While the interior ministers of the European Union are meeting telematically to discuss the tightening of border controls, this news appears, which you can read in Ara Balears: seventeen people have died trying to reach Mallorca in a makeshift boat, after two weeks adrift. Salvamento Marítimo found two people inside the boat, malnourished and dehydrated, who before being admitted to Son Espases hospital were able to report that there were nineteen people on board. All the others had died. These seventeen deaths are added to the more than five hundred so far this year on the migratory route that attempts to reach the Balearic Islands from Algeria. It is one of the main entry routes for immigrants into the Western Mediterranean, and also one of the most dangerous.When we talk about migration, we are talking about this, about poor people dying drowned at sea, or of thirst and hunger. Whether mafias are the ones who brought them there, or governments that encourage their own citizens to go to their deaths, as we have seen these days, does not exempt First World countries from the political and moral duty to help these people, to welcome them, and to have foreseen all the mechanisms that civilization, democracy, and wealth allow in the service of an objective superior to any other: to recognize, restore, and protect their dignity as people. Before the mafias and depraved governments, the force that pushes these people is desperation, pure and simple. They assume the risks, the scams, and the humiliations because they know that here, in Europe, a relatively few kilometers from their villages devastated by corruption, living conditions are better. And they are: objectively, we are better off here. Let's prove it: let's develop migratory policies based on the civilizing and inalienable principle of human dignity. It is from this principle that the institutions of the post-World War II world order were built, starting with the United Nations and the European Union. It is these institutions and the world order that the great authoritarian powers – the USA and Russia – now want to dismantle, with the help of smaller but equally criminal governments like Israel or Morocco. That the European Union approved less than two months ago a pact on migration that includes the imprisonment of immigrants in prisons (they call them "centers") in non-EU countries is worse than a shame: it is a defeat. It is the European Union proclaiming to the world that it is incapable of being itself. That it is preparing for dismantling. Returning to the Balearic route, the local government of PP and Vox says it is "overwhelmed" by the eleven thousand people who have arrived in dinghies from January 2025 to July 2026. They are not, however, overwhelmed by the twenty million tourists who are destroying the islands during this tourist season. No, saying this is not do-goodism, nor wokism nor demagoguery: demagoguery is using migration crises to try to scrape votes by stoking discourses of hatred and racism.

According to data released by the Balearic Government, the support of the citizens of the Balearic Islands for public schooling in Catalan continues to be very widely in the majority. Overwhelming, if we prefer similar adjectives. In Mallorca, 81.85% have chosen to enroll their children in schools in Catalan. In Menorca, 89.7% of families have done so, and in Formentera, 82.45%. The exception to the general trend has been Ibiza, where only 53.28% of families have chosen Catalan, compared to 46.71% who have chosen Spanish.The total in the Balearic Islands as a whole has been 78.57% of favorable votes for Catalan, although this percentage does not represent reality accurately enough, because it is necessary to differentiate between the results from Eivissa and those from the rest of the islands. Naturally, results need to be improved everywhere: normality would be a percentage of 90% or higher in favor of Catalan on each of the islands. Even so, taking into account the demographic revolution that the Balearic Islands have experienced in the last 25 years (which requires careful study, not with prejudice or broad strokes) and the strong pressure against the use of Catalan exerted by Spanish nationalism, not only through politics but also through tourism as the sole dish of economic activity, certain media, and networks, these are reasonably good results. Not to contemplate them and congratulate ourselves, but to urgently get to work to reinforce the use of the native language of the Balearic Islands in their own territory. The case of Eivissa is the most difficult and, for that very reason, does not need defeatism or sterile apocalyptic messages (and almost always interested ones), but full support for the people of Eivissa who work in favor of Catalan in a more than meritorious way on a daily basis.For three years, this government, presided over by Marga Prohens, has given parents the "freedom" to choose the language of schooling for their children. This is what remains of a linguistic segregation plan that, at the insistence of Vox and with the approval of the PP, intended to separate students by language and thus create a social fracture with public schools as the scene of confrontation. A socially undesirable separation of students into "mallorquinites" (locals), "forasterets" (outsiders), and "immigrantets" (little immigrants), so as not to have to share classrooms with certain people (there are, it seems, those who propose this same thing for Catalonia). The plan in question was fully rejected by the educational community of the Balearic Islands, but the "freedom of choice" has remained and yields similar results each year. Some say that the PP is fine with it, because in this way it satisfies its Vox partners without everything translating into any notable change in practice. We must think that this is not the case, because if it were, we would be facing the most absurd and stupid educational policy imaginable, which would degrade public schools through gestures without content or meaning. And the rulers of the Balearic Islands would not engage in such a policy. We are sure of that.

It is opportune to recall that Morocco, as a political regime, is an authoritarian monarchy – a dictatorship – and that the current monarch, Mohamed VI, besides being an eccentric millionaire, has also proven to be a business shark, much more ambitious and greedy, and also more skillful, than his father, Hassan II, a bon vivant who got along very well with Juan Carlos I. Mohamed VI (and now also his heir, Mulai Hassan, who each day assumes more power, due to the absences and health problems of his father) has gotten down to business, and possesses a fortune that Forbes calculates to be over 5,000 million euros, the first in Morocco and the fifth on the African continent. The Alaouite monarch is richer, for example, than the British one. Just in terms of known official residences, Mohamed VI owns twelve palaces with more than a thousand servants that cost more than a million euros each day. Needless to say, these are, from his perspective, merely current expenses. With all this, it means that we are talking about a deeply corrupt regime that intends to perpetuate itself. A royal lineage from which hangs the vast and powerful investment fund Al Mada, which controls key sectors such as banking, mining, agriculture, telecommunications, and distribution.The Alawite regime uses its country's resources for its own benefit, starting with its geostrategic situation and the Moroccan population itself (more than eighty deaths in this latest crisis in Ceuta). It should not be forgotten that the geopolitical maneuvers of this regime are directly linked to the enrichment of the royal family and its extensive network of partners, accomplices, propagandists, and flatterers. For this reason, as Tesh Sidi (a Sumar deputy born in a Sahrawi refugee camp) has recalled, migratory crises like the current one or the one in 2021 cannot be understood without the triangulation of interests between Morocco, Israel, and the US. With Spain playing the role of a pawn that goes from colonization to the recognition of the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, the hardest and lowest moment of Pedro Sánchez's foreign policy.Even harder and lower because it has served no purpose. Morocco continues to use migratory crises as a tool to destabilize Europe through Spain whenever it suits them, which strengthens xenophobic or populist discourses such as those advocated by Vox and, in their own way, the PP. One only needs to see a recent interview with Abascal in which he emphasizes that Morocco “is not the enemy,” contrary to what has been traditionally preached. Solutions? Few. As diplomat Joan Manuel López Nadal has said, one possibility for the Spanish state, in the long run, is to decolonize Ceuta and Melilla (and ask, in return, for the decolonization of the Sahara by Morocco), but this, indeed, would be major words. A lesson? As Cristina Mas wrote in an analysis in this newspaper, “we have known for a long time that it is not a good idea to subcontract a regime without democratic guarantees to monitor your borders, and now it is being demonstrated again”.

The saying that some news is better understood when placed side by side sometimes works. For example, it is a fact that the Community of Madrid has purchased, through a public company, a nearly 500-square-meter penthouse in one of Madrid's most luxurious areas. This purchase, valued between four and six million euros, was made without public bidding and was not budgeted for anywhere. The response from the president, the inevitable Ayuso, has been to play the victim once again (she stated she is once again the victim of a "smear campaign"). She also offered a kind of explanation according to which this luxury penthouse will be an "office" where "institutional meetings can be held temporarily" while renovations are carried out on another building, and that it is not clear if she will have to use it. On the same day, Ayuso announced that they were opening a section on the Community of Madrid's website to "safely channel donations for the reconstruction of the Sierra Oeste," and the next day, the Community made the astonishing announcement that they will now sell the penthouse in question "to help those affected by the fires": neither is public money managed like this, as if it were a child's game, nor are citizens necessarily idiots. "Reconstruction," by the way, is the word used by the Generalitat Valenciana to administer, also with notable opacity, the funds intended to repair the damage from the storm of October 29, 2024. Still in Mazón's time, the Generalitat's coffers received twelve million euros in donations from citizens who wanted to contribute to this cause, of which nothing more has ever been heard. There is no news that either Mazón or Ayuso have had to appear before the courts for the very alleged corruption surrounding them.On the contrary, it is another known fact that, despite the forceful ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in favor of the amnesty law, and despite having granted a handful of more technical amnesties in homeopathic doses, the Spanish Supreme Court refuses to grant amnesty to the political leaders of the Procés for a crime of embezzlement that has only existed in the imagination of the accusers and the magistrates who convicted them. The call for a referendum on self-determination was part of the electoral program of the parties that formed a fully legitimate and democratic Government, and with the expenses to carry out this referendum, it has not been proven that anyone profited from it. Furthermore, the then Minister of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro, stated that "not a single cent of public money" had been spent on "the Chinese ballot boxes". By the way: the so-called Montoro case, a major corruption scandal in which the Tax Agency and the Ministry of Finance would have been used to commit extortion and other crimes, has seen the judge extend its investigation by six more months this week, a speed inversely proportional to the gravity of the case. As we were saying: sometimes, putting news side by side helps to understand it better.

Police officers who hit demonstrators in non-violent and legitimate mobilizations – such as the massive protest last Sunday in Palma, against overpopulation and «turistification» – do so protected by the anonymity of their helmets and badges: they are not people with a face and a name, like citizens, but rather there is a conscious effort to give the police officer who represses citizens an aspect as dehumanized as possible. This is well known, studied, and denounced. The other great instrument of concealment for the repressive police officer is corporatism. This is the foundation for the development of police accounts that, to put it mildly, clash with or contradict reality. That they lie, to put it bluntly. They know they can do it because corporatism, a kind of misunderstood and perverted camaraderie, makes it impossible for a police officer to ever dare to report the bad practices — and whoever says bad practices, says crimes and offenses — of their less exemplary colleagues.The National Police of Palma has produced a report on the events of Sunday evening in which they do the usual: victimize themselves and state that they had to resort to charges to "defend themselves" from "violent demonstrators" who caused "fear". The song of individuals who like to line up as muscular cabinets, armed to the teeth and trained for whatever may come, who claim to feel intimidated and scared to death by defenseless demonstrators who – in the case of Palma – do such fearsome things as sing La Balanguera. It is tiring, above all, because it is a lie. From the police of October 1st to those of Altsasu, including those who have been in charge of repressing pro-Palestine demonstrations with batons, they all claim to feel deep fears when they have to confront the unleashed hordes of violent demonstrators. The reality, repeated over and over again, is that the provocative, aggressive, and – if necessary – violent elements in demonstrations and other citizen protest events are the police officers themselves. This is what happened in Palma, where there were more than twenty injured, including a photojournalist who had to receive six stitches in his head. The police attacks were unjustified. And, above all, intolerable.False police reports and statements – and, when necessary, false declarations before courts by police officers and high-ranking officials – are repeated because the political leaders do nothing about it (they are afraid, these ones). The government delegate in Palma, Alfonso Rodríguez, is asked to resign. He should also present it due to his incompetence in having done the dirty work for the tourism businessmen and the PP and Vox Government chaired by Marga Prohens. They have achieved the objective of tarnishing a demonstration that was as powerful as it was civic, and on top of that, they can blame a socialist government delegate. They probably think they have made a masterstroke, but more or less everyone sees through them (this does not mean that the delegate must resign, of course).

After a minimal truce (we won't call it "courtesy", because that has disappeared), and as expected, the Spanish ultra-nationalist right and Spanish woman has burst out to take advantage of the disaster of the great fires (those everywhere, but especially, as expected, those besieging Madrid) to engage in demagoguery and politicking. You can read the chronicle of Roger Hernàndez Pujol in this diary.More astute and agile, Pedro Sánchez got ahead of them with a proposal: a state pact for the climate emergency, which he had shelved last year. It is true that, to counteract his perennial parliamentary weakness and face the last year of this bruised and fierce legislature, it would be very beneficial for Sánchez to lead a state pact of whatever. But it is equally true that, beyond Sánchez's political conveniences, there is no shortage of areas in great need of major agreements and long-term improvement projects: education – as we are seeing particularly starkly these days in Catalonia –, femicide, alternatives to real estate speculation and mass tourism, boosting research and development, etc. If politics had not turned into a grotesque spectacle similar to Ibai Llanos's that Mònica Planas criticizes in her article, the parties would know how to make these major pacts and, at the same time, maintain the tone and task of the opposition. But this is not the case: it is easier to follow the inertia of systematic polarization and tension, even at the cost of crashing directly into reality: it is what we know as negationism. When Sánchez brings up his proposal for a state pact for the climate emergency, he does so knowing that PP and Vox will not only not sign it, but will reject it with the usual negationist outcry. He also does it to expose them.It is not, however, a minor issue. Global warming reached 1.37 degrees above the pre-industrial era in 2025, and by 2030 it could reach the 1.5-degree increase that the 2015 Paris Agreement set as a limit. We are already suffering the consequences now, in the form of fires and extreme weather phenomena. We do not need to give in to apocalyptic imagination to understand that the lifestyle developed by the West in the last hundred years is not sustainable in the next hundred: not, at least, in the way we know it. Resources, both human and economic, will have to be dedicated to finding alternatives that are, at the same time, environmentally acceptable and do not represent a setback in people's way of life. Some, however, are clear about it: in the Balearic Islands (currently in the news), a denialist government of PP and Vox has legislated to deregulate rustic land and protected natural areas, in order to build and speculate there. The threat of the far-right is against democracy, certainly. But also against nature and people's health, in exchange for the economic benefit not of an elite (a word too prestigious), but of the usual smart alecks.

Mallorcans have, or we have, as a society, a certain reputation for being apathetic and conformist. I won't say it's not a somewhat deserved reputation, but it has a more interesting flip side. This same society also forms a country of sensible and elegant people, with a deep allergy to bad manners, rudeness, exaggerated gestures, and violence in any form. For the citizens of this country called Mallorca, there are few things less interesting than losing one's composure and irony, losing one's temper, becoming solemn or intransigent. And let's not even mention becoming aggressive: all of this, in Mallorca, is frankly frowned upon.This country, despite what some say, exists, and it manifested itself again on Sunday in a massive and exemplary way through the streets of Palma. More than 70,000 people came out to demand that good sense be applied to tourism and real estate policies. The current model is extractive and parasitic, with large profits concentrated in a few hands and a very long list of social problems that citizens/taxpayers suffer. Speculation, the impossibility for a large part of the population to access housing, the expulsion of people who literally cannot afford to live here, growing inequalities, job insecurity, premature abandonment of studies, overpopulation, coexistence difficulties, and social fracture. It was against all this that the Majorcans demonstrated this Sunday.The success of the call – by the platform Menys Turisme, Més Vida, with the support of 145 entities – materialized in a true human wave (as you can read inAra Balears) that marched through the center of Palma without insults, without tension, with a cheerful tone and impeccable civic attitude. The protest was truly historic, comparable to few in Mallorca's recent history. Faced with a mobilization of this magnitude, business owners and politicians can only do one sensible thing: get to work on the corrections they are being asked for.On the other hand, what they did was send the National Police to beat citizens. Provocations, impediments and, finally, police charges with batons and rubber bullet shots, resulting in several minor injuries and a photojournalist seriously injured in the head. An absolute and intolerable disgrace, the primary responsibility for which lies with the delegate of the Spanish government, Alfonso Rodríguez, who should indeed resign, as is demanded from all sides. The PP and Vox government should not think, however, that they benefit from this: they wanted exactly this, to be able to accuse the demonstration of being “violent”. They had been trying for weeks to disqualify and criminalize the protests, and Vice President Antoni Costa went as far as to invite those who request a reduction in tourism to “pack their bags”. On Sunday, the Majorcans set an example of dignity, and their rulers, of indignity and ineptitude. Sunday, too, something broke between the Majorcans and their institutional representatives.

The death of Joan Roca, the bassist of Antònia Font, was one of those low blows of life that fit badly. Last Saturday his friends and bandmates – Joan Miquel Oliver, Jaume Manresa, Pere Debon, Pau Debon – paid him a tribute on the last day of Mobofest, the festival born and raised in Sant Joan, in Pla de Mallorca. It wasn't just any concert, nor is Mobofest just any festival. Mobofest celebrated its tenth edition this year, which will have been its last, because it is a festival that was born with a very well-defined spirit (collaborative, non-profit, understanding culture as a form of coexistence, knowledge, collective improvement) and despite the impressive success it has had in each of its editions, it has managed never to deviate from this foundational spirit. When Mobofest began, Antònia Font was already a star band, and they bet on this small festival because they felt a full affinity for it. Joan Roca wanted to do this concert one way or another. For a few days, it was no longer possible. The tribute (a mini-concert with the enormous Bathyscaphe Katiuscas performed by the choir La Corrala; the previous day Maria Jaume offered a beautiful version ofSamurai climbers, another flagship song from the Antònia Font repertoire)will always be remembered. Mobofest too. Joan Roca too, but we would have liked him to be on stage, the tall, strong man with white hair, an indestructible smile and an inner metronome.Before the tribute to Mobofest, the premature death of Joan Roca had been news in the media.Some of the headlines had repeated a rather cliché phrase: “the discreet and reliable bassist”, they said. Discreet for sure not, and not only because his physical presence was striking. His artistic personality was also striking, and without his bass, albums that are true peaks of Catalan pop music –A Rússia, Alegria, Taxi, Batiscafo Katiuscas, Lamparetes, let me add Vostè és aquí and Un minut estroboscòpica– would not sound as they do, nor would the more than a thousand concerts the group has offered in the years Joan Roca has been its bassist, from 2000 until now. Joan Roca was a bit more than reliable: he possessed a talent and musical knowledge as inexhaustible as his ability to improve the lives of the people he loved."Things aren't easy for anyone / inside this igloo", says the lyrics of one of the many hits by Antònia Font, songs that make you smile but also tend to carry a touch of melancholy, as with good pop songs. Now things will be a little less easy, without Joan Roca. I know it's basic and whatever you want, but every time a good, brilliant, talented person who loved life and made it better for others dies prematurely, I can't help but think of the overwhelming list of boring and dangerous scoundrels who overwhelm us every day. I think Joan Roca would have agreed.

Zapatero granted an interview to TVE to give explanations, as far as he is willing to give them for reasons of procedural strategy. It is legitimate: he is the first former Spanish president to be judicially investigated, and he is so on important charges, such as criminal organization, influence peddling, and document forgery.

The Town Hall of L'Alcúdia de Crespins, in the Valencian region of La Costera, has decided to remove the name of the writer Isabel-Clara Simó, who died in 2020, from the local secondary school. According to the mayor, from the PP, such an illustrious, relevant, recognized, applauded, read, and beloved author "does not represent the neighbors" because, according to him, "her idea of the Catalan Countries divides." He also says that "she was not a resident of the town," because Simó, in fact, was from Alcoi. Let's be precise, master. It is true that Isabel-Clara Simó was a citizen of the Catalan Countries and a convinced independentist, but even this mayor should understand that she would also have "divided" if she had been a strong supporter of the unity of Spain, because all positions and opinions "divide." But, lo and behold, if she had been a Spanish nationalist, she would no longer have "divided." Even being born in Alcoi surely would not have been a demerit either.The mayor and his government team are falling into a true classic of municipal policy by the Popular Party, which is to try to erase the names of Catalan writers in municipalities where they govern. Joan Fuster, Vicent Andrés Estellés, Blai Bonet, Josep M. Llompart, Miquel Àngel Riera, Damià Huguet, and even Ramon Llull, to mention just a few, are authors whose names, at one time or another, have been attempted to be erased from a school, an institute, a library. Or a bust, a memorial, whatever, has been vandalized. On another level, the current Valencian Generalitat, presided over by Mazón's successor, Pérez Llorca, decided, during this past academic year, to exclude Catalan and Balearic authors from the baccalaureate curriculum, with the utterly stupid argument that "they are not Valencian" and "they do not write in Valencian." All of this is always about the same thing: denying any form of recognition or visibility to writers who are part of their blacklists, and – even more seriously – promoting misinformation and ignorance of Catalan literature among public school students (in private and subsidized schools, they already ensure that "what is appropriate" is taught). It is part of the same offensive against the Catalan language and public education that occurs with PP and Vox governments, both in the Valencian Country and in the Balearic Islands. Isabel-Clara Simó was a successful writer and a particularly distinguished figure of her generation, as well as a tireless defender of the language, culture, and independence of the Catalan Countries. Also a feminist writer, left-wing ("fiery red") and environmentalist, who always spoke out in favor of diversity and minorities. The decision to remove her name from an institute has nothing to do with the excuses given by this insignificant mayor, but is political and ideological. I had the honor of being a friend of Isabel-Clara Simó, and I dare to say how she would react to news like this: she would laugh, let out a curse or two, and remember that if they are like this, it means we are doing well. She worked, she never cried.

The football obsession and the brain drain that we all have at this point in a summer that is already in full climate change have made the scandalous reaction of the Spanish judicial leadership, and of the ultra-nationalist right, to the CJEU ruling on the amnesty pass unnoticed. The summary is as follows. Constitutional Court: will look at it upon returning from vacation. Supreme Court: maintains the arrest warrant for Puigdemont and the embezzlement charge, and keeps the ace up its sleeve of raising new preliminary questions, which would further delay the process by a few more months. The PP: in the words of Secretary General Miguel Tellado, the CJEU ruling does not enter "into the substance of the matter". The substance of the matter is to get rid of Pedro Sánchez and his government, so evil that, according to the PP, it doesn't even support the national team.On the part of the socialists and the partners in Sánchez's investiture, and on the part of those directly affected – the independence leaders now amnestied by the European court – caution, prudence, calculation, and tense calm have predominated. Óscar Puente, the hooligan minister, broke the violin string, who overstepped by inviting Puigdemont to “show up in Spain”. This – since we mention football – is because Puente, like so many others, has for years applied to the certainly serious events that have occurred in the last ten years in the conflict between Catalonia and Spain the clumsy, emotional, and childish logic typical of football. They truly believe that “Puigdemont fled Spain inside the trunk of a car” and, from here, they are easy prey for the narrative they themselves have been building. An uninformed and misinforming, Manichean narrative, which quickly reduces reality to its caricature level. “Is there a favorable ruling from the ECJ? Then let him show up here”. If a minister's analytical capacity is this, the flood has arrived this far.However, what is truly alarming is the attitude of the Spanish courts towards their European counterparts. The fact that a state is a member of the EU means that European law and jurisprudence are incorporated into the legal corpus in force in that state and acquire a higher rank of relevance than "national" law and jurisprudence. The rulings of the European courts are not "foreign" rulings or intolerable interferences. European rulings cannot be postponed, neglected, evaded, or ignored. On the contrary, Spanish courts must respect them, apply them, and enforce them with the same zeal and diligence as if they were "own" rulings. However, this one from the CJEU on the amnesty is particularly difficult for them. And it is understandable, because it highlights the dirty game that Spanish justice and politics (in particular, the Supreme Court and the PP) have played and continue to play, naturally to defend the unity of Spain. The CJEU does not agree with them on anything and, without saying it, says what they are: politicians who act outside of democracy, and corrupt judges.

Trump attended the heaviest final in history, not so much to act as host as to make some memes with his friend Infantino. He went with two hot potatoes in his pockets: his war in Iran (which he's losing) and the midterm elections next November (which he might also lose). Both potatoes, of course, are strongly connected: naturally, the disastrous management of the Gulf crisis and its consequences worsen Trump's expectations before the elections, in which the majority in Congress is at stake.In Iran, Trump continues to cling to what the journalist from the New Yorker Robin Wright has defined as "ad-lib strategy", i.e., a strategy that is no strategy at all. A course of action based on sudden turns, caprice, volatility, and changes of direction, in which massive bombings are ordered one moment and supposed diplomatic successes are announced the next, which are always successes in the style of Vance, Hegseth, or Rubio: ideas that must have seemed good in the meetings of the hard core of the Trump administration but which fail on contact with reality. Having resumed the armed conflict after signing, even if only by teleconference, a peace agreement – now frozen from Tehran, while Trump went off to football – can only be described as a demonstration of ineptitude and weakness. It is clear that Trump and his collaborators underestimated the resistance capacity of the Ayatollah regime, which has even overcome the beheading of its leadership and renewed it without too many problems, at least in appearance. It has not been a walk in the park like staging a coup in Caracas, kidnapping Maduro, installing a puppet government in the country, and stealing its oil. Trump's pirate ship has run aground in the Gulf, and besides the thousands of human lives already consumed by the conflict, the orange pachyderm risks the Strait of Hormuz remaining closed. The consequent rise in fuel prices, and prices in general, is an extremely unpopular effect among the American electorate. This is one of the factors that explain the very low popularity ratings that Trump has been dragging for some time, and the poor expectations that polls give him for the "mid-termelections of November.This is why Trump has for days been resorting to the fascist resistance manual (they have one too) and appeared last Friday on Fox – no other channel wanted to broadcast it – with a statement warning of a possible electoral fraud like the one, according to him, that already occurred in the 2020 elections, a lie based on misrepresentations about immigration, demographics, and the census. Does that sound familiar? It's the same song that the far-right here repeats day and night, both the Spanish and the Catalan, starting with the pathetic Feijóo. It wasn't what Trump wanted, but remembering the American elections of 2020 was a way to also remind us that he was the instigator of the assault on the Capitol on Three Kings' Day in 2021. And that, consequently, he should not be in the presidency, but in prison.

Last week, the Guardia Civil arrested, handcuffed as if they were dangerous criminals, two young women from the Mallorcan town of Santa Maria del Camí for having made graffiti against tourist saturation and speculation on the facade of the office of a German real estate agency. For the arrest, several media outlets were notified, who disseminated the image of the two young women being led away with handcuffs on. Images illegally recorded with security cameras from the same real estate agency were also disseminated, in which they are seen making the graffiti. The next day, the Guardia Civil accused them of belonging to a "criminal organization". Both the Guardia Civil and the National Police also made a threat public: "Whoever commits crimes against tourist interests in Mallorca will be arrested".The disproportion is so exaggerated that it has caused indignation. As has been noted on social media, no one has ever been arrested in Mallorca for making fascist graffiti, such as that which regularly —for example— defaces the bust of Aurora Picornell. In any case, graffiti is an anecdotal event on an island where attacks, destruction, and assaults against the environment, urban spaces, and people's homes occur every day, and in abundance. And not at the hands of activists who question the system, certainly, but of mass tourism taken to the extreme, which has as a direct consequence the strongest demographic pressure and housing crisis in all of Spain. The island of Mallorca is being crushed and, at the same time, marketed without control or measure. On the contrary, the current government of PP and Vox has pushed through an omnibus law and an amendment to the agrarian law to unprotected rural land and natural spaces on the island. They have created a tailor-made legal framework so that any speculative abuse on an already saturated and fragile island is not only possible, but perfectly legal.That the authors of a protest graffiti are treated as dangerous criminals is another abuse, in this case a police one, for which the government delegate in the Balearic Islands, Alfonso Rodríguez Badal, and Minister Marlaska must answer. The context is easy to understand: for the next Sunday the 26th, a large demonstration is called in Palma against tourist saturation, and the political and economic powers that consider themselves owners of the island are trying to criminalize the protest and generate fear, in order to suffocate and dilute the call. There is an immediate precedent: the large human chain on July 5th, in protest against the lack of protection of the Es Trenc Natural Park: they thought it would be a small thing and found themselves with a significant citizen mobilization, which bothered them and which they have tried—also—to criminalize by saying... that graffiti had been made there. Predictably, they will use the old dirty tricks, starting with the infiltration of provocateurs within the demonstration. It is absolutely necessary that next Sunday's be the largest protest ever seen in the Balearic Islands.

The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is a stark reminder that the trial of the Procés was a charade where everything was seen: false testimonies, which everyone knew were false, were given with impunity; prosecutors were seen reciting from memory what the police officers summoned to testify were supposed to say; defense witnesses were questioned by the court; defense evidence could not be presented to support the veracity of the defendants' statements; for the first time, private prosecution was brought by a far-right party; civil rights and human rights organizations suffered all sorts of obstacles in carrying out their supervisory task, and a very long etcétera of irregularities that resulted in a judgment confirming Spain as a country with political prisoners and exiles. Justice was not sought, but revenge for a mobilization (the ballot boxes of October 1st) that exposed the democratic shortcomings of a state that, faced with legitimate dissent, only knew how to resort to repression.The ruling, without explicitly saying so, encompasses all of this. And more: Spain lost its full democracy status in the index of The Economist, and became a flawed democracy, precisely because of the response it gave to Catalan independence, a brutal response in all aspects: police and judicial, but also institutional and political (King Felipe VI's speech on October 3rd, the application – invented on the fly – of Article 155). It became clear that Spain has a serious internal problem: years later it regained the label of full democracy, but the development of events has shown that it is a term that is too big for a state where the police fabricate false evidence against the enemies of the ultranationalist right, where citizens are spied on with programs like Pegasus (recently we have learned about the cases of David Fernàndez and Carles Riera), where a rapper has been in prison for more than five years for a satirical song, where the gag law is never repealed, or where just yesterday two activists in Mallorca who had painted slogans against tourist saturation were arrested and accused by the Civil Guard of belonging to a criminal gang.Or a state, also, in which justice not only acts in part, but refuses to apply a current law such as the amnesty law, now also reinforced by the CJEU ruling. Predictably, now the Constitutional Court will rule in favor of the appeals for protection filed by exiled pro-independence leaders convicted of embezzlement for the organization of the October 1st referendum, and the Supreme Court will try to torpedo it, because the high Spanish judiciary does not even try to conceal the political affiliations of judges and prosecutors. The CJEU magistrates are obviously also aware of the political content of their ruling. They, however, have no interest in favoring some political parties over others: rather, they say that what is at stake in Spain is democracy itself, and the rule of law.

Whenever the Spanish national football team excels in any competition – and let's not even mention if that competition is the World Cup – the index of absurdity in political life skyrockets. Valle-Inclán would have had a field day these days. The image of Felipe VI, Queen Letizia and the princesses – or whatever their title is – Sofia and Leonor sitting on a cheap two-seater sofa watching Spain's match against France on a small TV propped up on some kind of scaffolding, in a damp and dark apartment, seemed like a bad joke. All that was missing was the unborn conceived to complete the picture of an ideal Spanish family, poor but decent and united. Trying to pass off the Bourbons as members of a sort of working-class family, who have a brief moment of happiness when the red one wins, and who then allow themselves to jump, dance, and hug in the humble dining room that is the setting for all their joys and sorrows, is excessive even for such a dilapidated and crude royal house as the Spanish one. At least they could do us the favor of not mocking the poor by dressing up as if they were. However: there is something even worse in all this, and that is that if they do it, it is because those who take care of their communication and image assume that it will work for them. That many citizens will accept the message and feel sympathy for monarchs who are "like them". Simultaneously, M. Rajoy, a former Spanish president who is not being investigated by the justice system (on the contrary: he appears before the courts with ostentatious and tolerated arrogance), has revived a concept from his years in office, that of the Spanish Brand. He gave a recital of it when he made the xenophobic statement that the French team was playing "without Frenchmen," and in a continuation in which, far from rectifying, he took the opportunity to attack the current government. Rajoy's writing (or whoever writes his articles, published, needless to say, in a hard-right online newspaper) is directly related to the Borbons' little house: something bizarre, disordered, unbecoming of a minimally educated person. Every public appearance by Rajoy always has an eccentric touch that in his case is intentional: Rajoy does not disguise himself as poor, but as a fool, and when everyone laughs he achieves exactly what he wanted: in Spanish there is the saying "Ande yo caliente y ríase la gente", which in Catalan could have as an equivalent – never more fitting – that of "Feed me and call me Moor".Rajoy, by the way, says that Sánchez acted as a "informer" to the French, and from the PP they have stated that the successes of the Spanish national team suit Sánchez very well as a smokescreen. If Feijóo and his try to present the red one as an agent of sanchismo, it might turn out even worse for them than comparing work absences with cancer. By the way, showing up at an international forum trying to sell that Sánchez is like Putin, Trump, or Xi Jinping ("an authoritarian president") doesn't fly either. Euphoria makes them lose their rhythm, and that has consequences. Not just in football.

Normality in the Spanish state goes through the hegemony of the ultra-nationalist right, whether it's called PP, whether it's called Vox, or whether it's called a magistracy and powers of the state handed over to the cause of sostenella y no enmendalla, the vivan las caenas and all this rich tradition. If the answer is Spain, then what is the question?Political projects that can question the hegemony of black, monolithic, and self-devouring Spain (see octopuses, which eat themselves; see Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son) always require majorities that are difficult to maintain due to their own internal composition. Catalan independence, to have any strength, needs to bring together all the different forms of democratic independence: center-right, center-left, anti-capitalist, etc. And even then, to add other sovereignist and Catalanist forces. What was interesting about the "Procés" were mainly two things: on the one hand, the fact that it emerged from the bottom up, starting from the demonstration on July 10, 2010. On the other hand, having achieved this sum of forces from such different political cultures, united in the common objective of a referendum on self-determination. Since it was not achieved, there was a moral of defeat that led to succumbing to all self-destructive temptations, and now to the most self-destructive of all, which is to incorporate a false far-right independence into the equation. But that's another story.Regarding the governance of Spain, avoiding the crushing power of the right-wing (“stopping the far-right,” as it's commonly put, and also the right-wing that claims not to be so extreme but easily reaches government agreements with it, and forgive the wordplay) is perhaps even more difficult. It necessarily involves bringing the Spanish left-wing parties together with the wrongly named Catalan and Basque nationalisms (who is truly nationalist, and with all the tools at their disposal, is the Spanish state), and even with other “peripheries” like Galicia, the Valencian Country, the Balearic Islands, etc. The “Spanish left-wing parties,” evidently include the PSOE and the catch-all category often simplified with the expression “to the left of the PSOE.” There are many elements that clash here, but the most decisive is the historical, and mutual, animosity between Catalanism and the Spanish left-wing parties. In recent years, there have been two attempts to overcome this animosity: Sumar (now Moviment Sumar), in low spirits as seen at its assembly last weekend, and Rufián's project, about which nothing concrete can be said because it hasn't even started yet. So, everything remains, for now, within the realm of hypotheses, mistrust, and (historical) grudges. Curiously, the Spanish right-wing and far-right do not have so many problems identifying their adversaries, nor in presenting them as enemies to be defeated, dehumanizing them if necessary. Indeed: they are all those who never agree among themselves.

The history of Spanish state nationalism is a history of repressions against minorities. One of the most persistent repressive fronts is the linguistic one: if we were to print all the jurisprudence that has been generated —only in democracy: we don't need to go back to the Decree of Nova Planta— to deprotect Catalan and relegate it from social use, and to reinforce, on the contrary, the presence and use of Spanish, we would have paper to wallpaper the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, and the High Court of Justice of Catalonia. And with all certainty, there would still be some left over.The new ruling is from the Supreme Court, and it corrects the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), which has imposed with various rulings the 25% of Spanish in teaching hours, even —or especially— against the linguistic regulations set by the Generalitat. But the brand new ruling from the Supreme Court comes to say that the TSJC's efforts are not enough: now they also rule on the language in which the signage of schools and educational centers must be done. As they themselves say, “signage is not irrelevant”. The ruling states that school signage can be in the bilingual Spanish/Catalan version, but what is certain is that, at a minimum, it must be in Spanish. Argument to support this? “Spanish is the official language throughout Spain, which means it is a language that cannot be excluded from communications between public authorities and citizens". This is an argument that closely approaches the phrase that serves as the title of this article, a slogan that the Spanish state disseminated in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and the Valencian Community during the Franco dictatorship. It resembles it perhaps not so much in letter, but in spirit.That Spanish is “the official language throughout Spain”, as the ruling emphasizes, is not an accidental fact nor the fruit of divine grace. Without going back to historical explanations, Spanish is “the official language throughout Spain” because the Constitution of '78, in an article 3 that the ruling also cites, establishes it as such in the current democratic stage: Spanish is official throughout the Spanish state and it is a duty for Spanish citizens to know it, while “other languages” (not mentioned by name) are recognized the “right to be used” and to be “also official in their respective autonomous communities” (not co-official, this is a term that further diminishes the official presence of Catalan and which incomprehensibly many repeat like parrots).Therefore, the Constitution enshrines a principle of inequality that serves as a legal argument for a ruling that is ideological and political. There is in this ruling a component of the day and another of substance. Of the day: whoever can do it, let them do it, that is, a bombardment of rulings that could destabilize the Sánchez government through its relationship with Catalan partners, especially Junts. Of substance: an eternal nationalism whose raison d'être lies in the fight against diversity in all its forms. Also (perhaps especially) against linguistic and cultural diversity.

Jordi Aragonès, who is the candidate for mayor of Barcelona of the winning party of the CEO, the far-right Catalan Alliance, gave an interview a few days ago to the newspaper Abc, for the saying that those who do not gather do not resemble each other.The headline chosen by the newspaper founded by Torcuato Luca de Tena made an impact on social media: “We must not confront Catalans and Castilians, the common enemy is the caliphate”. The rest of the interview dealt with the proposals of Sílvia Orriols' party for the Catalan capital. Housing? Deregulation of the market and construction in abundance. Maragall or Pujol? Noucentisme, Catalonia city, order, discipline, daily mass and going to bed with the maids (this was not said in the interview, but it was inherent in the candidate's discourse). The interview also revealed that AC leaders have as much intention of leading Catalonia to independence as of sticking their fingers into an electrical socket. Independence is, for them, the carrot to attract unwary voters, an addition stuck to the front of the trumpist baseball cap. They coat it, the carrot, with an ethnicist stucco that does not make it more viable, but rather more toxic.In its ideological aspect (besides being a candidate for Barcelona, Jordi Aragonès says he is the party's ideologue), Aliança Catalana recovers – it's no news – a kind of petty-bourgeois fascism, what we could call a scared fascism. They are not proper fascists: they are little fascist shit, with intellectualist pretensions and the mental horizon of a village pious woman. They are the arrival station of a long itinerary of degradation that separatism has inflicted upon itself during almost ten years of giving rope to phantoms who impart lessons of resentful and mediocre patriotism. The leaders of AC aspire to play in the league of low or not so low intensity fascism, the kind that is starting to be strong enough in Europe (with figures like Meloni in Italy, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla in Germany, or Marine Le Pen in France) to impose an aberration like the PEMA – the European Pact on Migration and Asylum, in force since June 12th – to send illegal immigrants to detention camps in non-EU countries. The unifying enemy cannot be Spain, precisely because it is a European and Catholic country, because they expect it to soon be governed by their Spanish counterparts (Vox and PP), and because, lo and behold, Catalonia continues to be part of it and they will certainly need to do some business there. The unifying enemy, therefore, will be the usual one: the poor. Among the poor, the immigrant. Among immigrants, the Moroccan, the Muslim, the Moor. The caliphate, which is secretly preparing the substitution of Catalans, another toxic carrot that appeals to fear and human misery, smeared with disinformation and aporophobia. In this, AC truly represents the old fascism of all time: racism, supremacism, the pointing out of the weak as an enemy and as a threat. It is objectively unpleasant to have to see this bad weed reborn. When the great substitution begins, let them be substituted first.

Feijóo has done it again and, when it seems that the winds are blowing in his favor (with the modest help of the judiciary, the Public Prosecutor's Office, the Civil Guard, the UCO, and a majority of Spanish and Spanish nationalist media, and of the Íbex-35), he manages to show that he is still capable of shooting himself in the foot. And with precision. This time he said that paid sick leave incentivizes the "cancer" of absenteeism and, therefore, fraud. Anti-fraud and anti-cancer meteorite. Seeing the dust raised, spokesperson Borja Sémper took to social media and everywhere else to try to clarify the message: it was worse, because in this case the message was Sémper himself. Recently, the most syrupy spokesperson for the extreme right had to take paid sick leave, precisely for cancer treatment. Subsequent attempts by the party to make it seem that Feijóo had not said what he had indeed said have also not been very useful.Garamendi and Sánchez Llibre –a quasi-comic pair of skinflints– pointed out that Feijóo demonstrates “sensitivity” to a problem that “employers” have been denouncing for some time. An exquisite sensitivity. It would be necessary to know, on the other hand, with more precision, which "employers" they are referring to. Are they the kind of employers, perhaps, who exploit undocumented immigrants while demanding a hard line against dinghy crossings? Those who force employees to be false self-employed? Those who refuse to pay overtime? Those who abuse employees in internships? The absentee worker is a being from the same galaxy as the squatter who takes your home when you go on holiday, the Catalan student who doesn't know how to speak Spanish, or the "moro" rapist of young white, Catholic, well-educated and well-fed girls. They are characters who are part of the imaginary of the current right-wing, created from half-truths and complete lies, which serve to fill the scary tales they tell in their public appearances, their rallies, their articles and discussions and podcasts and whatever else you want. In any case, from denouncing absenteeism at work to identifying labor rights as “a cancer”, and doing so from a place as identified with privilege and parasitism as the political class, there is a considerable distance.Feijóo claims to have the cure for this illness: a labor reform (not negotiated with the unions) that includes a cut in the salaries of workers who are on leave. It strongly recalls the labor reform promoted by his compatriot Rajoy, approved with the steamroller of the absolute majority to the cry of “Que se jodan”, uttered in Congress by the deputy Andreíta Fabra, daughter of the corrupt Carlos Fabra, the one from Castellón airport. Almost fifteen years have passed and the PP's doctrine on labor matters remains where it was: now, if anything, with the assumption that precariousness and growing inequalities (and that we live in a communist dictatorship, according to them) justify any violation of labor rights.

The Constitutional Court has admitted for processing an appeal from the Spanish government and has overturned the decision of the Balearic Government to repeal the law of democratic memory of the Balearic Islands, which was done last March with the votes of the PP and Vox. The repeal came after many back-and-forth discussions on this matter (it was among the one hundred and ten points of President Prohens' investiture agreement, which Vox made the PP pay for without forgiving a single one, and with interest) and after some scandal such as the one staged by the president of the Balearic Parliament, from Vox, who during a session in which democratic memory was precisely being debated, furiously tore up a photo of the Roges del Molinar, murdered by the Francoists in 1937. For the moment, the repeal remains provisionally without effect pending the TC's ruling on its more than probable unconstitutionality. This is important news, to which the entity Memòria de Mallorca, which works for the recognition of the victims of fascism on the island (where, contrary to what some still believe or want to believe, there was a true massacre of people executed in cold blood), reacted immediately, demanding that Prohens' executive apply the democratic memory law: for three years of the legislature, before repealing it, it has kept it in suspense and has avoided convening the commission responsible for its development. The TC's decision may also point the judicial path for the democratic memory laws of the Valencian Country and Aragon, also repealed by the PP-Vox binomial, following their denialist policies of Francoism's crimes.Vox has reacted to the news with its usual rhetoric of the communist dictatorship that Spain suffers and all that. More worrying is the PP's reaction: as Anna Mascaró explains in Ara Balears, sources from the parliamentary group of the Peperos say that they are fine with the repeal being suspended, because (as they said, they emphasize) they only voted in favor to have Vox's support to approve the budgets. To say this with so much carelessness and cynicism is truly frightening. Memory laws are among the most delicate and sensitive that a government can manage. They are also a touchstone of a government's democratic quality. To bargain with them with indifference and cold blood indicates that we are facing rulers of more than dubious democratic credibility, and they are not even aware of it.There are things that are better understood by comparison: if the French or German right were to agree not only to govern with the far-right (that alone is already unthinkable, because they practice the cordon sanitaire policy, which is naturally essential), but also to repeal memory laws to approve budgets, the scandal would be indescribable. By the way, to the wise people on duty who oblige us by scolding Mallorcans and Valencians for having PP and Vox governments: keep your paternalism, keep your arrogance, and stop making a fool of yourselves, please.