Brexit is a representative example of how a demagogic idea (less than an idea, barely a slogan) can come to condition an old, stable, and respected democracy like the British one, and by extension, international politics. More than anything else, Brexit was a huge, colossal stupidity, and as happens with stupidities, its effects were — and still are — devastating. Keir Starmer became prime minister with a striking Labour absolute majority as has not been seen for a long time, and now abandons power mid-term, with discredit earned through hard work: to implement neoliberal policies, the others were already there, there was no need for a Labour politician as right-wing — and as anti-European — as the Tories themselves. Starmer has had to experience from power the explosion of the far-right in the United Kingdom, represented by Reform UK, Nigel Farage's party, an old populist who had always played a residual role in British politics and who now has solid possibilities of gaining power.Starmer's resignation has coincided with the conviction of former minister and former organization secretary of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, and the Spanish right sighs: may Pedro Sánchez follow the example of his colleague Starmer, who after all is also one of them, they say. Starmer was made to step down, as he himself has acknowledged, by his own party. The Spanish right wants to play Pedro Sánchez the trick we already know from Lula da Silva in Brazil or António Costa in Portugal: to set up a judicial siege around a president and his government (with true and false causes, and with an arbitrary and discretionary use of the justice administration) until the president in question resigns or ends up in prison (this would be the most desired outcome with Sánchez).Those who will go to prison, with sentences that surely must be adjusted to their crimes, are Ábalos and Koldo. The exemplary nature of the sentence should be celebrated, as well as the speed of the process: let's hope the example also applies to the PP, a party that according to the Gürtel sentence has been organized to commit crimes at least since 1988 and occupies headquarters paid for with black money, without anything happening. The two speeds, the different yardsticks: Kitchen has reached trial thirteen years late, and it seems that justice is also in no hurry with the Montoro case, of structural gravity for the powers of the state. Nothing that we do not know, on the other hand, since the offensive of the robes against the Process. Finally, the one who will not go to prison will be Víctor de Aldama, one of those characters who seem to be taken from Santiago Segura's films and who abound and move at high speed among the high powers of Madrid. A hustler, a betrayer, a liar, and an almost confessed swindler who gets away with the laughter of the triumphant scoundrel. "Thanks to justice," says the subject, with all the cynicism, and encourages "those who come behind" to follow his example. Spanish democracy does not need any Brexit, it creates it every day.

Aznar's “let him who can do it do it” has been taken so much to heart by the Spanish nationalist right that a real competition is underway among guardians of the fatherland's essences to see who can strike the hardest, and if possible, definitive blow, against the communist dictatorship of Pedro Sánchez, an accomplice of Basque terrorists and Catalan coup plotters. Judge Peinado, in particular, seems to feel called to the high mission of delivering a mortal blow to perfidious sanchismo before his own retirement arrives (in September). As is public and notorious, the way he has found to do so is a classic of fascism and mafias: attacking the relatives and closest people to the enemy, defaming them, humiliating them. Mission accomplished: Judge Peinado's investigation against Sánchez's wife, Begoña Gómez, is as extravagant, irresponsible, and unacceptable as one wishes, but she will no longer be able to avoid, for as many years as she lives, that when her name is mentioned someone will associate her (want to associate her) with corruption.With so much zeal they put into it, they not only commit a coup d'état, not as soft as it is sometimes called, which is perpetrated from the very institutions of the State, but they also manage to trample on each other, and this is more unusual and more ironic. Peinado, specifically, has managed to anger the police unions, for having withdrawn Begoña Gómez's passport with the suspicion that the escorts could help her flee. The National Police, accomplices of Sanchismo! Where will we end up. Both the National Police and the Civil Guard have worked overtime to save Spain from any fumanxú that could endanger its sacred unity, only to now be pointed out as possible accomplices in an eventual escape by Begoña Gómez, one of the protagonists of the most squalid misogynistic memes circulating in patriotic WhatsApp groups. The main police unions, Jupol and SUP, are beside themselves and Minister Marlaska has summoned them. That is to say, he asked the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) to act, and the CGPJ has reprimanded Peinado, even if with a pronounced internal division. That's fine, but it would have been better if they had clarified whether Peinado is guilty of malfeasance, as stated by former Supreme Court magistrate Martín Pallín. Or even better, whether the judicialization of politics is not a serious problem for the rule of law. The arachnid sense, however, warns us that corporatism will prevail and that these debates about the magistracy will not take place, at least not publicly. A prominent member of the judicial leadership summarized it quite well: let us be left alone.The Spanish right has become so inflamed that, in order to save Spain, it doesn't mind destroying it. “Nothing happens. When we return to power, which they usurped from us, we will fix the mess,” they tell themselves. The problem is that the rule of law does not break and repair at will. Meanwhile, amnesty – another scandal of a judiciary that refuses to apply current law – looms on the horizon of the end of the legislature.

Spanish politics is bogged down, who will unbog it? It will certainly not be Alberto Núñez Feijóo's PP, which fails to present itself as a governing alternative that convinces anyone, except the PP itself and the only interlocutor and partner it has left, Vox. The situation of the Spanish government oscillates between anxiety and shock, according to the news of each day, each week, and each month. Pedro Sánchez seems determined not to call early elections, or to resist doing so as much as possible, and one can doubt whether this attitude is due to firmness, calculation, or mere stubbornness. But Feijóo is not, in any case, a leader who presents himself with a response capable of generating enthusiasm in the face of the government's wear and tear. For a long time now, his only opposition task has consisted of directing exhortations to Sánchez's investiture partners. Sometimes he blames them, other times he insults them, much less often he hints at wanting to convince them (I won't say seduce them, so as not to sound sarcastic). To Junts and the PNB, in particular, he begs and begs again, like a mendicant friar of politics, to let him have their votes to carry out a motion of no confidence, even an instrumental motion, pretending to sideline Vox. Even so, he does not manage to get the Catalan or Basque right to give him their support. Not because Junts and PNB are particularly satisfied with Sánchez and his government (especially Junts, gripped by a conceptual discomfort that leads it to engage in the gesticulations that everyone already knows), but because they know that the Spanish right's proposal is no acceptable alternative. They know that, however bad the current situation is, the other is objectively worse. With a PP that openly says it is willing to govern with Vox (what else?), and with the demonstrated influence of the Spanish right over State powers such as the police and the judiciary, what may happen in the form of involution —and, if necessary, demolition— of Spanish democracy is easy to imagine and difficult to digest. It is also obvious that the first to suffer the consequences would be the Basques and the Catalans. Very mainly the Catalans.The distrust of Junts and PNB towards the PP also has to do, paradoxically if you will, with what has served the popular party to put Sánchez's government on the ropes: the judicialization of politics. At the beginning of the current legislature, the PP fell into the maneuver of labeling the left-wing government as "illegitimate" — no small matter — and Feijóo predicted a "calvary" for Sánchez that has been becoming a reality in chapters. The harmony between the PP and the patriotic justice is more than evident, and this causes the stalemate to be not only of the government, but of the institutional system. To dislodge the PSOE from power and access it themselves, they have literally perverted the rule of law: this is how they have gained positions and worn down Sánchez, yes, but they have also cornered themselves. Feijóo is six votes short of bringing down Sánchez, only six. And he doesn't get them. He can only beg for them.

These statements by Pete Hegseth that woke countries that do not want virile missiles, even though they spend much more than any reasonable figure on them. that they do not want virile missiles, even if they spend much more than any reasonable figure.chiringuitos del catalán, Hegseth could pass for one of those individuals that Vox has as spokespeople. The original MAGA end up resembling their provincial copies of the empire. This is because they all navigate, and dive, and feed, within the same putrid waters. A government that plays at confusing the eighty years of a president who falls asleep at public events with the 250th anniversary of the proclamation of independence, and does so with a spectacle of punches, blood and guts, is the exact reflection of those who here want to prevail the hatred of some citizens against others, and the ugliness of their bad taste.

Last Sunday, the newspaper Última Hora published a poll on the results of the elections in the Balearic Islands, which, if nothing changes, will be held in a year's time. The prediction was that the PP and Vox will be able to renew their joint government, and that they would do so with a reinforced majority: the PP would have a significant increase, from 25 to 28 seats (close to an absolute majority, which in the Balearic Islands is 30 deputies), and Vox would gain one seat and remain with 9, compared to the 8 it has now. The eco-sovereignist left of Més per Mallorca would remain with 4 seats, Més per Menorca would go from 2 to 3 seats, and Gent per Formentera would lose its current seat. But the one that would suffer the great defeat would be the PSOE, which has already announced that Francina Armengol will not be its candidate and which blames the wear and tear of socialists at the state level: it would fall from the current 18 deputies to 14. As is often said, it is only a poll, but everything indicates that the revalidation of the victory of the extreme right and the far-right is a done deal in the Balearic Islands.Naturally, those favored by the demographic winds immediately came out to boast, as reported by Ara Balears. In his peculiar way of expressing himself, the spokesperson for the Popular Party, Sebastià Sagreras, boasted that “there are only two possible scenarios, one in which the PP is close to an absolute majority and another in which it would approach an absolute majority, but would still have to reach agreements”. Sagreras doesn't realize that, in both scenarios, he says the same thing. However, no one takes away his greatest satisfaction: “The PSIB [acronym for the PSOE in the Balearic Islands] is sunk”. Very good, Sagreras.More disturbing is the assessment made of the survey by the spokesperson for Vox in the Parliament of the Balearic Islands, Manuela Cañadas, who admires and applauds the things her party has "achieved" by forcing the Popular Party to follow its discipline as partners/non-partners. Namely: "The repeal of the democratic memory law, the deregulation of rural and urban land to allow more construction, and the imposition of national priority for accessing social benefits". In other words: fascist denialism, wild real estate speculation taken to its ultimate consequences, and institutionalized racism. They are great advances, indeed. Cañadas forgot, because she must take it for granted, a frontal and constant attack against the Catalan language and public schools, which the PP has diligently carried out from the self-governing institutions.Now, however, the same PP of the Balearic Islands says that it considers the commitments acquired with Vox to be fulfilled in order to approve the budgets, and that they intend to distance themselves from them during this pre-election year. Comment from a Vox source to Ara Balears from a Vox source: “They want to appear as moderate centrists now that the legislature is ending, but it's a lie”. It cannot be summarized better. A conclusion as schematic as it is true: the PP will continue to sell (and will not lack buyers) the idea of being a liberal, moderate, and reformist center-right party. The reality is that it is and will continue to be the submissive partner of Vox. In the Balearic Islands and everywhere.

I suppose some theorist or PhD student in communication sciences must be preparing, or will soon be, a very dense work on the increasing presence —and influence— of crime reporting in the current information diet. Dark, confusing, unpredictable, bizarre, violent days, all in all. To a large extent, crime reporting has been exonerated by what we might call conventional or mainstream media from the bad reputation that preceded it. Traditionally, crime reporting was a genre that, in itself, constituted almost a synonym for sensationalism, scarce or null reliability, nosiness, and low intellectual level.It is no longer like that. Now black chronicle is justified by its “informative interest”, and because it is supposed that —according to some— when practiced with quality and rigor, black chronicle “illuminates” aspects of reality that usually go unnoticed by chroniclers of society, politics, economics, or even culture. It is an argument imported from the supposed sibling of black chronicle in literature, which is the noir novel, to which a social content is recognized that often, in effect, it has. However, concepts like quality or rigor always remain pending definition, and that which journalism and literature (and cinema, photography, and painting) do have in common is overlooked, which is the point of view. That a journalistic chronicle, or a novel, has “social content” in itself is a fact that says nothing: what is decisive is the point of view, the focus from which this social content is worked. What do you want to explain with that story, and with what intention.In any case, in times of fierce competition from so-called traditional media against new digital media and the pseudomedia of garbage journalism to capture the public's attention, the disputed and disoriented and fragmented attention of the public, stunned and at the same time hyperstimulated by continuous scroll reading and by the multi-screen bombardment, what the crime genre brings is the capacity to attract an audience. Nosiness is always successful, morbid curiosity also is, and crime reporting provides these ingredients in any quantity desired. We have therefore proceeded to lift the ban on "good" crime reporting, so that it is no longer confined to spaces specifically dedicated to this type of content, but is also incorporated into other programs, or sections of programs: magazines, talk shows, and even news programs. Because we have already agreed that crime reporting is of journalistic interest.There is no longer any need to be ashamed of it: it has prestige and is well regarded, however uncouth it may still be. Turning on the TV or radio and finding the video of Isak Andic stumbling and falling to the ground a few months before he died, or the recording of his son Jonathan tearfully calling emergency services in a state of shock, is apparently a matter of public interest. Or of true vicarious embarrassment: it depends, as we said, on the point of view.

The f-word (“the efa word”) is the euphemism with which in English they refer to the word fuck, which undoubtedly is the most popular curse word —or swear word, or blasphemy— in this language and the touchstone of all its vulgar registers. It can be translated as merda, collons, puta (the variant puto, very widespread lately, is a Hispanism) and still a series of other possibilities, depending on the context of the sentence.Trump likes to use the f-word and its derivativeswhen he wants to act tough and politically incorrect. This Sunday he used it against Netanyahu, because the Israeli prime minister was once again on the verge of derailing, with a new bombing of Beirut, the agreement between the US and Iran to stop the war and open the Strait of Hormuz. Trump lamented this in a telephone interview with the digital Axios: “Why did Bibi have to do a fucking attack? I was so pissed off. I let him know. He has no fucking judgement” (“Why did Bibi have to carry out a shit attack? I got very angry. I let him know. He has no sense, damn it”). Trump calls Bibi Benjamin Netanyahu because deep down there is an affection. The degradation of language, the normalization of crude language within politics, is, do not doubt it, another tactic and tool of the far-right: they pass off as a sign of supposed “authenticity” what is nothing more than an impoverishment and coarsening of public debate. This suits populists, never democrats.The fact is that Trump's agreement with the ayatollah regime —still pending signature, on Friday in Switzerland— hangs by a thread of Israel's intentions and maneuvers against Lebanon, which the chief of staff of the Israeli army, Eyal Zamir, confirms as the country's “main strategic priority”, as you can read in the information by Ethel Bonet and Núria Vila Masclans in this newspaper. Trump had announced this agreement as imminent on numerous occasions and, in the end, has achieved a preliminary agreement in which he must present as a great triumph having managed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which would not have been closed if he and Netanyahu had not started an illegal war (one more) against Iran. They have managed to return to the point where things were before February 28, when they launched the first attack against Tehran. Of course: with a toll of thousands of deaths and with a global energy, economic, and financial crisis about to be unleashed as a consequence of the brilliant maneuver of these geopolitics speculators.Trump, however, has to present it as a success, and for that he celebrated it with a tweet on his network, Truth Social, which said: "Let the oil flow!"(“Let the oil flow!”). Trump's presidency, in effect, is becoming a succession of invasions, wars, and coups d'état with the purpose of stealing the oil reserves of other countries. Or perhaps he was referring to the oil with which the wrestlers who performed at the White House to celebrate its eightieth anniversary are greased. Be that as it may, a very oily president.

Francesc Parcerisas is one of the fundamental poets of current Catalan poetry and has just published Fer-ne vuitanta, a prose book that he has written – as the title suggests – to mark his eightieth birthday. The book – published as always by Quaderns Crema – is, as the author himself has said, difficult to define or label, halfway between memoir, a photographic album, a poetic and fetishistic evocation of certain life moments, and a diary: in addition to his poetry books, Parcerisas has published several excellent diaries, such as La primavera a Pequín, Un estiu or La tardor em sobta. Two years ago he published the essential volume Triomf del present, which brings together his poetry books between 1965 and 2000 (there are rare, or even unpublished, materials), and a second volume is expected to gather all his poetic work from 2000 onwards.Make eighty-two a subtitle: Prints, evocations, images, which gives a certain idea of its content. Each year of the life of Francesc Parcerisas (who was born in 1944) is associated with an image; each image bears a brief explanatory text in the manner, we could say, of a caption, and finally there is a longer text – but never excessively so – that tells a story, draws the profile of a person, recovers a landscape, recounts a lived event, etc. The images can be by the author himself, by other people who have an important weight in the book (and in the author's life), of landscapes, of texts, or even of academic or administrative documents. Always, in each case, they correspond to the year of reference.The result is a delight, a book that produces a lasting dazzlement in the reader after finishing it. This is achieved by the literary mastery that Parcerisas exhibits in each of the texts included, and the way in which he gives meaning and coherence to apparently heterogeneous and scattered materials. At some point during the reading, I thought that "Fer-ne vuitanta" made me think of the book "L'any en estampes" by the great poet from Ibiza, Marià Villangómez, although in reality they only have in common the unfolding of a happily selective and fragmentary memory (and the fact that Villangómez, in addition to being a poet, was also an excellent translator from English, as is Parcerisas, to whom we owe translations of Seamus Heaney, Ezra Pound, or J.R.R. Tolkien, starting, of course, with "The Lord of the Rings). Afterwards, I realized that what made me connect Parcerisas with Villangómez was precisely Ibiza: the largest island of the Pitiuses has a great prominence in the book, and in the life of the author. Another reference is the memoir that Henry Miller also wrote on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, and which is precisely titled, On turning eighty".To make eighty has, in short, a game element that invites the reader to imagine a similar journey through their own life. And it produces that unmistakable sensation of awakening, of discovering something unexpected, of activating intuition and intelligence, which is a hallmark of good literature.

The day after the respective parliamentary groups applauded with Christian fervor (of false saints, of whitewashed tombs) in Congress the words of Leo XIV against xenophobia and national priority, the PP and Vox invested the new president of Castilla y León with a government agreement based mainly on this concept. It is hypocritical and contrary to the spirit and letter of everything they claim to defend, from the Constitution to the Charter of Human Rights, but it was completely predictable that it would be so. Castilla y León would not be an exception to what has already happened in Extremadura and Aragon, nor to what will most likely also happen in Andalusia. In fact, in the communities that have not had elections this past winter but are also governed by agreements or pacts between the PP and Vox, national priority has also been incorporated into the roadmap as an indispensable condition for maintaining governments. The scheme is always the same: Vox imposes a blockade on the PP and does not lift it until the PP signs a long document in which it commits to applying Vox's demands in its government action. Since Vox is a completely vertical and hierarchical party, it always does things the same way everywhere, so it is absolutely predictable.The first of these demands is the famous national priority, which conceptually implies the institutionalization of racism and xenophobia, and in practice means a severe cutback in immigrants' access to public services. It is, incidentally, exactly the same recipe proposed by Aliança Catalana in Catalonia, and it is also the characteristic “Theirs first” of fascist populism. It rhymes well with the European Union's migratory policy, which, as the Advocate General of the ECJ has just certified, exports immigrants to prisons in non-EU countries without any guarantees regarding their fundamental rights. Without euphemisms: so that they can be tortured and killed in these other countries, in exchange for receiving the corresponding stipend.Returning to the national priority of Vox and the PP, what many of their supporters do not know is that the cuts in public services and rights that they applaud being applied to immigrants will tomorrow also be applied against them. Hearing Mañueco (the president of Castilla y León is called this, and he repeats in office) stammer vague excuses to downplay the agreement is a sad warning of the justifications that his voters will have to seek when they realize – if they realize – that at the bottom of it all is the dismantling of the welfare state, first, and of democracy itself later, or simultaneously. All this, seasoned with defiant bad-taste fireworks: the president of Extremadura, María Guardiola, who a couple of years ago stated that governing with Vox was her red line, now puts the resources and strength to create a piece of garbage called Extremestiza, to exalt with public money the figures of the Extremaduran plunderers of Latin America, Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro. And what is worse, with Nacho Cano as musical advisor.

A few days ago, Floren Aoiz was in Palma, a Navarrese abertzale activist with a long trajectory, currently responsible for the area of political relations with the State of EH Bildu. Invited by the Darder Mascaró Foundations and the La Col·lectiva association, he granted an interview with Anna Mascaró, from Ara Balears, in which he said very interesting things. For example: “In Euskal Herria there is a greater tendency towards sovereignty among Basque speakers (...) but there are also many non-Basque speaking sovereigntists. In recent years, more: it is a growth linked to the perception that sovereignty offers an alternative for society as a whole. An alternative not only of the left, but also linked to society's ability to govern itself. To understand self-government in a certain direction, which is the defense of public services, the defense of better living and working conditions... A model of coexistence. In the case of Euskal Herria, the aspiration for sovereignty means that we want to obtain this sovereignty with respect to the Spanish and French states. But in the world we live in, it is also a demand for democratic sovereignty against capital, against international capital flows and decisions in which peoples have very little say”.It is so. Nine, ten years ago, when Catalan sovereignism was able to propose a true alternative, that is to say: a Republic based precisely on coexistence, equal opportunities (this implies the defense of public services and good living and working conditions), it had an absolute majority in Parliament, it confronted the Spanish state and obtained —briefly, but it obtained it— world attention. Many saw it as a threat to the established order, but this was precisely the greatness of the proposal and what made, in the eyes of many others, the Catalan Republic not seem like a threat, but rather a hope. The old order was what the Spanish state represented; the Catalan Republic represented —it promised— a step forward in rights and freedoms, a new 21st-century Republic, progressive, advanced, mature, capable of including citizens rooted in the past and those who have just arrived. A country founded on the Catalan language and culture, in dialogue with the languages and cultures of the world.Political defeat led to another self-inflicted defeat. A tortured abandonment in internal hemorrhages, psychodramas, obsessive searches for culprits, and idealizations of pasts supposedly better than they ever existed as invoked. Withdrawal, conservatism, and ultra-conservatism: the attitudes of the fearful and the opportunists who believe their moment has come to command something, even if it's just scraps. There are those who still insist on denying the existence of a Catalan far-right, even when it's right in front of them, and those who consider a poll sums to an "independentist majority" with the seats of Junts and ERC plus those of Aliança Catalana. This is indeed the direct path to definitive failure.

With his unusual address to the Congress of Deputies, Leo XIV, or Robert Prevost, personified one of those paradoxes that define our times: that a supposedly infallible religious leader, who even allows himself to speak out against rights as fragile and evidently noble as euthanasia or abortion, can at the same time be a better defender of democracy than many of the elected representatives who applauded him with the same cynicism with which they carry out their lamentable daily work. The current Pope of Rome said valuable words in Congress, he has said them at different times during his trip to the country called Madrid, and it is foreseeable that he will continue to say them during his stay in Barcelona. Furthermore, he has just published an encyclical in which he positions himself on an issue—abuses of power in the age of artificial intelligence—that will literally determine the future of the world: Leo XIV has not wanted to shirk the duty of speaking out on it, and he has done so with a speech that challenges the powerful far-right groups in the West. That in Spain, and in Catalonia, some solemn patriots call him a woke pope, or a sanchista pope or (these days we will hear it) a Spanish nationalist pope also indicates that he is not mistaken. In Madrid, Leo XIV received enthusiastic and uncritical mass adoration, because it is a city accustomed to living under the customs and ways of Spanish nationalism, and this predisposes favorably towards any pontiff, even if he is progressive. In Barcelona he will find more opposition, but not so much—unfortunately—as a result of the city's progressive tradition, but as a consequence of the patriotic and essentialist mess that pollutes the Catalan public debate and which, precisely, advances by leaps and bounds this far-right against which Prevost positions himself.

In his essay The artistic and religious vision of Gaudí –in Quaderns Crema–, Francesc Pujols maintains that the Sagrada Família is, in reality, the tomb of Catholicism. Pujols writes: “Instead of being [Gaudí] the builder of the first cathedral of the True Religion, he had the misfortune of being the builder who began, without finishing it, the last cathedral of the greatest of false religions, and even sadder for a Catalanist like him who loved Catalonia so much, the builder of the last temple of the religion of the Jews, he, who could have been the builder of the first temple of the religion of the Catalans [...]”. When he speaks of the True Religion, thus, in capital letters, Pujols refers to this Catalan religion, or that of the Catalans, of which he himself is the founder, publicist and, if necessary, prophet. It is simultaneous and parallel to Catalan science, which Pujols also made known, with identical enthusiasm.Pujols found parallels between the Sagrada Família and the Carlist Wars, and between Gaudí and the feared General Cabrera. Even more: Pujols claims to have heard Gaudí say that the distance separating classical art from Gothic or Romantic art is the same as that from Aeschylus' Orestes to Shakespeare's Hamlet. What Shakespeare would have done with Hamlet was not to create a new character, but to deform an ancient one. Gaudí, with the Sagrada Família, would have achieved a syncretic prodigy that fuses Hellenic art with Baroque, and with Gothic, and even (I quote Pujols) "with the great architectural conceptions of India, to which Gaudí did not want to have any kind of kinship, despite having it, because, as the universal genius he was, he not only had relatives everywhere and at all times, but he inherited them, accumulating inheritances and bringing them to the streets of Barcelona". Dalí said that the best that could be written about Gaudí had already been written, and it was Pujols' text.Perhaps Leo XIV and his entourage should take into account the observations of Francesc Pujols, who also prophesied that the day will come when Catalans, when traveling the world, will have everything paid for. Speaking of paying, papal trips, with their exorbitant cost (this one now amounts to 25 million euros) recall the evangelical passage of the merchants in the temple, when Jesus gets angry.In return, it is clearly better to receive a pope who defends the poor, immigrants, and the helpless than one who aligns with the powerful and exploiters. It is good to receive a brave pope who issues an encyclical against technofascism instead of a calculating and cynical one who would favor it or remain neutral. It is good to receive an anti-Trump and anti-MAGA pope who, when in Spain, does not hesitate to stand before Congress to make a proclamation in favor of democracy and against the far-right. Such a pope is not so far, depending on how you look at it, from Pujols' True Religion. And it contributes to the Sagrada Família being the tomb, not of Catholicism, but perhaps of national Catholicism and its ideological heirs.

Arrogance, dismissiveness, and haughtiness are terrible tools in any negotiation. They can give a false sense of security, but they often backfire on those who use them. Both Generalities, the Catalan and the Valencian, can apply this to the standoff they are having with teachers. Also —in the case of Catalonia— unions that thought they had a representation of the teaching collective that has been proven they did not. It also applies to journalists who present a fundamental civil right —the right to strike— as little less than an antisocial act. All of them —certain politicians, certain unions, certain journalists— have fallen into the error of taking for granted that the strong, deep mobilization of teachers in public schools and in Catalan (two things that go together) was reduced to a salary increase. There are variables that certain people in power do not take into account because they do not know them. For example, the vocation for public service. For example, dignity.Be that as it may, the reactivation of protests in Catalonia, and the continuation of the indefinite strike in the Valencian Country, have shattered the plans of the rulers to whom, in the first instance, the demands of teachers and professors were addressed. Fragile and inconsistent plans, as demonstrated by the fact that the rulers in question —consellera Niubó in Catalonia, president Pérez Llorca in the Valencian Country— have fallen into the error of saying, or implying, that the teachers were actually seeking “other objectives” than those that in theory had led them to strike. Hidden, veiled, unconfessed objectives. Who knows if unconfessable.Pérez Llorca, who as the successor of the unfortunate Mazón is a loudmouth and a reckless person, accused teachers of going on strike which had "a political component": the strike —with its corresponding loss of job and salary, as they like to talk about salaries— is always one of the most profoundly political acts a citizen can undertake in a democracy, an act as committed, conscious, and decisive as voting. Of course a strike has "a political component". Niubó, for his part, spoke of these suspicious "other objectives", as if what teachers really wanted was to destabilize the government. Mistaking the adversary and their objectives is a fatal error.Of the tasks that fall to those who assume government responsibilities, few —or none— are more important than taking care of public pensions, healthcare, and schools, which in the case of Catalonia, the Valencian Country, and the Balearic Islands are in Catalan (we should also applaud the gesture of the teachers in the Balearic Islands, who have donated one hundred thousand euros from their common fund in support of their Valencian and Catalan colleagues). Many years of bad decisions, abandonments, non-compliance, and partisan and/or ideological manipulation maneuvers have accumulated in public schools. Intelligent and audacious elites would see an opportunity to roll up their sleeves and shine with good work planned in the short, medium, and long term. Mediocre ones see a war against an enemy that seems incomprehensible to them.

It has gone around the world, like everything related to the toxic twins of international politics, the row that a few days ago Trump gave Netanyahu over the phone: "You are a son of a bitch," he told him. "You would be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass." A possible subject of study is the identification between leaderships that claim to be strong and the brothel language that floods Western politics and media.In any case, for once, Trump fell short. When it came to Netanyahu, he could have continued to hurl insults and curses, and whatever he said would have been justified: on the condition, of course, of also reversing the insults against himself. Trump blamed Netanyahu and the attacks by the Israeli army against Lebanon for Trump's repeated failures in negotiations with Iran, and with good reason. But he could also blame himself and his administration, which insist on pursuing the productive strategy of combining negotiations with bombings over Tehran. Trump has been announcing an agreement for weeks that, in his words, is always imminent and desired by the ayatollahs' regime with a desperation that, for now, is only evident in Trump himself (the latest announcement, quite doubtful, is for this coming weekend; Netanyahu, meanwhile, says he has agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon, but his ceasefires are so elastic that they include massacres of civilians, as in Gaza). Let's remember that Trump announced the supposed victory of the US and Israel over Iran eleven days after the first unannounced attack: "Our army has practically destroyed Iran. Its air forces are finished." Almost three months later, Iranian aviation, drones, and missiles continue to torture American armed forces that are short of resources. The warlike fury of the Trump administration generates profits in the form of spoils obtained in piratical actions against international law (for example, Venezuelan oil, which the US is now plundering with the collaboration of Delcy Rodríguez and the same elites who already parasitized the country with Maduro; there has been no regime change, nor anything similar), but it also depletes budgets and armaments.

Junts' response to the PP's proposal (to have their support to move forward with a presidential motion of censure, with an early election call and without Vox in the mix and blah, blah), was to ask them to go and propose it to Carles Puigdemont in Waterloo. This has generated all sorts of jokes, and rightly so, because the answer is witty. Politicians have learned to imitate their imitators, and the idea of Feijóo —or Miguel Tellado, or Cuca Gamarra— going to Brussels to beg for Puigdemont's support generates in the minds of many a possible gag from "Polònia". Especially after having spent eight years pointing to Puigdemont as the worst criminal in the history of Spain (some inflated writer has recently said that the Catalan Process was even more dangerous, "in a certain sense", than fascism. These kinds of absurdities are products of a state of opinion generated mainly by the PP and its judicial, police, media, and digital confluences). It would be a fun scene, certainly. But above all, it is an unfeasible scene, which we will not see.Why? Mainly because of the PP's own trajectory in these last eight years, which has led them to tie their future to that of Vox, and to no one else. They have no other interlocutors, not even among parties like Junts or the PNB, traditionally called “nationalists” (apparently the PP isn't one, nationalist-wise) but with whom they supposedly share liberal, conservative, or center-right ideology. The problem, however, is that the PP has never properly been part of the liberal tradition, and the current drift only confirms this. The tradition to which the PP belongs is that of the ancestral Spanish authoritarian right, that of the lords, the bosses, the military pronouncements, and the coups d'etat. They come from there, not from reading Adam Smith and John Locke.Be that as it may, what prevents Feijóo from going to Waterloo is not the 155: the PSOE also supported it, and even so Santos Cerdán, and also Zapatero, were correctly received there, political agreements were reached, etc. The problem, therefore, is not that Puigdemont closes the door of Waterloo, but that the PP has no way to call him without seeming like the wolf from the Three Little Pigs in front of the house. Something equivalent happens to him with the PNB. The reason is that everyone knows that the PP cannot do without Vox to make Feijóo president (or any other candidate he might present), and everyone also knows what a setback this would mean in all areas of an already too fragile and rotten democracy. On the other hand, there is a reason that the journalist Carlos Alsina made explicit a few days ago — a journalist of a conservative and unionist, but honest, editorial line — when saying goodbye as presenter of the news segment of the morning program of Onda Cero: “Not helping to bring to government someone who has not been able to reach it by himself”. Another very old behavior of the political tradition from which the PP comes is to win by force, or by cheating.

Episodes of police brutality, like the one that occurred last weekend in Valencia, when a police officer attacked a protester without reason and from behind at the teachers' assemblies, always constitute a direct attack on the foundations of democracy. Since the so-called state security forces and bodies are delegated the management of violence (they are the only ones who can carry weapons, and use them, in public spaces), when one or more police officers turn against citizens and use force against them, the act causes consternation and repulsion. The use of force is only justified in very specific cases, which are legislated, and none include repression against people exercising their right to demonstrate and protest.Scenes like that of the retired teacher who is pushed face down to the ground by a national policeman are intolerable. The images are unequivocal, so the reaction should also be: swift expulsion from the force for this officer, in addition to any criminal responsibilities they may incur for the assault on their victim. Instead, however, as always happens when something of this nature occurs (I mean: every time a policeman assaults a person suspected of not being a good Spanish patriot, according to the well-known parameters of Spanish ultranationalism), a swarm of politicians and journalists suddenly appears to cover for the policeman in question and to twist reality. It doesn't matter that it's recorded by a lot of cameras and that everyone has seen it: the denial machine kicks in and quickly twists reality, in order to present the victim as the aggressor and the aggressor policeman as an exemplary servant of public order (and as a victim, if necessary). A protester who receives a brutal push when she is with her back to her aggressor, when she was doing nothing remotely punishable and who obviously cannot defend herself from an armed and uniformed policeman, becomes in a certain official version a “element of tension” or an “alterer of social peace”. This is what has been done by the president of the Valencian Generalitat, the very unworthy Juanfran Pérez Llorca, and a long list of usual mariachis from the press close to the PP and Vox. The abusive policeman (who, incidentally, the first thing that should be done to him is a drug and alcohol test), on the other hand, becomes little less than a hero.Or a hero without palliative care: the police officers of 1-O were decorated, and a few dozen paraded through the trial of the Procés to give easily verifiable false testimony about the events of September 20 and October 1, 2017. The Altsasu police officers involved in a bar brawl were exalted as victims of terrorism, while eight young people were sentenced to high prison terms for terrorism offenses. This, to mention just two recent cases that many of us remember. Abuse of authority is, for certain defenders of the homeland, a way of winning ten to zero.

The popular singing of La Balanguera on Friday in Mallorca was a massive success. Tens of thousands of Mallorcans took to the streets and squares (or to educational centers, as was the case for many students) to participate in an act of affirmation as a country, as a society, and as a cultural and linguistic community that recognizes itself in a series of references and in a common heritage.The most valuable element of this common heritage is the Catalan language: Majorcans have been speaking Catalan for eight hundred years and it is the native language of the Balearic Islands. Catalan from Mallorca, speaking it and sharing it, is the attribute that identifies us as Majorcans and it is the best we can offer to people arriving on the island, as immigrants or for whatever reason. Catalan is the tool that will allow them to live fully as Majorcans, the instrument that will allow them to share their own cultural and linguistic contributions. That is why it is so, so important.At the same time, Catalan finds itself in a delicate situation in Mallorca due to linguistic gentrification, which corresponds with territorial, housing, labor, and economic gentrification. Gentrification as a synonym for overexploitation and speculation. The protests of Majorcans in defense of the language and public school (two things that go together) are also against this reality, in which the exaggerated economic benefits of a few come at the cost of the common good and enormous inequalities among the citizens of this island.The mobilizations of Mallorcans for Catalan are successful. This first performance of La Balanguera has been, as was, a few weeks ago, the arrival of the Correllengua Agermanat flame in Palma, or the Yes to the language of 2024 and 2025: large protest demonstrations, with strong participation and presence of young people who do move and commit themselves to defending Catalan. The entity that has promoted the mobilizations (or has supported them, in the case of Correllengua Agermanat, organized by a conglomerate of entities) is the Obra Cultural Balear, which has addressed its demands to a deaf PP government with its back turned, which has made it its main priority to please the far-right and ultra-Spanishist allies of Vox. The novelty in the performance of La Balanguera was that the main institutional representatives of the PP of the Balearic Islands attended: the President of the Government, Marga Prohens; the President of the Consell de Mallorca, Llorenç Galmés; and the Mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez. It has been a show of skill by the president of the OCB, Antoni Llabrés, and his team to have left these rulers literally without excuses for not joining an act that could only annoy fanatics. At the same time, it forces them to review the calamitous linguistic and educational policy they have pursued so far. The opposition parties also have duties, and they are not minor: all this citizen energy hopes to find a channel, a political articulation, proposals that make them vote with enthusiasm.

Donald Trump will turn eighty next the 14th, and this will make him, according to Trumpist propaganda, the oldest man – there is no woman – to have ever held the presidency of the USA (Biden left it at 82, but perhaps he has been canceled). Obviously, it is a fact that is of no interest or relevance to public life, but in the eyes of the interested party, it is a very important and transcendent anniversary. As much or more than the 250th anniversary of the proclamation of the independence of the USA, which will take place just three weeks (minus one day) later, on July 4th, which, as even aliens know, is the Yankee national day. From this coincidence, Trump has decided to create a kind of jumble to see if he can manage to amalgamate the two dates, with a few celebrations that are quite consistent with the character.On the same day, June 14, the White House will host a UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) gala, a mixed martial arts championship that in recent years has achieved great popularity among the North American MAGA public and also among MAGA from provinces everywhere, like those who graze around our home. For the occasion, a gigantic cage for fighters named The Claw –The Talon– has been built in the White House gardens, because these fighters, to please their audience, must strut within a cage. Inside Trump's head, this must be equivalent to a gladiatorial fight in the Roman circus in honor of Caesar, which is him.There are more ideas in play: a special issue of $250 bills with Trump's face stamped on them, the printing of passports with Trump's face (again) printed on the first page, or the construction of a seventy-five-meter-high triumphal arch that would eclipse the monument to Abraham Lincoln (which Trump, incidentally, had restored, with instructions to illuminate the pool with an "American flag blue" color). There is also the project to erect in Miami, a reference point for the global turbo-capitalist right, a "presidential library" that, according to Trump, would be his cultural legacy: an immense glass tower topped with his name, with a lobby that would house an Air Force One plane gifted to Trump by the Emir of Qatar and a giant statue of the orange pachyderm. All golden and shiny, of course.Besides constituting a series of imbecilities, Trump's proposals are an usurpation of public space. A bacchanal of nationalist and patriotic exaltation, mixed with the cult of the leader's personality. It can make us laugh or scandalize us, but it is a very clear representation of the type of leadership that so-called emerging right-wingers want to normalize again, much closer to the figure of the despot (benign or not; certainly not enlightened) than to that of the elected president who, as such, represents the citizenry, owes them and submits to their vote. As has always been done in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes: when Elon Musk made the Nazi salute from the tribune, on the day of Trump's investiture, it was not a moment of obfuscation nor a gratuitous act of arrogance.

This is how it is: this Friday, May 29, at 8 p.m., a popular, multitudinous, and simultaneous singing of La Balanguera will be celebrated in all the towns and cities of Mallorca, called by the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB). More than 250 educational centers and all the municipalities on the island will participate. In this way, the centenary of this song will be celebrated, a poem published by Joan Alcover in 1903 to which maestro Amadeu Vives set music in 1926, the year in which the song was performed in public for the first time, at the Palau de la Música Catalana. It is also the round anniversary – thirty years – of its declaration as the official anthem of Mallorca by the Consell de Mallorca, in 1996.Today's great cantada, however, has an objective that goes beyond mere commemoration. In the words of the president of the OCB, Antoni Llabrés: “In a situation of a de-structured society with problems of social cohesion, such as Mallorca's in this third decade of the 21st century, we need to seek shared references.” He adds: “Our intention is for us to experience an act of affirmation of who we are and what we want to continue to be. An act of Mallorcan affirmation.” Certainly, de-structuring and the loss of internal cohesion are characteristics of current Western societies, but on an island like Mallorca, which has experienced disproportionate population growth in two and a half decades and is subjected to economic dependence on mass tourism and luxury tourism, and to the very strong pressure of real estate speculation by vulture funds and large German, Swedish, or British investors, these phenomena only worsen.Going out into the street to sing La Balanguera (a hymn that does not sing of epic deeds, but of the passage of time, death and life, the succession of generations, "of childhood climbing up, / of old age going away") may seem to some an almost naive gesture in the face of the avalanche of noise and fury that falls upon us every day. Quite the contrary: it is a bold and intelligent gesture, a civilizing expression. A way of saying that all of us who live in Mallorca are, can be, Mallorcans: wherever we come from, whatever our skin color. A few months ago, on the occasion of the Chinese New Year, the Chinese community in Pere Garau, Palma, organized their own rendition of La Balanguera, accompanied by the dragon that stars in this celebration (which, for the occasion, was named Pep) and by human tower groups: this is a good example of the way forward. Is it arduous? Absolutely. But it is the way of bringing together people from all over the world in the native language of the Balearic Islands, Catalan, and with cultural references that are shared and dialogue with those contributed by immigrants settling in Mallorca.From Joan Alcover, one of the great poets of Catalan literature and one of the leaders of the Mallorcan School, you can read his Poesies in the critical, sound, and rigorous edition that Ignasi Moreta has made of it, recently published by Edicions 62. You can search for the text of La Balanguera and sing it, if you wish.

There is a demolition underway, but it is not just that of the government (this will largely depend on how long Sánchez's investiture partners hold out, because he intends to hold out) but that of the entire institutional and political edifice of the Spanish state. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the demolition that has been occurring for years against more limited objectives is now happening on the scale of the Spanish government. The judicial coup état has been a reality within Spanish political life at least since 2010, with the Constitutional Court's ruling on the Statute of Catalonia, and this has been repeatedly denounced – preaching in the desert, needless to say – by various progressive jurists. Afterwards, we have come to know that other powers of the State, such as the Public Prosecutor's Office or the police, were working against rulers and elected representatives, as we saw with the cases against Catalan independence and the Spanish left. Finally, it has also happened to the PSOE, for having sided with the enemies of the Spanish fatherland, that is to say, for having built a governing majority precisely with the Catalan (and Basque) independentists, with the Spanish left, and with almost all minorities represented in Congress.It is evident that the PSOE, with Sánchez at the forefront, finds itself cornered and is carrying out a confused forward flight in which it is very difficult to know what is true and what is not in the avalanche of filth that falls daily upon Spanish public life. It is also evident that the Popular Party acts with privileged information, to the point of announcing or incorporating into its arguments and speeches the next moves of judges and police officers. It is another piece of evidence that an former president of the Spanish government has never before been indicted, let alone on the basis of indications, in a country that has been governed by individuals such as Felipe González, José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, possessors of fortunes and assets over which the most absolute opacity prevails. The fact that the UCO entered the PSOE headquarters on Ferraz street in Madrid this Wednesday should, it is presumed, be equivalent to the search of Génova street in the same city in 2013, with the detail that we have known for many years that the PP headquarters was paid for with illegal money. at Ferraz street in Madrid, it is presumed that it should be equivalent to the search of Génova street in the same city in 2013, with the detail that we have known for many years that the PP headquarters was paid for with illegal money.We have also recently seen Mariano Rajoy, María Dolores de Cospedal, and other PP leaders parade before the courts in the Kitchen case (abusive use of the police to spy on political opponents), and leave with their heads held high after declaring that they knew nothing or did not remember, assisted by a magistrate who was in a hurry to interrupt the most uncomfortable interrogations. Tomorrow, Sánchez's brother will also appear before the courts, for another case fabricated from inspirations and suppositions. Feijóo is right about one thing, and that is that the atmosphere is suffocating. The right's total attack consists of wanting to govern on top of a wasteland covered with the ruins of the rule of law. They have models of how to do it (the falls of Lula da Silva in Brazil and António Costa in Portugal, based on false charges) and they apply them thoroughly.