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.

Uproar on the right and desolation on the left of the socialists, where the noisy leaderships of four days ago are getting lost in a general blurring. With canonical cases in both Catalan and Spanish politics, albeit with different forms and styles. Two examples of how stars that seemed to break barriers are fading: Pablo Iglesias, convinced that his presence was enough, did not want to understand that politics has a part of heavy and unsightly work behind the scenes, he was lazy about organic entanglements and got stuck when it came to moving from rhetoric to action. Result: he is a little more out of play every day. In the Catalan case, Ada Colau, who entered the mayorship with momentum, gradually blurred as if she couldn't find her place in the world of institutional politics and got lost in the transition from verbal illusions to practical concreteness. The drift of Podem and Comuns and the consequent fragmentation of their space, on a direct path to insolvency, force us to question the so-called far-left. And it's not just a problem for Catalonia or Spain.

Although some wish to save appearances and keep alive the border between the right and the far-right, the reality is that the right-wing parties are looking for each other, and increasingly shamelessly. The taboo of pacts with neo-fascists is falling across Europe as conservative or liberal right-wing parties fail to stop the leaks towards the far-right. Every day they incorporate more elements of reactionary thought: patriotic retreats are returning, a symptom of a moment of growing confusion, with an absence of reference authorities. A time of distrust.

The sadism of belief. Noelia Castillo had to wait 601 days to make effective the euthanasia she had requested and had been authorized. A torment imposed by her father, who turned to the ultra-religious association Christian Lawyers to prevent his daughter from dying. That is to say, he did it in the name of faith, which like all beliefs is founded on an unprovable truth – the existence of God and the authority that emanates from him – a figure of domination that accompanies and conditions the human species with the identification with a superior being of which we have no objective evidence. An idea that, in the cultural diversity of the world, has not materialized in a single figure, but has generated countless beliefs, often in fierce rivalry with each other. So much so that Christianity itself – of which Catholics consider themselves genuine representatives – has materialized in a wide array of proposals in subtle competition. The diversity of the world is so great that it makes it difficult to accredit the Catholic claim to be the only authentic and universal one.

1. French politics is gripped by the threat of the far right, a threat that is spreading throughout Europe in the form of fears of a widespread rise in neo-fascism. This anxiety is in keeping with the logic of times in which the right seems to accept the drift towards post-democratic authoritarianism, and neo-fascists capitalize on it with the classic game of copycats. For some time now, the names of Marine Le Pen—given her pending criminal case—and Jordan Bardella have been mentioned as potential presidential candidates. However, this weekend's municipal and regional elections, while not decisive, have highlighted the gap between rhetoric and reality, giving France signs that might suggest the reactionary movement is not as potent as it seems, provided the right doesn't lend it a hand.

Politics often has reasons that reason cannot comprehend. It seems that the PSC and ERC are in agreement to try to reach a budget that the country needs after so much frustration. There shouldn't be fundamental disagreements on the content, but Junqueras is setting a condition that depends on the Spanish government: the transfer of personal income tax management to the Catalan government. An old and reasonable aspiration that, in addition to its economic value, also has symbolic value, which the PSC seems to share, and which is generating irritation in the Spanish autonomous communities.

"We don't learn the lessons of history because we don't know what questions to ask." Lea Ypi was in Barcelona this week. I could introduce her as an Albanian intellectual with British citizenship, as a philosopher, as a professor at the London School of Economics, as the author of books such as Books and IndignityIn short, the things their CVs say. But I prefer to emphasize the reasons why her work captivates me: her way of being in the world, the need to give voice to ideas but also to life, to the human condition and its complexity.

Fake newsFake news: throughout history, whether due to ignorance or manipulation, two recurring attributes among humans. In fact, power systems have often been built on fake news transformed into undeniable truths, which have generated various mechanisms of submission and domination. The entry into the world of digital communication, with its immense capacity for propagation, has led us to a moment in which the use of... fake news It's so overwhelming that it operates like a kind of parallel reality, leading to great confusion. To the point that those who have made it their way of being in the world risk being caught in the contradiction, which is what's happening to Trump with his back-and-forth statements, which are increasingly exposing him. So much so that sectors of the Republican Party that until now had lived in his shadow are asking him to end the war because they realize that the presidential fabrications are rapidly losing credibility.

1. Now I attack, now I back down. Trump says the war is ending; the Iranians say they'll decide that. Pathetic spectacle. Timothy Snyder See two reasons Credible justifications for attacking Iran: "Destroy American democracy or enrich oneself." This is the level at which the world is being shaken. How can it be explained that in the world's leading power, no one is putting a stop to these delusions? Paul Ricoeur said that reflecting on politics means being able to operate in two dimensions: "the inexhaustible intertwining of evil and rationality." Is Trump's evil rational? Or is it the expression of a disquiet: is the acceleration of war a way of being in the world? The list includes Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Cuba, and a web of intrigue that only strengthens. Is there no limit?

Timothy Snyder has stated it bluntly: "All Trump has to offer is militarism, authoritarianism, and corruption." And indeed, his entire administration is an escalation in that direction, culminating in the Iran war. A further stage in his cruelty that challenges the entire world. And which, for the moment, has left Europe bewildered, while Russia and China avoid raising their voices (probably because they believe—and hope—that Trump has gone too far). In this context, Pedro Sánchez has seen a window of opportunity, anticipating the discomfort of the European right, who know that wars are unpopular with most citizens but, at the same time, don't dare to rebel against Trump, even though he has always belittled them.