In the news from ARA about the company of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's two daughters, which received more than a million euros from companies investigated by the judge, we see a photograph of one of them leaving that company.

The Pope's visit to Catalonia, which counts on Montserrat and Sagrada Família as world emblems of Christian pilgrimage, coincides with the selectivity exams of our hardworking and always most tender adolescents. Among these students, do not doubt it, there are —there must be— our substitutes and who knows if the Pope's own.

We read in ARA

We read in ARA that Jonathan Andic, accused of homicide against his father, Isak Andic, the founder of the Mango clothing stores, has entered the Martorell courts handcuffed and "with his head down".

We read in ARA

The PA system explains to us –both locals and tourists– that once we arrive at Sant Vicenç de Calders, due to the construction work, we will need to take a bus that will take us to Prat de Llobregat, where we can catch another train or the metro. Just in case, once the train arrives at its destination, I quickly get off and –being a boomer as I am– I ask the girl in the pumpkin-colored uniform: “And isn't there a train that goes directly to Barcelona?”. “Oh, yes, but it takes an hour and a half”, she says. Then, I run towards a vacant lot where the queue to get on the vehicle is forming. I see they are counting us. Diligently, I take the front seat because I get motion sickness.

Everyone who presses the train door button, to get on or off, does the same thing, without exception. On the train, on the plane, not so much on the bus or the subway, we are all flustered. They might tell us, as for example, still in the carriage, that when we get off at Sant Vicenç de Calders, those of us going to Vila-seca will have to change trains, to platform 4, because there is construction. We can see this train from the carriage, yes, on platform 4, and know that there are many of us who will get off and take it, and therefore know that it will wait for us. But we arrive at the station and everyone, everyone in front of the door, shows the same behavior: a completely sterile impatience when pressing the button. We press it many seconds before it's time to do so. The train is still stopping. Most of us take trains every day, more than once. We know perfectly well that we have to wait a few seconds, until it has stopped. But we can't help it. We press the button. And our fellow travelers, those who haven't reached out to press the button, making a colossal effort of restraint, look at us worriedly, with a heavy heart, in case today is the day that, because of us, the train leaves with us inside.

Atop the Vesuvius, I addressed the man who ran the drink kiosk and, overcome with wonder, I exclaimed, in my best broken Italian and with those knowing eyes that appear on me without intending to: “Dov'è Pompei?” The man pointed into the distance and said: “È lì”. I was happy. I had asked an interesting question, like a traveler, not a spoiled tourist; I had done it by trying to use his language and I had succeeded. When I was leaving (everything was already clear), I heard other tourists – my gut feeling told me they were Catalan – ask him: “Dov'è Pompei?”, and he, automatically, pointed to a spot in the distance (in another direction) and repeated: “È lì”.

The most serene Isabel Díaz Ayuso has said some words that painfully challenge us. She said them after the Mexican government –incomprehensibly– failed to understand her fervent praise for Hernán Cortés. "We had to disappear. We were in danger," she murmured, on her return to the capital of the motherland.

Two agents of the Mossos d’Esquadra infiltrated a teachers' assembly to spy on how they were preparing for future strikes in the sector. That saying that you last less than a lollipop at the door of a school will have to be changed to “you last less than a cop at a teachers' assembly”. They were discovered immediately.

I take the train, early in the morning, to get to the capital. It will take me an hour and ten minutes, which depending on how you look at it, is little or a lot. It serves me to read, reply to messages, face the day with some calm and think that I won't use the phone again until I return at night. It's a train that runs well (it's the Catalan ones) and should have more frequent service. It's always full of tourists coming and going from Montserrat.

You already know that the new threat, hantavirus, is transmitted through rodent droppings, and those of us who live in the countryside know that humans are in contact with them all day long. Our cats hunt them (and bring them to us), our gardens and fields are full of them. But those of you who live in the city also have them nearby. There are rats in Plaça Catalunya, but also in the warehouse of the shop that just served you this canned drink you are sipping now. The sole of my shoe has surely stepped on mouse droppings in the subway car I took this morning and it may have carried it to the floor of the bar where I am now writing these lines, where it will be swept up by a waiter, who will arrive home and sit down to watch a series with his feet on the sofa table... They tell us, yes, that not all rodents have the disease, that we shouldn't worry if we come into contact with them, and it's safe, because otherwise humanity wouldn't exist. But do rodents also transmit it among themselves? That not all rodents have it doesn't mean things have to continue this way from now on. Swine flu teaches us this.

I'm not one of those who would remove Columbus's statue from the end of La Rambla, because I love folklore. Columbus and the Asland cement factory are my two favorite monuments in the province of Barcelona. I also like the black towers of La Caixa, a lot, but for other, more romantic reasons. I'd like to get lost there...

I telephone – and it’s a rarity to do so – the organizer of a literary festival where I am to "participate" with other colleagues. I had lost the tickets she sent to my mobile and wanted to ask for them again. From the other side of the telephone, and of the sea, she tells me: “Don’t worry, you’ll have them right away.”

Youth ask me, in a tricky way, why ARA doesn't release information about the Esplugues crime, and if it's because they want to hide it. "They're hiding that it's a jihadist attack," they complain. "The man said 'Allah is great,'" they tell me. "Why doesn't ARA publish the video of the man shouting 'Allah is great?'"

In the trial for the Ábalos case, his former advisor at the Ministry of Transport, Koldo García, had to answer this question from the prosecutor: “What are xistorres?” The answer from the man –who faces nineteen years in prison– was what the police suspected: 500 euro banknotes.

What a joy it is to be loved. We read in ARA that the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, has informed us that “Rodalies users will pay again to use the train starting next Saturday, May 9. Thus, the last day to use the railway network for free will be Friday, May 8”.

Junts said no to the rental extension of Sumar-PSOE and we read in ARA that it is a risky stance, “because according to all the polls, housing is the main problem for citizens”. It is true. Renting or buying a flat is unaffordable, not just for young people. And paying rent or the mortgage too. But what would this extension have fixed?

I read that the group Fetus, formed by Adrià Cortadellas, Telm Terradas and Adrià Jiménez, with Carles Belda and Joan Colomo (as producer), are releasing a – to put it in the manner of DJs – “new work”. At l’ARA, where we read that they dedicate their minstrelsy art to issues like the PSC, Aliança Catalana and Rodalies, they say this: "On this album they have called us chroniclers and we agree. In the end, it is all an exercise in understanding the ballad as a predecessor of the press and wanting to claim and reinterpret it as a genre that often has a certain objectivity, but the mere fact of singing it is already a political act in itself".