Our parents or your grandparents followed, in the old way, the arrival of man on the Moon, on television, that July of 1969. We called him “man”, because we used the generic to mean “humanity” or “human being”, but also because the astronauts who stepped on it were men. We remember their names and their words. Those of Neil Armstrong: “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. The rocket was called Apollo 11 (the name of the god of medicine and masculine beauty).

We read in ’ARA that Vox resorts to Catalan only in the regions where Sílvia Orriols' party is strong. They have made posters with the slogan of Plataforma per Catalunya, “First our own people”, in one language or another, depending on the market, and so on. In the provinces of Barcelona and Tarragona you will see the posters in Spanish, while in Girona and Lleida you will see them in Catalan.

We writers are invited, around Sant Jordi, to talk about the paper-paste article that we have had the joy and audacity to create. “I haven't finished the book”, Basté told me, apologizing. I know authors who get offended or upset if the journalist hasn't read them. But does the journalist need to have read a book, seen a movie, listened to a record, or gone to a restaurant to interview the author? It seems to me that it's not necessary. That, sometimes, it is, perhaps, desirable. Cultural journalists often make this joke: “We are eternal readers of half a book”. Tomorrow they will have another one, and the day after tomorrow another one. Books should be enjoyed calmly (without eternity) and abandoned if necessary, because sometimes it's necessary, like series. The journalist's questions don't necessarily have to be about the plot. It seems to me that an interview with Melville (I love Melville) shouldn't be about cetaceans, even though, of course, on a day like today we would ask him about that extraordinary video we saw on ARA, which shows that whales, my goodness, help each other to give birth. Interviews are advertisements, and it doesn't matter if the author talks about their childhood or what they think of Donald Trump.

I read in ARA a very good interview by David Miró with a politician who, without me agreeing with him at all, I find brilliant. Alejandro Fernández, a man who I think loves music and cooking. Talking about the frigate that Pedro Sánchez has sent to Cyprus, he says: “It doesn’t matter, John Lennon isn’t there singing Imagine

The headline leaves me stunned. Donald Trump explained on Fox News that "Iran asked him for a seven-day truce in attacks on power plants and other energy facilities, but that he granted them ten." Apparently, Tehran is "very grateful" to him.

We hear on the radio about Noelia's case, the girl who by the time these lines are read will have received euthanasia. They have spoken to us about it. We know her father opposes it with the support of Christian Lawyers. But the difference is that, a few days ago, she gave an interview on television. Then "Noelia's case" goes from being general to specific. The girl talks about her father. The father said: grandmagrandma was hell." The case is not "just" a paraplegic girl who wants to die. It's a girl who was raped and, as a reaction, tried to commit suicide without succeeding.

Colleague Carles Rebassa, winner of the Sant Jordi Prize for the novel Prometheus in a thousand ways, he tweeted: "I don't know what's going on. More than a week after Sant Jordi's Day, not a single institutional representative, from Barcelona or Mallorca, has congratulated me. What's going on?"

The bakery, the only establishment open at the intersection where I'll be picked up in the early hours, has a Catalan name that suggests tradition. The young, uniformed, Latina workers speak Spanish. Many of the customers do too. To avoid the cold from the automatic glass door, which opens and stays open, I stand at the back of the establishment. The speaker with the music is above me. Reggaeton songs play nonstop, and I understand that it's more for the enjoyment of the workers than the customers. I can do nothing but pry.

The Brotherhood of the Blood of Sagunto, which is an extraordinary name, has rejected, once again, by majority vote, the admission of women as members of the brotherhoodThe Spanish government, ever eager, pressured to make it a mixed-gender event, but alas, 267 members of the brotherhood voted against it. 114 voted in favor. Rejected, just like in 2022. This time, however, a threat loomed: the withdrawal of the National Tourist Interest designation.

"Welcome to Clos de Ca Gras. I invite you to a calçotada and I'll make the sauce for you," she tells us. It's Pilar Dolç, a surname—what sonorous surnames, Catalans!—that seems to have predestined her in the kitchen. She's the daughter of farmers and now, at seventy-eight, she's still going strong.

We read in the ARA What are the Spanish government's measures to stop the rise in oil prices, which is causing everything else to go up, with or without cause? It's obvious that the barrels of oil we're consuming today were in the warehouses of the world's powerful elite, and that they raised the price to keep things moving. And it's obvious that the vegetables from overseas that you consume (I avoid them) arrived by plane and ship months ago, and that the cold storage facilities where they were kept months ago were also powered by electricity that hadn't yet become so expensive, triggering this domino effect we half-concocted. The government's measures are to lower the VAT on fuel, gas, and electricity. Amid the usual tug-of-war between parties (now I'm asking for more, so it looks like I'm putting pressure on you, now I can't grant you this so I don't look like a pushover), Sumar has managed to include, for now, "the automatic extension of rent."

We read in the ARA This headline: "Black Thursday on World Stock Exchanges." It refers, of course, to the fact that the notorious US president is shaking up the stock market with his all-you-can-eat attitude toward the world. The stock exchanges are the stock market. We all understand that, just as when we say "the papers" we understand that we mean newspapers.

There are people born to scold others, and there are people born to be scolded by others. I am (perhaps like many of you) one of the scolded. It seems that the more power or property we are given, or that we grant ourselves, the more argumentative we become. The more polite we are, the more argumentative we become. Do we hire an accountant to help us with the bills? They'll scold us about the bills. Do we go to a restaurant that we pay exorbitant prices for, and we're not very hungry or we're very hungry? The waiter will give us a hard time. If we take a taxi so we can get somewhere quickly, the taxi driver will scold us for not taking things slowly. Except for the lady at Google Maps, everyone scolds us.

Suddenly, an impulse. I was going to smile, to make that face, half you make when the sun bothers you, half you make when you see someone has hurt themselves, but I don't. I stop. The girl was speaking to me hurriedly, quickly, with a singsong voice I've sometimes heard in the supermarket queue when they ask me about rounding up and the answer is no.

I'm attending the Night of Catalan Literature at the MNAC. My colleague Xavi Bosch and I are presenting the awards, and we've been able to read the chronicleWe award the Mercè Rodoreda Prize for short stories, which used to be called the Víctor Català Prize (I wouldn't have changed the name). The ceremony is broadcast on television and radio, and that's a good thing, because literature should be an industry, and that's what they call it. glamorSince it's a literary gala, the presenters don't joke around much. The stage is elegant, and the award is lit up in pink like a cheap lamp. I'd love to win two literary prizes just to have two and put them on my nightstands. The old one (I have it in my bookstore, my dear Mercè Rodoreda) was made of pumpkin-shaped wax.

We read in the ARA that "the second woman who accused Íñigo Errejón, in this case of rape, has not ratified the facts before the judge." Her lawyer says that his client is an actress "of recognized public notoriety and potential," and has decided to act this way—the case is provisionally dismissed—because "she is very anxious and fears that her identity will be revealed."

For work reasons, I live and share meals with a group of young people in their twenties and thirties. I've cooked with young people before, of course, but the meals were always prepared or paid for by me. This is different—we eat with a few scrapes from work—because I can observe their culinary habits and customs.

Wonderful news has reached us from the Middle East. Twenty camels have been disqualified from a beauty contest, the 2026 Camel Beauty Festival, held in Muscat, the capital of Oman. The animals, who were probably participating unwittingly, and whose gender is unknown, had been "touched up" with Botox to make them more attractive.

The technology of war (what they call "the arms race") has gone so far that, paradoxically, wars are more "homemade" than ever. Iran was about to manufacture nuclear weapons, figure, and that's why it's being attacked, figure. Iran could defend itself from the attack by finalizing and using the nuclear weapons that were the target of the attack, but it doesn't because then the western part of the world would have been destroyed, and perhaps the eastern part, to some extent. This war will last and last, and there will be dead and maimed soldiers, destroyed buildings, orphaned children, hunger, and disease.

We read in the ARA about the book by British journalist Ellen AtlantaVirtual Diva(Deusto, 2025), where he criticizes the business ofinfluencers"as a symptom of what millions of girls and women experience today," who "feel compelled" to imitate and admire her content. The publication discusses the model andinfluencerKylie Jenner, who embodies a "patriarchal beauty standard that is becoming increasingly strict, but disguised as female empowerment."