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.

It is very interesting (and comforting) news that Pope Leo XIV dedicates his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, to confronting the major technology companies that aim to lead the implementation of a new authoritarian world order, based on the power of a few large oligarchies. Leo XIV says no to the idea of a world controlled by the masters of artificial intelligence. It is the world of Alex Karp, the CEO of the company Palantir – about whom we spoke the other day–, who openly preaches and practices the idea of concentrating power in the hands of those who possess not only the nuclear weapon, but also (and above all) the power of artificial intelligence. A world based on an elite of lords and a humanity made of servants, barely lab rats forced to fulfill the role assigned by a power that, like Janus, has the double face of war and peace. Depending on how and from where the AI looks at you, your passage through this world can be relatively peaceful and prosperous (and irrelevant), or it can consist of becoming minced meat in one of the more than fifty wars currently raging in the world with multiple purposes, but one main one: to make money. The more the security spending of states and large corporations increases, the more the arms supply and demand expand, and, therefore, the more conflicts there end up being. AI is both cause and effect of this vicious circle.Leo XIV claims humanist thought in opposition to the logic of what is known as technofeudalism, or technofascism, that is to say: the final stage of capitalism's decomposition, at the antipodes of liberal democracies (liberalism and the very idea of freedom are banners that authoritarians have made their own: in this sense, Karp should be thanked for his half-frankness in not presenting himself as a defender of freedom, but of order). The Pope is therefore right to take part in one of the crucial issues of the world in which he has had to exercise his pontificate (his predecessor Leo XIII, from whom he took his name, did so by siding with workers' rights). He confronts the Promethean vocation of tech companies, of the big AI and big data service providers: like Prometheus, they too want to steal fire from the gods, but not to give it to men, but to subjugate them. There is also a pharaonic vocation: read Irene Cordón's short essay, The Pharaohs of Silicon Valley, where the disturbing parallel is established between the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, who were worshipped as gods, and the magnates of this world dominated by large AI corporations.It is logical that the Pope reacts to this situation, because it is - once again - the usurpation of God. Perhaps we have never been so close. In an old science fiction story, Fredric Brown narrates how, a newly inaugurated supercomputer - to great joy and expectation of the rulers - is tested with a first and only question: "Does God exist?" The answer is equally concise: "Now he does."

Now that the Illa government has managed to move forward with theirs, it is a good time to point out that, both in Catalonia and in Spain, the negotiation of the budgets has become a little theater of gestures, pretenses, and bad scripts of drama or comedy. It seeks to find twists that are exciting, because politics is reduced to a fair of emotions and politicians live waiting to find their moments –fleeting, ephemeral– of display. This applies as much to the parties in government and their partners as to those in opposition. Within this dynamic of fanfare, the coup de effect, and unbridled populism, budgets appear as a golden opportunity to gain prominence.In Catalonia, budgets were always approved during pujolism, and also with the two tripartite governments (with more problems: they were the years of the Dragon Khan, and the first effects of the crisis began to be noticed). From 2011 onwards, when Artur Mas stopped counting on the votes of Alícia Sánchez Camacho, budgets entered a period of uncertainty: these were the years of the Procés, and instability was in crescendo until the referendum of October 1st and the application of Article 155. From 2018 onwards, with the presidency of Quim Torra (then Aragonès, now Illa), and with governments of Junts, ERC and PSC, the difficulties in approving budgets were not due to truly exceptional situations – as the Procés was – but to simple calculations and staging by the different political parties. Or to politicking, if you prefer. Something different, yet at the same time similar, is seen in the Spanish case: González and Aznar were almost always able to approve budgets punctually, Zapatero with some problems, and with Rajoy an era of uncertainty began (his government had to manage the global financial crisis in Spain, and did so in such a grotesque and corrupt way that the Spanish government ended up with its accounts overseen by Brussels). With Sánchez, the uncertainty has been accentuated by having had to govern in minority and with the ultra-nationalist right in a state of total political warfare.All this does not mean that politicians from the past were more tepid, but rather that they saw the negotiation and approval of the budget law as what it is: the law that allows the normal functioning of the entire public system, a matter important enough not to put obstacles in its way unless for reasons, let's repeat, truly exceptional. Lately it has become an occasion for exhibitionism and overacting: those who vote in favor of the budgets want to assume that they have managed to wrest great advances from the government in power – even if they are railway lines fifteen years away – and those who oppose them denounce the budgets as an act of betrayal and vassalage (they would approve them in the same way, or a similar one). So much comedy is not only sterile: it is also a contempt for the understanding of citizens, and an abandonment of the public responsibility that one is supposed to want to exercise.

The Ibizan municipality of Sant Antoni de Portmany has launched a campaign it calls "for responsible tourism awareness", which, among other measures and initiatives, provides for sanctions for uncivil attitudes that are often associated with mass tourism (such as that suffered by the island of Ibiza and the municipality of Sant Antoni de Portmany). Urinating in the street will incur a fine of 500 euros, and walking down the street without a shirt or t-shirt, with a bare chest, 750. Consuming alcohol in public places will be fined 1,500 euros, and if the substance consumed is nitrous oxide (what is known as "laughing gas", popular especially among British and German tourists who visit Ibiza and Mallorca), the fine will amount to 3,000 euros. The town hall has also published ten thousand postcards to be distributed among hotels, restaurants and other hospitality establishments, in order to inform tourists of the rules and the fines they face if they fail to comply. The postcards are in Spanish and English, which are languages that, in principle, many of the tourists who go to the area in the summers know, but they could also have included German and Italian. And Catalan, which is the native language of Ibiza and for which tourists do not need to be protected (it will do them no harm to encounter it). But perhaps for the town hall of Sant Antoni de Portmany, governed by the PP, that would be asking too much.However, the initiative to give civic rules to tourism is interesting and we would say necessary. On this side, the fact of being a PP town hall means that they will be protected from the accusation of tourismophobia that would undoubtedly fall on a left-wing council that launched a similar campaign. On the other hand, the rulers of Sant Antoni de Portmany are not limited to tourists. Last March, a lucky resident received a fine of 10,001 euros for abandoning a dog (a dog, for those who need translation from Catalan to Catalan) in the street. The abandonment of animals is fined in Sant Antoni de Portmany with this amount.They are amounts that someone might find excessive, but which are in reality proportional and sensible. Incivility is one of the most serious problems that many towns and cities in the Balearic Islands, as well as in Catalonia and the Valencian Country, currently have to face. It is a phenomenon that is not caused solely by mass tourism, but that is directly linked to it. It also has to do with an educational problem (the Balearic Islands have alarmingly high rates of school dropout), which is also one of the consequences of the hegemony of tourism as an economic activity. That they are punitive measures is no obstacle to implementing others of a more pedagogical nature. But it is good for the tourist to know that all-inclusive does not mean a carte blanche to dirty and damage the environment, and for residents to receive the message that the common good exists and that destroying it is not free.Regulating binge drinking tourism is not a bad idea. Now it would be necessary to also regulate the tourism of yachts and luxury mansions, which is as harmful, if not more so, than the other.

For a long time, the speech given by Václav Havel on January 1, 1990, shortly after being elected president of the Czech Republic, was cited as an example of a leader who dared to speak with frankness and honesty to citizens, always addressing them as adults and responsible individuals. He unreservedly acknowledged the ruin the state was in after the communist dictatorship, but also explained that the responsibility for the disaster lay not only with the rulers who had been in power, but also with all those who, in one way or another, had acquiesced to it or had reaped illicit benefits from it. To set the future on the right path, he appealed to the civic conscience, responsibility, and the defense of the rights and freedoms, as well as the duties, of each and every citizen.We have witnessed an operation of demolition and emptying of public language that makes Havel's discourse, today, unviable in the terms in which it occurred thirty-six years ago. “Speaking frankly and honestly to citizens” has become another banner that charlatans and demagogues, especially those from the far right and its circles, have adopted to degrade it into a barrage of lies, insults, and absurd conspiracy theories. In this way, the debate is poisoned to such an extent that often whoever shouts the loudest, and does so with the most visceral, absurd, or irrational arguments, appears in the eyes of many – often a majority – as the one who speaks “the truths,” when it is quite the opposite. If he were to deliver his famous speech today, Havel would be attacked by a swarm of accusations from fake media and fake journalists, and from social media influencers and activists, who would defame him and accuse him of all sorts of vileness. The uproar would be so deafening that it would be difficult to distinguish, as is often the case today, reality from falsehood. One effect pursued with this confusion is to change the necessary criticism of institutions into a permanent, poisoned distrust that is never anti-system, but rather one of the most perverse ways the system has of perpetuating itself.The judicial dirty war in Spain, which has been going on for decades and has trampled over a large part of Catalan independence movements and the Spanish left, now wants to get rid of the part of the PSOE that bothers them, no matter what. Zapatero is the first Spanish president to be indicted, curiously in the National Court, curiously with lawsuits from Manos Limpias and Hazte Oír involved, curiously before any similar lawsuit accuses other architects of Spanish democracy like Felipe González – with his enormous, and never explained, increase in wealth –, José María Aznar or Mariano Rajoy, who are obviously the main responsible parties for scandals like Gürtel, Kitchen or Operation Catalonia. “Whoever can, should do it,” said Aznar. Often, what seems too obvious turns out to be true. We live in days when, from a state deformed by a judicial and police power that acts as a party, they want to call it democracy: it was precisely against this that Havel fought and wrote.

It is quite disheartening that, as soon as the news of Jonathan Andic's arrest appeared as an accused (but not guilty, nor tried, nor sentenced) in his father's death, the reaction of many compatriots was to wonder when Carles Porta would make an episode of Crims. The popular interest (or at least, what could be seen on Twitter) reached the point where Porta himself was forced to publish a tweet reminding good people that this would be jumping the gun. (But he also announced that they “will try to do the Andic case”, because indeed the program consists of documentary and dramatized recreations of real-life crime cases). Nor should we be scandalized by things that are more than known. Crime is morbid, parricide is morbid, the crimes and parricides of the rich and the very rich are even more morbid (because, yes, the mob is thrilled when the powerful fall into the same mud as the rest of mortals: that's what classic tragedies are about), and all this morbidity, when it hits the right note of success, always sells enormous quantities of whatever: tickets, copies, downloads, viewers. However, crime is not a trivial matter. It is sad and sordid, as we know from Dostoevsky, who in Crime and Punishment narrates a crime among the poor. It is also philosophical and chilling, as Tolstoy teaches us in The Kreutzer Sonata, a husband who kills his wife, in a well-to-do marriage, because he cannot bear the sexual act. Liberating and abysmal, as we read in The Infanticide by Víctor Català, or vengeful and dark as in The Cask of Amontillado, by Edgar Allan Poe. It can still be, moreover, hilarious, as Thomas De Quincey demonstrates in The Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. It can become a source of entertainment when presented as a puzzle to be solved, as in the infinity of stories (literary, cinematic, television) that follow the schemes of the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, or Inspector Maigret. We must naturally add the roughness and murkiness of the American hard-boiled, the coldness of the French polar, or the Mediterranean illuminations of the Italian giallo. Things become less interesting when they fall into sensationalism, opportunism, or a kind of catharsis for citizens of declining national communities (“it's just that we, if we set our minds to it, are also capable of killing each other, you know”). There are two more references, Truman Capote's novel In Cold Blood and Emmanuel Carrère's The Adversary, which have become easy justifications for all sorts of programs, podcasts, and more novels of what is known as true crime, a denomination where what has real power of attraction is more the true than the crime: an audience eager to consume recreations of real crimes, with their blood and guts, to then go to sleep warm. And who, when they hear the news of a sensational crime, already Pavlovianly imagine the narration that their favorite program will make. It is, also, an image of a country.

Prepared by a group of renowned economists, the Fènix Report is undoubtedly a relevant contribution to public discourse. Those who shape—and we shape—opinion in the media often attribute a large part of the problems we have as a society to something called the economic model, and not infrequently we write or say that a change, or changes, in this model is necessary. Well, the Fènix Report presents a sound, rigorous, and straightforward exploration and diagnosis of the economic model in force in Catalonia during the first quarter of the 21st century. From 2000 to 2025, Catalonia has only lost sheets (GDP points) with each wash, meaning: in comparisons with regions in Europe, or America, with which Catalonia traditionally used to compete or be reflected, and which allowed for complacent or triumphalist expressions of the type “Catalonia, the Bavaria of Southern Europe” or “Catalonia, the European Massachusetts”. This kind of effusion has long since gone out of style, and in its place a chorus of resentful and phantom voices is heard preaching nationalist retreats or, directly, hate speech directed very especially against immigration. Indeed, the migratory flows that have arrived in Catalonia have only grown during these twenty-five years, and have led to a profound demographic transformation, summarized in the transition from Catalonia of six million to that of eight million inhabitants (the Fènix Report incorporates the forecast of ten million by 2050). It is no coincidence that, from the year 2000 until now, Catalonia, and especially Barcelona, has made its economy increasingly dependent on mass tourism and real estate speculation, two phenomena closely linked, often in the form of cause and effect. In these aspects, it can be said that Catalonia —especially Barcelona— has become Balearized, given that the Balearic Islands are, unfortunately, a benchmark in this economic model focused on low-productivity activities, unskilled labor, and low wages, on which the Fènix focuses. And it is true, as its authors indicate, that workers with excessively low wages do not contribute enough to cover the services they will use throughout their lives, thus “contributing” to the deterioration of the economic fabric and the impoverishment of the country as a whole.

The Andalusian elections confirm that the Spanish right is heading towards living within what Moreno Bonilla and Feijóo had insisted throughout the campaign they wanted to avoid: the mess (in the original version, el lío, a terminology inherited from Rajoy). The mess is having to govern with Vox, and that is exactly what the Andalusian PP will have to do in this new legislature, now that they have lost their absolute majority. In regional negotiations with the People's Party, Vox acts as a party that does not know the meaning of expressions like institutional loyalty or proportionality . Apparently, they don't even understand what negotiating exactly means: for Vox, there is only the possibility of imposing their slogans and ideological obsessions, or breaking the game. They are not government partners: they tutelage governments. Lately, Vox's slogan is called national priority, which means institutionalizing racism, supremacism, and xenophobia, and making them transversal elements in government action. After that, there follows a list of hatreds (feminism, environmentalism, etc.) at the top of which is the Catalan language and anything that Spanish far-right nationalism identifies as "catalan". This is "the mess" that Moreno Bonilla will have to face, who does not emerge exactly unscathed (5 fewer seats and loss of the absolute majority) from the scandal of breast cancer screenings, despite the fact that there were more than enough reasons for the wear and tear to be more pronounced.For its part, the question that the Andalusian PSOE can ask itself is whether it has already hit rock bottom and if it still has sheets to lose in future electoral washes. In hindsight, it is easy to say, but the truth is that the socialists could hardly have chosen a worse candidate than María Jesús Montero, a woman who is Andalusian by birth but who is little or nothing so in practice, much more linked to Madrid, to Pedro Sánchez and to the party apparatus than to Andalusian political discussion, which is intense, dense, and vibrant. The old tactic of sending politicians who have "succeeded" in Madrid as ministers to the "provinces" (Pilar Alegría to Aragon, María Jesús Montero to Andalusia), which has been used so many times by both the PP and the PSOE, interchangeably, is not yielding results for Pedro Sánchez.The significant rise of the sovereignist left Endavant Andalusia, led by José Ignacio García, compared to the blockage suffered by the Sumar, Podem, and Esquerra Unida coalition, Per Andalusia, with Antonio Maíllo as candidate, confirms that "what matters to people" is also ideological, and that sovereignism makes sense (and has voters) when it is presented as a form of democratic improvement, linked to the demands for the rights and freedoms of individuals, both individually and collectively. The fact that Endavant Andalusia has received more votes than Vox in constituencies like Cádiz or Seville is also relevant. By blocs, the right-wing parties total 68 seats, compared to 41 for the left-wing parties. The mess that we already know in the Balearic Islands or in the Valencian Country is beginning in Andalusia.

As it can go unnoticed among Florentine controversies, attention must be drawn to the impressive demonstration led by Escola Valenciana on Friday in Valencia. The adjective historic is burned out by the metalanguages of football and politics, but there are facts that certainly are, historic, not only as an emphatic resource but because they will remain in the collective memory as a reference. This demonstration on Friday in Valencia for public and quality education in Catalan (or Valencian, as they wish to call it) I believe is one of those facts, and I do not write it with more forcefulness because historic facts, by definition, always require the validation of time.A true green tide made up of many thousands of people (the dance of figures is irrelevant in the face of evidence) collapsed the center of Valencia on a great day in the streets that falls within a strike – it should be emphasized – indefinite. From the protest, a series of things can be pointed out: on the one hand, the Escola Valenciana movement is one of the most powerful tools that Valencian civil society has and is also one of the most important civil movements in the Catalan Countries. On the other hand, Friday's large demonstration does not spring from nothing, but is the mature fruit of many years (not just those of this legislature) of continuous work by Valencians to protect fundamental rights such as public education and the right to live in their own language. More: against those who allow themselves to assert, often out of prejudice and ignorance, that the Valencian Country is demobilized or lost, this multitudinous demonstration is — I use the words of a tweet by Gustau Muñoz — “a gust of fresh, cheerful, imaginative, Valencian, civic, critical and festive air”. If anything, it can be objected that this citizen energy lacks more effective political channeling, capable of being victorious at the polls. But this same objection, with the appropriate variables, can also be applied to Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. In Catalonia, the strike and educational protests also have great force and echo an ancient and very long-standing unease, and the scandal of police infiltrations has further justified teachers, if necessary. In the Balearic Islands, there is no teaching mobilization at the moment, because the PP still remembers with fear the green tide of thirteen years ago and has tried to calm spirits, even though aggressions against public schools and Catalan continue to occur in a trickle.In Valencia, Friday's show of force served as a response to an Education Ministry and a government of the Generalitat Valenciana that, since the beginning of this legislature, have made frontal hostility against teachers and professors, against public schools, and against Valencian an ideological banner. This Monday they have to talk again, but it is doubtful that the Council of Pérez Llorca, heir of the still unpunished Mazón, will be able to do anything to reduce the tension.

The ongoing teachers' strikes in Catalonia and the Valencian Country are significant events, in the sense that they go beyond their professional dimension (which is also fundamental and, of course, entirely respectable) and bring to public discussion issues that affect us all. Issues such as what kind of society we want to have, and also how we want this society to be governed, and according to what values and with what idea of the future. Of course, they also point to what future we want, as citizens of the Catalan Countries, for our language and culture, and for our viability as a cultural community in the world of technofascisms. Universal public education up to the age of sixteen, and in Catalan, are recent achievements that have brought great progress to a society that largely defines itself as democratic. Not only that, but – in Catalonia, in the Valencian Country, and in the Balearic Islands – this society has had as its central nerve the awareness of being a democracy that is still fragile in many aspects (the weight of a Civil War, a fascist military dictatorship, and a democracy born with all sorts of subservience to the previous regime is heavy) and, in response to this fragility, the will to deepen, precisely, in democracy. This means in the knowledge, defense, and respect for the rights and freedoms of citizens. To advance in this democratic deepening, public education in Catalan has played a fundamental role. Today it has more than ever, because the will to live in democracy is seriously questioned for the first time. That is why it is a serious error, or a too dark bad faith, for elected rulers to present teachers and professors as enemies (as the PP and Vox do in the Valencian Country) or as an extremist group that makes unreasonable demands (as the socialist government does in Catalonia). Trying to reduce or caricature their demands as a simple matter of so much money per month or year, besides being disrespectful, is to distort the content of protests that reflect a long-standing discontent and in which all governments —regional and state— that have existed until now have a share of responsibility. To underestimate teachers or to try to get by with an agreement with large but minority unions within the sector, or — much worse still — infiltrating police into assemblies and then offering half-hearted apologies, are gestures between disrespect and authoritarianism.

Palantir Technologies is, let's say, a technology company with an ideology (other technology companies also have an ideology, but they hide it more). Ultraconservative, naturally. Palantir is dedicated to the analysis of massive data, or big data. It provides services to governments and also to large companies such as Airbus, Panasonic, Merck, and others. It is valued at 380 billion dollars, was founded in 2004, and its name refers to the magic stones that appear in the novel The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien (which you can read in Catalan, by the way, in the excellent translation by Francesc Parcerisas). Its two most visible leaders are Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, two singular gentlemen. Thiel, a German citizen naturalized American who was also a co-founder of PayPal, is an ultracapitalist shark, specializing in venture capital funds. His theory is that democracy is incompatible with freedom; if not with economic freedom. Thiel is a money supremacist above all other values.Alex Karp, for his part, comes from the humanities: he is the son of a progressive Californian family, studied philosophy in Germany, and was a disciple of Jürgen Habermas, the philosopher defender of democracy. He is fascinated by literature and adores The Lord of the Rings: despite these characteristics, or precisely because of them, Thiel saw in Karp (they had met, when young, at Stanford University) someone who understood Palantir's idea better than anyone, and that is why he pushed him to become the company's CEO. Palantir's idea: to dominate the world through the data generated on the internet (about 400 million terabytes a day) and artificial intelligence. Karp explains it in a book he published last year, The Technological Republic, which is considered the company's manifesto. Karp says that the era of atomic deterrence is ending and a new era is emerging, that of deterrence based on artificial intelligence. Karp considers this deterrence essential to protect Western values (he no longer speaks of democracy, but of a "lifestyle" that must be safeguarded). Palantir is dedicated to this.Karp does not hide, rather the opposite, his company's close collaboration with the governments of the USA and Israel. Palantir's programs are behind operations such as the detention of Maduro or the start of the ongoing war in Iran and the Middle East. He does not believe it is Palantir's place to define the limits of the use of its programs. He leaves that to the clients: the CIA, the FBI, the Mossad, or even the American ICE. Palantir also works with other governments such as those of Canada, France, Germany, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi Arabia. Or Spain, which in 2023 awarded it a contract from the Ministry of Defense for 16.5 million euros, with the task of implementing military intelligence software named Gotham. Yes, it is the name of the city where Batman lived. Yes, the future is in the hands of highly dysfunctional people.

The president of the Canary Islands government, Fernando Clavijo, of Coalición Canaria, complains that the Minister of Health, Mónica García, has "ridiculed" him and "taken him to the meme" for his theory about swimming rats that could escape from the ship MV Hondius and spread throughout the Canary Islands, biting the suffering citizens at will, an idea he maintained in a screenshot taken from an AI. Perhaps Clavijo doesn't realize it, but he himself has made a fool of himself and offered himself as the protagonist of memes, by providing the synopsis of a B-movie to an extremely delicate health operation with a strong international impact. Clavijo's laughable —but not funny— overacting could not prevent Pedro Sánchez from once again receiving applause from the international community: the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; the UN's António Guterres, and also the President of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom, have praised the management of the situation by the Spanish executive. The national spokesperson for Vox, José Antonio Fúster, commented: “How scary, when the WHO praises you, it must be a bad thing.” Because, as we know, the WHO is one of the favorite targets of the lies and conspiracy theories of the global far-right. Perhaps for all these reasons, Clavijo has announced the possibility of taking the Spanish government to court for its handling of the hantavirus (in fact, the arrival of the ship has already been the subject of judicial rulings: on Friday, the National Court rejected an urgent request to halt the disembarkation, and the next day, the Court of First Instance of Madrid confirmed the imposition of a quarantine on the cruise passengers). When the fear mechanism fails them (the theory of the invasion of amphibious rats, however much fun it may have generated, was nothing more than an attempt to sow fear among the population), they always have the option of taking matters, whatever they may be, to court. They don't always win (often they do), but at least they have managed to bog down the discussion.Experts at spreading falsehoods and judicializing, the ultra entity Abogados Cristianos has raised a outcry because they want to prevent Pope Leo XIV, during his visit to Barcelona in a month, from visiting the Lluís Companys stadium because, they allege, under Companys' mandate "more than eight thousand people were murdered". They refer to the persecutions of religious by the FAI during the Civil War, but they omit precisely this: that there was a Civil War caused by a military and fascist uprising, which had the support of the Church. They propose that, instead of the Lluís Companys stadium, the pontiff go to the Valley of the Fallen, as they still call it. It seems that under Franco's mandate no one died, starting with the 33,833 people (12,000 of whom were unidentified) that the dictator had buried in his tomb in Cuelgamuros: the largest mass grave in a fascist Spain to which some want to return at all costs.

In the case of the two Mossos agents infiltrated in a teachers' assembly, speaking of a greater evil is not a play on words with Trapero's rank, but an objective description of a serious abuse of power committed by the institutions. In a democracy, it is a greater evil for the police, and therefore the government, to act against the right to free assembly: quite the contrary, what the police and the government should do regarding freedom of assembly is to guarantee it. Not to monitor it. Only the meetings of criminals should be monitored and prosecuted, and we do not see police infiltrating the meetings of certain politicians with speculators and directors of vulture funds, for example. On the other hand, there is another democratic requirement that must be demanded of rulers, and that is that public education should not be questioned. Teachers are not and can never be the enemy of rulers, and if they become so, or are seen as such, then the fault lies with the rulers, never with the teachers. The work of teachers and professors is one of the cornerstones of any democratic society, and the teaching collective should be very specially listened to in their demands, respected in their decisions, and remunerated for the decisive work they carry out. Public education cannot be a space of conflict and insecurity, and even less so a space infiltrated by plainclothes police. Neither in teachers' assemblies nor, of course, in classrooms.The lesser evil is what the parties supporting the Government, and also, from the opposition, Junts, seem to have chosen. ERC, Comuns, and CUP agree on demanding the dismissal or resignation of the aforementioned Trapero, and they do not go beyond requests for responsibility (they could do so, because the scandal is, let's repeat, serious). Junts does request that councilors Paneque and Parlón fall, but these are routine requests, which they do not expect to be heeded. The Government, on the other hand, has closed ranks around Trapero and thinks, at first, of getting out of this difficult situation without anyone from the organization falling. Illa is a politician of the old school with an axiom: heads are not cut off except when there is no other remedy. From this perspective, the risk that the situation will fester is less compared to the danger of the Government showing hesitation or weakness. Therefore, once again, the choice is for an evil that is considered lesser (it remains to be seen if it is: putrefaction generates infections).In the limbo of evils, in the middle but no less toxic zone, there is the ultra-conspiratorial swarm, which these days has had more than enough material to fill the networks with all sorts of delusions, threats, and hallucinated prophecies: hantavirus, the murder of a woman (an immigrant, by the way) in Esplugues and, now, the scandal of teacher assemblies infiltrated by police. If these people come to power, even with a small part of their arsenal of lies and alternative realities, it is possible that the upheavals they preach will become self-fulfilling prophecies.

The title phrase is said by one of the passengers on the cruise ship MV Hondius, the one with the hantavirus, in a video that has become, precisely, one of the most viewed stories on social media this week. The passenger's name is Jake Rosmarin and he makes a call to whoever sees his video not to be forgotten. He cries as he says it, and you can see he is afraid, an objective and justified fear because he is on a ship where three people have already died. But then there is another fear that also makes him cry: that of not being able to count on the support or empathy of others, of us who are watching his video. Of becoming, as he says, a story, which in social media language is a video or an image that circulates for an ephemeral time and then simply disappears.Jake Rosmarin expresses this fear from the other side of the black mirror of the screen. He too is a social media user, like everyone else, and he too has surely seen videos similar to the one he recorded himself: people who were suffering, who found themselves in terrible, desperate situations. Surely Jake Rosmarin had looked at these videos with indifference or with a brief shiver (of compassion, of rage, of disgust: this already depends on the specific emotion that each video seeks to excite), and then had not thought about it anymore. It is, by no means, any reproach to Jake Rosmarin: it is how more or less all of us behave as users, or as consumers, of social media. What Jake Rosmarin, passenger of the hantavirus cruise, asks of us is that we do not do this to him and his unfortunate companions. That we do not pause briefly at their tears and then move on to another video, who knows, of celebrities on a red carpet, or of funny animals, or of in-laws formulating conspiracy theories.Jake Rosmarin's plea surely comes late. For a long time now we have been accustomed to contemplating people subjected to extreme pain on the screens of our mobile phones. For a long time now we have become accustomed to seeing people cry while we dine in front of the television: victims of bombings, immigrants shot down in boats, elderly women evicted by vulture funds, bodies abused or raped or blown up. Sensationalism, banality, the algorithm, and the desire to make easy money (in short, what we call technocapitlism) come together to help us become spectators — more passive, more abulic than ever — of the misfortune of others. People who suffer like flies trapped inside a glass, which is the screen.The horror is to go from being the spectator to being the fly. Jake Rosmarin rebels, with good reason, against this horror, but his tears will predictably have the same trajectory as those of so many, so many people who appear crying every day on our screens. We will be moved, of course, if in a while a film, or a series, is released narrating the ordeal of the hantavirus cruise, with the corresponding tagline: “Based on true events.”

That the Popular Party has a patrimonial conception of justice (of institutions in general, but of justice in particular: let's remember Ignacio Cosidó in his stage as a senator, boasting that the party controlled —it's just an example— the second chamber of the Supreme Court “through the back door”) is a well-known fact. This week, however, the PP has taken, in its capacity as a popular accuser, a step on this hitherto unprecedented path: dictating what the prison sentence should be for an accused person in an ongoing trial. And accusing the Prosecutor's Office of being “subject to the government” when it refuses to comply with its dictate.This is what happened with the businessman (we accept businessman as a euphemism) Victor de Aldama. The PP made it known to the public that it considers the appropriate sentence for this character to be five years in prison, a sentence that would precisely allow him to avoid entering a penitentiary institution by resorting to a couple of technicalities (technicalities, and pardon the joke). The Prosecutor's Office immediately replied no, that it requests seven years, as it had already established in its brief. The PP's response, in the words of Feijóo himself, is that the Prosecutor's Office has thus dashed the right of any person who collaborates with justice to obtain penal benefits in exchange for this collaboration.The “collaboration” of this Aldama with justice has so far consisted of appearing before judges and operating a fan for seven hours that spread lies, fabrications, half-truths, and some true facts, all mixed in any way, with a whiff of a biased and prefabricated narrative that is astonishing, and verbalized with an unacceptable and barroom language. That Feijóo (and not someone of lower rank within the party) comes out in his defense means that Aldama is a VIP, a piece considered key within the strategy that the PP has designed to harass and bring down the hated Pedro Sánchez, and with him his government. Aldama, let's remember, is an accused person in an ongoing trial: that a political party goes to the extreme of indicating what sentence can be imposed on him is a serious attempt to interfere with justice.We must assume that it does not come from here: in the case for which Aldama is accused, the former minister and former organization secretary of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, faces a request for 24 years in prison for crimes very similar to those committed by Isabel Díaz Ayuso's partner, who not only did not go to prison but also caused the dismissal of the State Prosecutor General Álvaro García Ortiz and received compensation of ten thousand euros for damages to his honor. The conclusions are self-evident, and the socialists have no right to complain much, because the practice of judicial dirty warfare dates back a long way and the PSOE did very little to prevent it.Be that as it may, for a party to dare to say what sentences should be handed down in a judicial process that is still open, even as a popular accuser, is more than worrying. If this is a party that claims to be fit to govern (and it is), the ways of its future government can only be authoritarian.