire conservative space.

Politics and bickering go hand in hand inexorably. The executive power operates in direct connection with the legislative power, on which it depends, and under the watchful eye of the judicial power. Installed upon the complex system of interests that articulate societies, they are spaces of order, but also of confrontation: the legislative is the scene of political debate, where laws are approved and majorities are made and unmade. The judicial has the delicate mission of pointing out who has exceeded the limits of what is legally possible. And the executive is responsible for government action and the control of society. In this evident uproar, human impulses manifest themselves, endowed, as we all know, with a complex economy of desire: passions, they call them.

“The disregard for truth leads slowly but inexorably towards totalitarianism, for which, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, the ideal subjects are “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) no longer exists, and the distinction between what is true and what is false (i.e., the norms of thought)””. This quote is from the first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV, who seems comfortable diving headfirst into denouncing the battle for ideological hegemony of powers that consider themselves omnipotent and pursue dehumanization. I don’t know if it should be understood as personal interest, intellectual concern, or a feeling that the Catholic Church is out of touch with the times and risks derailing. In any case, Leo XIV has a freer way of speaking than his predecessors – always zealous in defending their doctrine – which allows him to intervene naturally in public debates and even pave the way, before the immense ceiling of artificial intelligence imposes itself on the world and deploys technology to impose a form of domination of the human. And he does so without shying away from pointing fingers at the new great powers of the world: an elite that “runs the risk of leading us to new atrocities”. That is, towards the overwhelming of the human condition to subject it to suffocating levels of submission and capitulation.

The symptoms of degradation of liberal democracies are multiplying. And the situation is worsening since the United States entered the Trump era, who with no respect for democratic institutions considers them all to be at his service. ARA has reported on the deal that Trump has imposed on the country's tax agency, the IRS: an out-of-court settlement with the approval of the Department of Justice, which establishes that it is "prohibited and excluded forever" from examining or prosecuting any tax claim against Trump, his children, and the Trump Organization. In other words, the president and his entourage have a free hand for economic impunity. What about the principle of equality before the law, which at least formally governs democratic societies? The institutional degradation generated by Trump's egocentric deficiency knows no bounds. From republic to monarchy?

Albert Einstein said that “if the Moon had consciousness, it would be convinced that its rotation around the Earth is free”. And humans? We have elevated our condition above that of the other inhabitants of the planet, consecrating as a reference for our way of being in the world the ideal of the Enlightenment: the ability to think and decide for ourselves. But day-to-day life makes it evident that we are far from meeting this standard; we are a species articulated around power – the difference in potential contained in any relationship – and the abuses that derive from it. And, if Voltaire is right when he says that “humans have no remorse for the things they are accustomed to doing”, there is still a lot of ground to cover. We must be very careful. Reinhart Koselleck put it more sophisticatedly, in the story of a German doctor's dream: “After the consultation, around nine in the evening, I lie down on the sofa with a book about Matthias Grünewald, and suddenly my room, my whole house, is left without walls. I hear the loudspeaker noise: by decree, the walls are removed until the 17th of this month.” The paradoxes of the human condition: without walls there is no freedom, even though walls are the most common instrument for isolating the citizen and leaving them without space to make their own. Translated to the present day, Ulrich Beck put it more prosaically: “We are heading towards a state authoritarianism that, on the outside, will adapt to global markets and, on the inside, will behave authoritatively.” We see it day by day. And the proof is that every day there are fewer democracies and those that remain are ossified, in societies that do not even have the impetus to stop the penetration of the far-right.

It was a surprise: the day Florentino exposed himself. A delirium only explainable by the loss of touch with reality that, sooner or later, happens to all of us and which, in his case, has an impact due to who he is and the roles he has played: an all-powerful and untouchable businessman who has run Real Madrid as if it were his own home without his management being questioned. His latest performance can only be understood by unconsciousness, by a significant loss of faculties. Such an excessive outburst that revealed the worst he carries in his backpack: excessive sexism, blatant arrogance, and a clear loss of touch with reality. He, all by himself, has been left out of play. A feeling aggravated later, when he said he had only received congratulations.

“My male friends lean to the far right, but women remain sensible”. This is what Andalusian poet Aurora Luque told the newspaper El País}, in the run-up to the Andalusian elections. Every election —and especially regional ones, where the relationship with the candidates is more direct— has its peculiarities. The current Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, came to the Junta in 2019, after 40 years of socialist hegemony. With a kind and unassertive style —far from the aggressive, fixed-agenda politics of Núñez Feijóo and his circle—, he has earned a certain respect that, in practice, translates into limited wear and tear, allowing him to attract votes beyond his usual base, both from the right (from Vox) and the left (from the PSOE itself). And this in a land that had been a socialist stronghold.

The Spanish government has prepared to welcome a ship with people infected with hantavirus to the Canary Islands, and the baser passions of the right-wing parties have been unleashed. Without any contribution or information about a case that is in the hands of the health authorities, they have focused on the crude speculation with the memory of the incomparable and painful episode of covid. Anything goes to take advantage of the situation. But one thing is to play politics and another is to play politics by seeking to instill fear in citizens without any justification, only to weaken the adversary. A formula that demonstrates the poor awareness of politics and the scant consideration for people. A move that could backfire on them.

The joke of the moment: President Díaz Ayuso declares Madrid a “free territory of nationalisms and identity ideologies”, “the most heterogeneous region that exists because it is made up of all forms of being Spanish”. It sounded like a reverberation of one of Francoism's slogans: “España, una, grande y libre”, now concentrated in the capital.

A police officer at school to complete the staff. It's just an experiment, they say. When I read it, I couldn't believe it. It seems a contradiction in terms: school as the main place for education and socialization should have basic shared values: what is happening that in an open and democratic society those in power can have a joke like this? At school you go to learn, to socialize, to enter the relational logic of society, to acquire skills to find your place in the world, to build relationships naturally, to grow up. And this requires a space of trust, recognition, and the construction of a framework for coexistence based on the development of each person's personality, which allows us to learn from the contradictions and complexity of human societies.

Trump in his element: “Only the truly relevant leaders, those who have the most impact, are targeted.” Trump knows that violence feeds on itself and seeks to capitalize on attacks like the one at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. A criminal act by a poor man, Cole Thomas Allen, who has forged his delusions in a country with maximum tolerance for gun use.

The slow but sure capitulation of the PP to Vox has found an anchor point in the principle of national priority, the banner of ongoing negotiations and an alibi for neo-authoritarian shortcomings. The right wing has always operated on the simplistic logic of good guys and bad guys, of "us" and

“Midnight will soon strike in the century”. These are the words of Edgar Morin who, at 104 years old, continues to show his lucidity in a long interview with Le Monde. Concerned “about the neo-authoritarian regression that is spreading across the world” and which favors “one of the two Frances: the one that was for a long time monarchical, aristocratic and religious, a Petainist France, as opposed to the republican, secular and social one”, he regrets that humanists find it difficult to unite at a time when “a conscious regenerationism of the original identity and the common destiny of all humans” is essential. And all this in “a catastrophic process underway. And although Trump and Netanyahu are not eternal, right now there is no option for salvation. We can only bear witness to impotence. The only hope is the improbable. Let's resist”.

1. Steve Bannon, a prominent voice of Trumpism, said that Viktor Orbán is “one of the moral leaders of the world”. For now, this figure whom Trump felt so close to that he said they were “like twins” is licking his wounds from a crushing defeat. Tisza, Péter Magyar's party, will have an absolute majority with 138 seats, compared to Fidesz, Orbán's party, with 55. It is precisely the unexpected dimension of the failure that has made these elections an event.

The right wing has already advanced its flirtation with the far right. And there is no time to lose. Two councilors from the PSC of Ripoll broke the taboo by saving the budgets for Sílvia Orriols, mayor of Ripoll and a reference of Catalan neofascism. Fortunately, the party has intervened and the councilors have placed their positions at the disposal of the PSC leadership, a step towards the exit door. We all know that, in the realm of local politics, the psychopathology of small differences between natural allies can lead to extravagant combinations, and that miserable personal interests can upset the apple cart. But, at a time when the PP has taken off its mask throughout Spain and Feijóo has opted for the normalization of Vox – carrying Abascal's baggage –, for the socialists to break the democratic taboo by giving recognition to the leader of the Catalan far right was a gift to the right wing (of Catalonia and Spain) and a disturbing – and apparently unnecessary – sign of weakness. We hope the anecdote will serve as a vaccine. Now that Pedro Sánchez seeks the role of European leader in the fight against neofascism, it was a pathetic gaffe.

1. “It’s a 3D view accompanied by personal experience, which gives us a much better interpretation than many images obtained by robotic probes”. I found it gratifying that a NASA administrator, Lori Glaze, recognized the human gaze, at a time when AI seems poised to overwhelm natural intelligence, risking domination over collective experience, ridiculing our condition. Victor Glover, one of the four astronauts who orbited the Moon, said during the eclipse: “It’s the strangest and most surreal sight we’ve had today, with the Earth’s glow illuminating the Moon”. And the spacecraft continues its adventure, which no one can explain better than the four people who have lived it. Without them, there would have been events but not an experience. That is, a lived reality transmitted by beings of flesh, bone, blood, and natural intelligence, who will be able to explain it to us (with the limitations imposed by the relevant authorities, it must be said, which is also a human condition) with the intensity of the lived experience. That is, a perception, from reason, accompanied by sensations, feelings, strengths, and weaknesses, that shape our species and that AI, capable of generating infinite accumulation and combination of data, will never be able to transmit with the singularity and sensitivity that, for better or worse, constitutes the human condition.