Why does Zapatero take the stage to play the sad role he played, with few concrete statements, half-truths, and the intriguing nuisance of the gifted jewelry? From a judicial point of view, he insisted on recognizing the judges' final say in valuing each thing, as could not be otherwise. And in fact, he was only emphatic regarding his actions for the benefit of Plus Ultra: "It's not that I didn't influence, it's that I didn't speak to anyone." A sentence that will pass the test of validation in the courts.

We are not used to the deployment of citizens in red shirts and Spanish flags in the streets of Barcelona with the relevant ritual chants. And it is shocking when you find yourself in it, even if it is perfectly predictable: it is the afternoon and evening when Spain wins its second Football World Cup. Sporting hegemonies play an important role in the economy of collective passions and often generate clichés that hide social complexity. The absence of a Catalan national team in international competitions has been capitalized by Barça, attributing to itself the role of the national team of Catalonia. With this logic of good and bad guys, the 'culer' religion has taken hold in such a way that it seems that the city (and the country) is its territory. But here it is that one day the Spanish team is proclaimed world champion and you go out into the street and you find groups of citizens with rojigualda flags and cries of patriotic enthusiasm, and your face shows that you don't know where you are. What is happening? Well, simply that societies – and people – are more complex than we think, that economies of desire are convoluted, volatile, and that just as they lead to confrontation, they can also lead to unexpected complicities.

The endorsement of the amnesty law by the Court of Justice of the European Union will test Spanish institutions and could expose the politicization of justice at the highest levels, which has long been sending worrying signals with the government majority in its sights. The president of the court, Belgian judge Koens Lennaert, highlights the purpose of "reducing institutional and political tensions, as well as facilitating a scenario of reconciliation." Do those who must ratify the law's application share this idea? From the judicial world, there has been an immediate move to distance themselves. For now, various judicial spokespersons have wanted to make three principles very clear: that the CJEU can have whatever opinion it wants, but that regarding the amnesty, it is the Spanish judges who must decide; that to interpret the Constitution we already have the Constitutional Court and there is no need for it to be done from abroad, and that there can be no automatic application of the amnesty. That is to say, calm and patience.

Spanish right-wingers have always had a certain complex regarding France. Seeing French national unity, apparently so well-tied, in contrast to a Spanish nation that has never been able to completely neutralize the peripheral differential facts, seems to make them feel inferior: why them and not us? It disturbs them to have as a neighbor a country that General De Gaulle left substantially structured after the war. If they had the dignity to think about who the reactionary forces entrusted with the structuring of the homeland (General Franco with a war) and to whom the French entrusted it, they would see that there is an abyss that should shame them, but they pretend not to remember. It is not surprising that when the Hispanic right-wing wants to build the nation, resentment emerges and the psychopathology of small and large differences flares up.

Any information that alters the perception of reality is news. A CEO poll has become an event because it attributes to Aliança Catalana an unusual jump from 2 seats to a range of 23-25 (third force). A punishment for Junts that has just been rounded off with ERC's conversion into the second force. The PSC, with a certain setback, continues to lead the situation. The left of the left, Comuns and company, remains in limbo.

1. We have seen ridiculous things in the history of football – a suitable territory for egos needing recognition to let loose – but Donald Trump asking President Infantino to withdraw a red card for Balogun, a forward for the United States team, and the order being immediately executed breaks records for frivolity and indecency. It's not surprising from Trump, because he has been showing off for years and prioritizing his conviction that anything is permissible for him, that there are no limits for him, but it seems to be a vice that contaminates. The anecdote comes at a time when the contradictions his uncontrolled ego has led him to are generating accelerated disrepute that is already directly impacting the United States, where awareness of the president's irresponsibility is spreading. The way he acts, doing and undoing, means that, for example, in Venezuela he today supports those he wanted to overthrow yesterday, or that in the Middle East the impasse his delusions have led him to is giving life to the totalitarian regime of the Iranian ayatollahs, who have abruptly curbed his excesses by exposing him for what he is.

What has become of European social democracy? It is shocking that Spain is one of its last strongholds. What is the reason for this generalized decline that is giving life to the expansion of the far-right and which finds no compensation in the space to the left of socialists, who are still experiencing this situation with even more bewilderment? Are we to understand that the role of social democracy was one of counterbalance during industrial capitalism, within the framework of European democracies of the last century, and that now it cannot find its place in the new financial and digital capitalism? It is evident that the meaning of words and things changes, and that the mutation of the criteria of truth and virtue that shape each moment has an impact on the ways a society organizes itself. But the role of social democracy was fundamental, and its weakness is noticeable. And what is disturbing is that, while social democracy fades, blatant forms of authoritarian impulses are gaining ground everywhere, with a clear shift towards right-wing radicalization that exponentially propagates neo-fascist impulses.

There are jokes that, besides being grotesque, are revealing. A recent example: Feijóo's claim that the party that wins the legislative elections should have a "bonus" reward in the form of receiving between 20 and 50 additional seats as a gift, which, if they had been voted for, would have been won by other parties. That is, to force an absolute majority by legal imperative, and thus save the winner from having to look for partners and make concessions.

"Dark Lights" is the name that Arnaud Miranda, a professor at Sciences Po in Paris, in a recent book, gives to the new neo-reactionary thought that threatens Europe and democracies in general in this epochal shift that is the transition from industrial to financial and digital capitalism.

Let's call a spade a spade: if at any point it is justified to demand the resignation of President Pedro Sánchez, it would be now. The Supreme Court ruling that condemns Ábalos and Koldo leaves the president in a compromised situation. Ábalos was the head of a ministry as relevant as Public Works for three years, repeatedly endorsed by the president, he handled the internal plumbing of the socialist party and Sánchez himself had pointed him out as the person to whom he entrusted the day-to-day management. It seems clear that there has been no link between the president and the facts ruled upon. That, therefore, the corruption scheme grew without him receiving any news of what was happening, which opens up questions about the Moncloa control systems. But a head of government is responsible for their actions; for example, for the appointments they make. And even more so when they are of the highest level. Faced with such a scandal – a corruption scheme at the government's highest level orchestrated by someone from the president's immediate circle – Sánchez cannot act as if nothing has happened. Something is wrong when at the highest level of power there is a case of this magnitude and the president finds out when it's too late.

In politics, grand pronouncements often last a short time. Eleven months ago, Feijóo pledged not to make a deal with Abascal. Generally, what makes the difference in leadership is knowing how to present and give coherence to one's own strategic options, which is what lends a certain credibility. It is true that these are different times, but Aznar's leadership in the PP represented the right's transition from dictatorship to democracy with a certain consistency. And, in fact, it is from that expansive moment that the PP, in part, still lives. Rajoy opted for continuity. And Feijóo, who has always been short on ideas, now sees himself closer to power, and is increasingly afraid of not being able to form a majority on his own. Beyond the Spanish conservative bloc, the right-wing parties in the peripheral nations are very different from the times of Arzalluz and Pujol, perhaps more ideological but much more practical.

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.