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).

French historian Johann Chapoutot has delved into Weimar Germany to see who made Hitler's rise to power possible. He examines this in detail in The Irresponsible (Angle Editorial, translated by Andreu Gomila). Now that we see, here and everywhere, how many people buy the fatalistic and angry narrative of the far-right ("first our own"), this reading is well worth it. The parallels are so evident that they are unsettling. It is a book that emotionally refers, and provides the entire historical context, to The White Ribbon, the icy film by Michael Haneke.

This Friday marks 150 years since the death of the engineer Ildefons Cerdà, creator of Barcelona's Eixample and father of modern urban planning. In our tortured 19th century, he embodied the progressive enlightened spirit. There are people with a powerful personality who mark an era. Cerdà, a social scientist and politician, a man of thought and action, was one of them. But he was not alone. He had good influences and good friends, such as the economist Laureà Figuerola, the hygienist and humanist Felip Monlau, and the geographer Pascual Madoz.

Lluís Bonet i Armengol, rector of the Sagrada Família parish for 25 years, died this Friday at the age of 95. His figure is intimately associated with the Gaudí temple, of which he was an ecclesiastical and human reference, in addition to being the brother of the architect who continued the works, Jordi Bonet, who died in 2022, at the age of 97.

The leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, has proposed a major political, social, and technical pact for a team of experts to lead the Department of Education for a decade, thus setting aside the partisan struggle and the professional bad blood in which the system has become mired. In the middle of August, the proposal has all the makings of passing without a ripple. The school year will probably start again in September with strikes. And the results of the botched PISA test will be made public. In other words, we will remain stuck in educational defeatism, which is the sure path to failure as a country. Does anyone else have any ideas to break the vicious cycle and enter a virtuous one?

There is debate about when human control of fire began. For hundreds of thousands of years there were only flames due to natural fires caused by lightning or volcanoes. But a day came when our ancestors were able to take fire from nature and maintain and transport it, although not yet produce it. This semi-appropriation must have happened between one million and 790,000 years ago. Scientists do not agree. Perhaps someone remembers the hypnotic film Quest for Fire (1981), by Jean-Jacques Annaud.The mastery of fire –the generation of fire by rubbing wood or striking stones– fully entered human societies 50,000 years ago. That is a lot and not so much. It was a fabulous technological revolution. Since then, we have been able to cook –and greatly improve our diet–, warm ourselves, light ourselves at night, better protect ourselves from all kinds of beasts and enemies, forge metal... Also to wage war more brutally among ourselves.

Democracy comes from demos (people) and kratia (power, authority). Aristocracy comes from aristos (the best): the power of the best. But by becoming hereditary power, the best ceased to be so. The best thing is to combine democracy with meritocracy, a government of the people in which positions are held by those who have the most merit, those who deserve it.

Suffocating heat. Chained waves of heat. A lot. We don't stop drinking liquids and we'd spend the day in the water: the sea, the river, the pool, under the shower. We'd like to live soaking wet. Are we clear about the privilege of opening the tap and always getting a good stream? Millions of people suffer from water scarcity in urban environments. And at the same time, they feel the recurrent threat of cold drops (DANAS). Viewed globally, water is not a scarce resource: it is simply poorly distributed. Technology helps a lot, but it's not everything. Everywhere, agriculture-livestock-fishing, tourism, and urban planning generate needs that are difficult to balance. AI has just been added to the intensive demand for water.