I wonder if we would be scandalized if the European Commission invited members of the Islamic State to Brussels, the terrorist group that terrorized Europe with attacks and beheaded foreign journalists in front of a camera to then disseminate the images. That's why I'm so surprised that the news that the Commission plans to meet in Brussels in the coming weeks with a delegation of the Taliban, who are more or less like the Islamic State, has gone unnoticed.

“He didn’t get out today either”, says Eglis Manaure, 50, resignedly, as she climbs the stairs leading to her home in a residential block in Guatire, a town about 50 kilometers from Caracas. She smiles and pretends to be normal, but her eyes betray her: she has a profoundly sad look. "I barely sleep. At one in the morning I'm already awake watching the news to see if they've released him,” she confesses. Her husband, Enrique Parada, was arrested more than six years ago, on April 20, 2020, and since then he has been in a prison more than 450 kilometers away, in the city of Maturín, in northeastern Venezuela. To get there, Eglis takes fourteen hours by bus and can only go every three or four months. She has to choose between paying the cost of the ticket or covering the medicines he needs. Her economy doesn't allow for anything else. The man, 45, has pancreatic cancer.

In Barcelona it is impossible to find someone who knows anything about Barcelona. The general response is total silence. Only a young man, after thinking a lot, says: "Ah, yes, you have Barça". Possibly, however, the same would happen in the Catalan capital if we asked what people know about Venezuelan Barcelona. Venezuela, in the same way as Catalonia, has a city called Barcelona. It is the capital of the Anzoátegui region, in the northeast of the country, where a good part of the so-called Orinoco Belt is located, which concentrates the largest oil reserves in the world and which is expected to become the center of foreign investments now after the partial lifting of American sanctions. There, for example, the American Chevron operates.

The direct flight connecting Madrid with Caracas was half empty days ago, and it can be said that the majority of those traveling were Venezuelans. It was easy to distinguish them by their peculiar Latin accent and because, upon arriving at Simón Bolívar International Airport, they waited for their turn to go through immigration control with their Venezuelan passports in hand. “Migration,” read a sign at the counter written in four languages: English, Russian, Chinese, and another with Arabic script. In that order. A good metaphor for Venezuela's disparate international allies after the United States "extracted" Nicolás Maduro from the country on January 3rd.This is how Venezuelans refer to the arrest of the former president of Venezuela and his wife, Cilia Flores. That is, as if it were a rotten tooth that had to be pulled, even if it meant disregarding national sovereignty and international law.

It was almost nine at night and at the emergency admissions desk of the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, two people were attending to the patients arriving. There was a third desk, but it was closed because the worker there was chatting quietly with two other colleagues. Perhaps they were talking about work, but the feeling that they were ignoring those of us waiting was exasperating: if you go to the emergency room, it's precisely because you need someone to attend to you urgently. I had the misfortune of having to go there last Friday to accompany my partner.

Her hair really catches the eye. She herself admits that she feels observed wherever she goes and that she is tired of being stopped in the street to be asked if they can touch her hair or if they simply touch it without her permission. Isabel Balde, 32, has beautiful afro hair. The kind that's a huge ball of curls. "People are not aware that touching someone's hair is invading personal space," she says, as her hairdresser styles it and she looks proudly in the mirror. It wasn't always like this. She used to hate her hair.

A 34-year-old worker at the meat processing company Embutidos Monells, in Sant Miquel de Balenyà (Osona), died on Monday after becoming trapped while operating a machine. It is a company that produces 45% of the bacon sold throughout SpainThe company also specializes in cooked ham, turkey, and cured pork loin. It works with all supermarket chains, and 65% of its products are sold sliced. The company's CEO, Maria Àngels Sebastià, confirmed the accident to the newspaper ARA but declined to provide further information because "it is under investigation by the competent authorities." "We are deeply saddened and deeply regret the loss," she emphasized. The incident occurred around 6:30 a.m. So far, only the worker's age—34—has been released; his nationality has not been specified. The Embutidos Monells factory in Sant Miquel de Balenyà employs approximately 650 people, 55% of whom are foreign nationals from forty different countries. In addition, the company has another production plant in Les Masies de Voltregà, also in Osona, with another 150 workers. Emergency Medical Service (SEM) personnel were dispatched to the factory, but were unable to save the worker's life. Citizen security and investigation patrols from the Vic police station of the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan Police) were also dispatched and reported the accident to the duty magistrate in Vic and the Catalan Government's Department of Business and Labor.

It's a village in Osona with little more than four streets and only about 1,200 inhabitants, but it's home to the meat processing plant that produces 45% of the bacon sold in all of Spain. The company employs more than half the village's population, and 55% of those workers are foreigners from forty different countries. The village is called Sant Miquel de Balenyà and belongs to the municipality of Seva; the meat processing plant is Embutidos Monells. They could be considered an example of what's happening throughout the region, but perhaps taken to an extreme.

Fifty-year-old Sylvie remembers almost vomiting on her first day working in a slaughterhouse. She had to cut the pigs' tongues and hearts with a knife in a room so cold her hands nearly froze. They were enormous pigs, weighing between 80 and 100 kilos, unlike anything she'd ever seen. "In my country, pigs are small. Here, they're as big as cows." And endlessly, one pig after another. Like on an assembly line.

It's a village in Osona with little more than four streets and only about 1,200 inhabitants, but it's home to the meat processing plant that produces 45% of the bacon sold in all of Spain. The company employs more than half the village's population, and 55% of those workers are foreigners from forty different countries. The village is called Sant Miquel de Balenyà and belongs to the municipality of Seva; the meat processing plant is Embutidos Monells. They could be considered an example of what's happening throughout the region, but perhaps taken to an extreme.

Fifty-year-old Sylvie remembers almost vomiting on her first day working in a slaughterhouse. She had to cut the pigs' tongues and hearts with a knife in a room so cold her hands nearly froze. They were enormous pigs, weighing between 80 and 100 kilos, unlike anything she'd ever seen. "In my country, pigs are small. Here, they're as big as cows." And endlessly, one pig after another. Like on an assembly line.

Anti-government protests in Iran continue to escalate. Tonight, massive demonstrations filled the streets of Tehran and other cities across the country, with calls to overthrow the Islamic regime. Authorities responded by cutting off internet access nationwide. Phone lines are down, flights have been canceled, and news websites are only updating intermittently. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered a televised address in which he accused the protesters of acting under the orders of Donald Trump and warned that Iran "will not yield to those who commit acts of vandalism." The trigger for the protests this time was high inflation and the collapse of the local currency, the rial. But after twelve days, the demonstrations are putting the ayatollahs' regime on the ropes. Since December 28, the wholesale shops in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, Iran's economic engine, have been closed. Schools in the capital also suspended classes, and universities canceled end-of-term exams. The mobilizations have spread like wildfire across the country's 31 provinces: there have been demonstrations in more than a hundred cities.

"Praised be the most holy sacrament"," the nun would announce loudly in the middle of the dormitory in the morning. And they, half asleep in bed and with their eyes still stuck shut with sleep, would answer in unison mechanically:May He be forever blessed and praised"The nuns would wake them up like that day after day. Maria Forns remembers it perfectly, even though it was more than half a century ago. She was 16 years old when she was placed in a convent against her will.

She's a woman and an imam. A binomial that is a priori antagonistic. Seyran Ateş She was born in Turkey into a Muslim family but grew up in Germany. A lawyer by profession, she has lived under police protection since 2006. She began receiving death threats because she helped Muslim women who were being forced into marriage. Later, because she published the book Islam needs a sexual revolution (Islam needs a sexual revolution). And finally, because she opened a liberal mosque in Berlin, the Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque, where women and men pray together in the same space. The documentary Seyran Ateş: Sex, Revolution and Islam (Seyran Ateş: sex, revolution and Islam) tells her life story.

These are not low-quality videos, but the opposite. The set is meticulously prepared, the editing is impeccable, and the sound quality is high. The podcast is called Return to the truth and has 46,800 followers on Instagram. "A man needs his wife to be willing when he wants to be with her. And it is forbidden [in Islam] for her to refuse, unless she has a legitimate reason: menstruation, if she is going through a difficult time… (…) Even if she is cooking, she must stop cooking and go," says Sheikh Yusuf Soldado in one of the podcast's videos, talking with other Islamic influencer Aleksandar Petrov, that is even more popular. Petrov has 508,000 followers on Instagram.

What is happening in Spain and Catalonia is not an exception. All European countries face the same challenge: they don't know exactly what is happening in mosques and they have foreign imams with limited knowledge of the language and the country's social, cultural, and legal context. So far, no country has found a solution for this situation, but most have taken steps. These are some of the initiatives.

A thick curtain divides the carpeted room in two. In the smaller section, a couple of women are teaching a group of girls. The larger section, however, is reserved for boys, and the imam and his assistant are in charge of teaching them the Quran and Arabic. There's a bit of a commotion, nothing like the silence that reigns in the mosque during prayer.

A woman chasing a ball was never well-received in Afghanistan. But with the Taliban's rise to power in 2021, it became completely forbidden. Women cannot play football in Afghanistan, nor can they participate in any other sport. However, the Afghan women's national football team has risen from the ashes, returning to the pitch this October and participating in an international competition. All thanks to Khalida Popal, the team's first captain, who refused to give up. "It has been a very proud moment and our way of fighting against the ideology that considers women should stay in the kitchen," she says with conviction. Of course, the road has not been easy.

Altruistically and unconditionally, 55-year-old Àlex Puy Ampurdanés has taken in four of the people who had occupied the former Civil Guard barracks in Sabadell. "If life had always been easy for me, perhaps it wouldn't have occurred to me to take anyone in. But with my experience, I couldn't say no," he explains. Àlex also lived on the streets for years, and he says he only managed to get back on his feet because someone helped him.

She's a woman, Afghan, and a film director. The perfect combination for the Taliban to consider her. persona non grata After having sidelined women from public life and banned cinema in Afghanistan, Roya Sadat (Herat, 1983) is in Catalonia to present her latest film. Sima's song [Sima's song]. Also, this Monday, in the Asian Film Festival Barcelona His documentary will be screened The sharp edge of peace [The Sharp Edge of Peace], focusing on the only four Afghan women who participated in the peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, which ended with the radicals taking Kabul.