The first heat arrives and you're very excited to buy peaches, watermelon, cherries. But where you live, it's not their season yet. The shops, however, know that you don't know when their season is, and if you vaguely seem to remember, you don't care. Then, they fill the shelves with watermelons, peaches, cherries at a ransom price. You bite the hook and buy them. They are fruits from Africa or America, harvested green so they can spend a month on a ship. They have sugar, look, and little else. And then, when the season for local fruit finally arrives, you're already bored of eating fruit from elsewhere, and on top of that, the local fruit is more expensive.

While I was reading a news article about theoutfit an accurate one from one of Leticia's two daughters – who seem to grow bigger every day, while she seems to shrink – an advertisement appeared to me. The text, in Spanish, read as follows: “Does it make you enjoy when you get their tastes right at the table? Imagine when you also get it right in bed. Enjoy what makes you enjoy”. They were condoms from the reputable brand Control, with hyaluronic acid (which keeps the skin soft and young).

Since we're talking about the human race, it was only a matter of days before we read that in Ceuta, the courts have already "received half a dozen complaints for sexual assaults linked to the context of irregular arrival”. Four or five girls under 14 years of age "have been attended to urgently by health services due to possible abuse" and the Ministry of Equality and the local government "have activated protocols for monitoring and supporting victims".

A group from Sagunt has created a poster, as a lure for the municipal festivities, with the drawing of a laughing woman being penetrated by a bull and a slogan that illustrates it: "A hole is a hole; for an afternoon it's fine". The Vox spokesperson for the City Council took a photo with a t-shirt printed with the poster and his party spread it online, because it is "an honor" —I translate— "to see how the neighbors keep alive the identity, effort, and unity that characterize our municipality". The Feminist Coordinator of Camp de Morvedre has denounced the poster for being "clearly denigrating" and an attack "against women's rights".

In the newspaper ARA, a report about young people struggling to survive in Ceuta, who came from Morocco by swimming, gives a voice to a young man who “doesn’t want to return to Morocco, where he assures it’s impossible to earn a living. That the salary in his country is low”.

Perhaps waiting for the rain is old-fashioned, I think, while I wait for the rain (the “sudden, unthinkable rain”, as the Valencian said). Outside, continuous thunder can be heard, which sounds like the buzzing of planes, because it doesn’t stop, and it’s not sunny. It hasn’t rained for three months, and I no longer remember if back then, when I was little, when the old people said it hadn’t rained for so long, that much time had passed like now. Children, back then, wanted rain to wear the kangaroo (like a fanny pack) and wellington boots. Like the children now, we didn’t want umbrellas. The umbrella, like waiting for the rain, was for old people.

When we say “we need immigrants because they do the jobs we don’t want to do”, I don’t feel comfortable. The jobs we don’t want to do are apparently always cleaning. People tell you they’d rather be prostitutes than clean and care for the elderly (who need to be cleaned). I don’t want to “need” immigrants. I want society to be able to absorb immigrants in a way that they do all sorts of jobs. My model is English literature. Kazuo Ishiguro, Hanif Kureishi, Vikram Seth, children of immigrants and brilliant authors in the host language, are part of the dream team of British letters.

The man, wearing an empire-style t-shirt and shorts, pushes the wheelchair with a look of half embarrassment, half annoyance. Willingly and unwillingly, he makes a sudden movement to get it onto the sidewalk. The woman sitting in it, in a summer dress, with a baguette (one of those from a bakery with no workshop) on her lap, is startled, like a fish in a pan, by the jolt. Her gesture is deliberately exaggerated. Her hands are twisted. She can't use them. She holds them in front of her chest, symmetrically, like a cartoon dog. Her eyes are so sad that no one can meet her gaze without pressing their mouth like a turtle.

Most of the deaths in the Ceuta events are Moroccan or sub-Saharan adolescents who responded to a call from social media, a call like a game or a gamble. Who pushed them, who incited and encouraged them? What were they looking for? What were the person or people who made the call, so effective, looking for?

Yesterday a photo, and today, another. Young people, between fourteen and twenty years old – I would say, teenagers – all in the water, standing, arriving at the beach, already touching the sand. They all have fashionable haircuts, the two-layer kind, like footballers'. Most of them are shirtless and show thin, toned bodies. Those who are wearing shirts have "decided" on them. They are shirts (wet, of course) with a drawing, a slogan, a photo. "If I die, let them find me well-dressed," they must have thought. There's one wearing a Lakers logo. Another, the Real Madrid kit. Some are still wearing the tire, which we mentioned yesterday. A tire that's meant to be a joke: an imitation of a truck's wheel. Two of them, and it's curious, are carrying their flip-flops in their hands, placed as if their hands were feet. Maybe they helped them swim. Maybe they wanted to keep them, whatever the case, so they wouldn't walk barefoot through the city when they arrived. "This is very important; shoes will save you from the police!" the mafia members must have told them. One of them is holding his mobile phone and seems to be taking a photo. Maybe he held it up high the whole time or protected it with aluminum foil. The phone shows us Europe made into a reel, but it's also the connection with those who have stayed behind.

Tens of thousands of people, says the Ministry of the Interior, have swum the distance separating one side of the border from the other and have managed to reach Ceuta, the theoretical Europe. Of all of them, dozens have drowned. That swimming for kilometers is dangerous, even artificial intelligence tells you, which always agrees with you.

Let's talk about the PISA tests, after this error that (fortunately) leaves Catalonia out of comparisons. In order to assess the level – or if you prefer level, competencies– of the students, from each community the institutes are chosen, and once the institutes are chosen, the students, just like when political surveys are done. Because in surveys, in sampling, that thing of “Spain is one and not fifty-one".

We read in ARA that the visitor service workers at the Sagrada Família are on strike to denounce "extreme" climatic and labor conditions. Apparently, many end their workday at the infirmary due to heatstroke, dehydration, and dizziness. It says they work an 11-hour shift “without being able to sit down” and are requesting “handheld fans and appropriate changing rooms,” among other measures. Temple officials are already installing sunshades and fresh water points wherever they can, apparently.

Today, in ARA, there is a news story about Sanna Marin, the Finnish prime minister who left politics for having gone, in 2021, to a nightclub despite having been exposed to coronavirus and, above all, for having had fun at a party in her "official residence." A few days ago, also in the newspaper, another prime minister appeared, the one from Japan, with a similar font name, Sanae, and a completely opposite behavior: she made public that she sleeps little. On X she wrote, not long ago, that she had managed to sleep "five complete hours of sleep for the first time in a long time. Since I took office as prime minister, sleeping between one and three hours has been the usual." (allow me this "lo", readers, for the sake of colloquialism.)

“I'm going to Catalunya Ràdio, to Diagonal-Beethoven,” I tell him absentmindedly to the taxi driver. Any taxi driver who has passed the taxi driver exam knows where this station is, or, if they don't, they know how to identify the streets I've mentioned. The man looks at me and makes no gesture. “There, at Via Veneto,” I tell him, then. Because Via Veneto is also the restaurant all taxi drivers know. He opens his eyes wider. He says nothing. I understand that he doesn't know what I'm talking about, but since he doesn't speak, I don't know if he's unaware of the address or the language I'm speaking to him in. “At Francesc Macià,” I say, then. He opens them even wider.

We read in ARA that the mural in Obradors street dedicated to the Spanish coach Luis de la Fuente in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter "appeared vandalized less than 24 hours after it was painted". The painting, which is the work of artist Alberto León, shows – or rather, used to show – the coach with the World Cup after Spain's victory in the Football World Cup.

We read in ARA that heat kills more at night than during the day in Barcelona and that experts say “there is a generalized overestimation of heating needs and an underestimation of cooling needs”. It says we are starting from “a past climate” and that “urgent reforms are needed for both the Technical Building Code and the energy certification system”.

We read an article in ARA about the new regulation that prohibits smoking on bar terraces, university campuses, and music festivals. The large photo illustrating the article, by Júlia González Grego, shows us three beings sitting on a terrace smoking. These three beings, who are hinted to be members of the discriminated-against, the guirior collective, are not the worst thing they do. One of them has taken off his socks (his feet must be sweating). By this I mean that if the waiter comes to the sock-wearer and tells him not to smoke, he won't care, if you'll allow the summery pun. On campuses and at music festivals, things will be even worse. Who will tell students (and professors) not to smoke on the grass? Who will administer justice? Some bikers in black jackets that say “Vaping Angels”?

We read in ARA that the spokesperson for Vox in the Parliament, Joan Garriga, and the spokesperson for the PP, Lorena Roldán, "have asked this Tuesday that the chamber officially receive the Spanish national football team and honor the World Cup champions", considering that it is a "shared joy" for all citizens. How lucky we are in life to have these two political heroes, who, unintentionally, agree for the common good, without thinking about partisanship.

We want a Catalan sports team, of course, like the Scots, because it's logical and because everyone aspires to a bit of banal nationalism. But we don't want politicians from one side to ask for it, because they put a flock of sheep to sleep, and the victimist tone and false "we demand" are much hotter. Nor do we want those from the other side to talk about Spanish uninhibitedness, because there can be no Spanish uninhibitedness with Franco's heir, "Felipe VI" (such was the name he wore on the shirt with which he watched the semi-final, so sadly) on the throne. Uninhibitedness means the usual, whether we're talking about football, trains, or the Mediterranean diet. Some have to put in the effort and others receive the Michelin star. I would like the teams to be requested by the clubs, the players, the members of those clubs. Those who would sing Els segadors with fervor, because it has lyrics, unlike the Spanish anthem. And it doesn't have them for one reason: it "used to" have them. In Spain, everything comes from before.