"More than ever, I don't know who to vote for." It is a common phrase these days. The distance between desire –one's own ideas and feelings– and reality –what the parties offer–, normal when it comes to going to the polls, has widened. The temptation to abstain is growing. But if one does not go, then one cannot complain about the result, right? The "let them deal with it" attitude doesn't work because, in the end, they also end up acting –governing– for you. So, what then? A useful vote?

The great love of Roberto Saviano (Naples, 1979) is the love of truth, a passion that almost led him to his death. When he was still a young man in his twenties, passionate, he wrote the work that has marked his entire life, Gomorrah (2006). Ever since then, he has been under a death threat. It cannot be easy at all to wake up every day under police protection, wherever you are, wherever you go. Perhaps his bitter survival is today a propaganda tool for the Camorristi or perhaps the vengeance will eventually arrive. Meanwhile, he takes advantage of the only space of true freedom that remains for him, that of writing. He does the only thing he knows how to do: write in search of some kind of truth. Depending on how you look at it, this is a lot or very little.

Today as we advance with a firm step towards the abyss of a dark post-fascist Spain (and with the danger also close at hand of our own intransigent Catalonia), one can always take refuge in the trunk of memory to rescue a benevolent image of what we are, or what we would like to think we are. I now hold on to the memory of a character who has suddenly become close to me again, Montserrat Roig, of whom I was an obsessed reader of the articles on the back cover of the Avui, collected after her death in the volume Un pensament de sal, un pessic de pebre. Roig practiced a free, critical, and intelligent feminism. We could use the same adjectives to define her journalism and her civic, political, and cultural commitment to the country, always tinged with a cosmopolitan outlook. Montserrat had traveled and read a lot.

The monster has monstrous ideas. The Big Boss is not a madman. Who feeds his boastful ego? Who breathes airs of greatness and superiority into him? Where does he get the ideological fuel that guides his immense power? Who are, in short, his intellectual gurus? In the essay The Dark Enlightenment(Edicions 62, translated by Mireia Alegre), the French political scientist Arnaud Miranda has dived into the bowels of the neo-reactionary thought that feeds the insatiable beast. Donald Trump's ultra-presidentialist policy is a frenetic combination of techno-futurism, national-populism and ultra-reaction. Those who write his script have first and last names, and are supported by billionaires of the tech. Let's get to know this barbaric galaxy.

What do you vote for, parties or people? In general, I recommend focusing more on the parties, that is to say, on the ideology or the program that inspires them, rather than on the proper names at the helm. People pass, organizations remain. And if they don't remain, it is often precisely because of hyper-leadership. That is what happened to Pujol’s Convergència. Sooner or later, we will have to see what happens to Puigdemont’s Junts. At the same time, it is also true that without a strong leader it is difficult to keep any organization cohesive: whether it is a party, an institution, a company, or an association. The balance between the group and the personality that heads it is never simple.

Josep Oriol Pujol Humet has held responsibilities at the Pere Tarrés Foundation for forty years, which is dedicated to leisure education and currently has more than 100 socio-educational centers and more than 200 federated youth clubs. Trained as a psychologist at the UB and as a business manager at Esade, he was manager and director of the Summer Camp Service (16 years) and general director (24 years), a position from which he is now retiring. Pujol Humet has been key in the strengthening and professionalization of the organization. But he leaves with a bittersweet taste due to the moment of social crisis that the country is experiencing and the internal unrest caused by the reports of interference by Archbishop Joan Josep Omella in the foundation.

Truth, respect, and loyalty have become symbols of weakness. This was stated by psychiatrist Léon Wurmser and adopted by Byung-Chul Han in the essay Disrespect: A Social Crisis (Edicions 62, and Paidós in Spanish). Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world, perfectly embodies lies, mockery, and disloyalty: shamelessness (lack of shame) or, as the author says, "demoralizing hypermoralism" of an arrogant petulant. Right now, one only needs to see what he is doing with Ukraine.

We have fully entered the tainted electoral race. We are starting to hear more nonsense than usual, gross demagoguery. And not only from politicians, but also in the popular echo on social media, in bars, in homes. The media, some increasingly specialized in infoxication, contribute to it in abundance.

The primitive arithmetic of love is that "one plus one makes two, but one plus one plus one doesn't make three, but rather makes one too many". Can two people love each other, in the romantic sense, at the same time? Without a doubt: it is perfectly possible. We have polyamory, we have open relationships... But in practice, it is complicated. This is the core of the book by Theodor Kallifatides that now reaches us: Love (Galàxia Gutenberg, translation by Elsa Compte). Love, according to Kallifatides, who we never know if he is the protagonist of his novels, but who often seems to be. Also in this case.

I run into Albert Sánchez Piñol on the street. We hadn't seen each other for years. I was once an avid reader of his. He likes a bit of action, and within seconds we are already arguing about politics, of course. A hasty dialectical combat. But neither I, nor the person accompanying me, an ex-girlfriend of his, have any intention of convincing him: we already know what he thinks. Annoyed, he turns on his heel and leaves. That's Albert! He has a hot temper. Surely we agree on one thing: both he and I only know how to read and write, nothing more. Naturally, he writes muuuuch better.

This month marks 800 years since the death of Saint Francis of Assisi. He passed away on October 3, 1226. He was 45 years old and practically blind. It is believed that the progressive loss of vision, and the tearing that affected him, which is reproduced in some paintings, was the result of a painful infectious disease: trachoma, which causes wounds on the surface of the eye and the cornea. He must have contracted it on his trip to Egypt in 1219. The visionary man who had sung to "brother Sun" was entering into darkness.

Life takes many turns. Larry Williams, 66, a successful builder from Vermont, is the new master of the Montjoi de Baix farmhouse and this entire small valley located on the southern slope of the Cap de Creus Natural Park, within the municipality of Roses. A rural paradise right by the sea. A place occupied by men and women since time immemorial, rich in flora and fauna and rich, too, in stories more legendary than documented, which now, however, are becoming real. It is, moreover, the stretch of coast where Ferran Adrià performed the culinary miracle of El Bulli.

We are in a global climate crisis. Planetary warming is not stopping. The struggle of the inhabitants of the Earth is life or death... But in a tiny corner of this overpopulated globe, in southern Europe, there is a small country whose inhabitants, stubborn, are not willing to change their lifestyle to contribute to saving humanity. They refuse to have their landscapes stained with windmills and solar panels. They make many excuses, some apparently –locally– reasonable. But the result is that they continue to burn large quantities of oil and consume gas, and they have no choice but to extend the life of their dilapidated nuclear power plants, which is not recommended at all.

If we Catalans were monarchists, like the British, James I the Conqueror would be a central figure in our popular imagination. But it has been several centuries since we lost our own dynasty. That is why we have embraced republicanism. The passionate Carlist substitute—traditionalist and rural—has also passed into history for over a century now. For all these reasons, only a mythical shadow and a shall we say friendly indifference remain of the Conqueror. What do people know about his life, his politics, his warrior ardor? Very little. And he is our great king.

The figure of Ada Colau emerged in the fight for decent and affordable housing for everyone. A youthful activism that eventually led her to become the first female mayor of Barcelona when she was 41 years old. From the position (2015-2023), despite two terms in power, the progress in housing policies was limited, frustrating. It remains the great problem in the Catalan capital and in all large cities. One only needs to look at the promises that have led to the victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York and Elif Eralp in Berlin: access to housing is marking the emergence of a new progressivism. The phenomenon is making its way into the urban world, where the problem is bleeding and where the left-wing vote usually carries more weight. Madrid, so tilted towards populist right-wing, is a global exception.

It is very different when someone who has experienced it firsthand talks to you about immigration than someone who has not. That is why I wanted to read the essay Class boundaries (Anagrama, 2025), by the Albanian political scientist Lea Ypi, professor at the London School of Economics, author of the now famous book Free. She was able to leave her country under very difficult circumstances, when they were supposed to be free and everything was collapsing after the late fall of communism. From the sidelines, it is easy to theorize and pontificate: only let the legal ones in, hire at the source, return them while still hot... Has anyone seen the 2023 movie Me Captain, by Matteo Garrone?It narrates the dramatic journey of Seydou and Moussa, two 16-year-old Senegalese cousins who leave their hometown, Dakar, to try to reach Italy. It is based on true stories. Pope Francis, impressed, received the two actors who starred in it at the Vatican.

Isabel has her mother and her father-in-law, both elderly; she is in her nineties and he is almost there. It is a problem. Phew! For her mother, she has found two caregivers who live in the village: a young girl from Honduras, Carolina, who is sweet and hardworking, and an older one, María, about to retire, who came from Córdoba as a little girl and has managed as best she could her whole life. María often goes to the mother's house with her granddaughter, Naiara, who keeps them both entertained: she dances sevillanas for them and does her homework. Carolina stays at night. She is pregnant now. We will see how she manages in a few months. But what drive and charm she has. She also cleans houses during the day. María has done that for years.

Perhaps some of you have read the monumental SPQR by Mary Beard, the work of a lifetime of research on ancient Rome. In her new book, the author places us in the intimate interior of that research, with a piece of advice: "The underlying message is that you get much more out of the classics if you revere them less". A phrase that we can apply to all our inclinations: hobbies, habits, beliefs, politics, sports... It is not bad to take a bit of distance, a therapeutic dose of skepticism towards what we consider "ours". It is about doing so, however, without losing the passion, for example, the one that Mary Beard has dedicated to ancient history, and which she now serves to us with amenity in the autobiographical text Classics Unfiltered (Columna, in translation by Joan Solé).

The election results in Saxony-Anhalt have fallen like a bucket of cold water on Germany and Europe as a whole. The continental wave of the far-right, which at one point seemed to be slowing down, has suddenly returned to the heart of Nazi amnesia. And it has received the applause of Trump-Musk-Putin. The AfD is pro-Kremlin and wants support for Ukraine to stop. The worst ghosts of anti-democratic xenophobia hover over the Old Continent.

Pilar Rahola Martínez reached a moment, during the 'Procés', when she became the organic and ubiquitous talk show guest of the independence movement. She was everywhere, pontificating about everything, supposedly knowing everything. Until everything went to rack and ruin and she disappeared. Some illustrious Rahola ancestors who preceded her were also, in their time, prominent figures: lawyers, politicians, businessmen, doctors, bankers, architects, editors... And they also disappeared, of course. Nothing lasts forever. We could say that she is the last—so far—of an energetic and influential Empordà lineage. The journalist and writer Xavier Febrés reviews their relevant figures in Els Rahola, una saga infinita (Editorial Gavarres).