We have teachers on strike – and this weekend they are demonstrating – but there is another group (and you will understand me if I say it is quieter) that is also doing so: librarians. In principle, the strike was only in Barcelona, but it has spread throughout Catalonia. They denounce the lack of labor recognition and the consequences of the new agreement.

The choice of Catalan by the Pope on his visit to Montserrat is a very important gesture because of its "logic". In the monastery, there were groups of fervent people who made themselves heard a lot. The "jóvenes del Papa", who rhymed "León" with "mola mogollón" or the gentleman who shouted "¡Viva el Papa y viva la virgen!". Alongside this, the parishioner who tried a local "Visca sa santedat el Papa!", had a lot of merit, because Catalans – they know it urbi et orbi– are not so expansive.

“You can connect to Movistar Papa2, Movistar Papa3, or Montserrat Wifi,” a journalist from Regió 7 explains to me. It’s almost eleven, all the faithful who have managed to get a spot, after the paperwork, to see the Pope in Montserrat have been in their assigned places for hours. Cordoned off – if you’ll forgive the rough word that has been used, all these days of paperwork – by fences in different areas. We, the reporters, are in a press room, in the majordomo’s building, with an imposing balcony overlooking the square, with the mountain in the background. Impossible to maintain atheism here.

Miriam Nogueras, from Junts, took advantage of the greeting, as a politician, to the Pope, to urge him to use Catalan in the events at the Sagrada Família. Then, Gabriel Rufián, from Esquerra, sent a tweet, in Spanish, which said: “Turra is coming. An absolutely bland and content-free event will fill the digital media and Catalan media circuit for days. Trivial but effective nationalism. Then to vote with PP and Vox, of course. Pure convergent mental hijacking”. And here comes the spokesperson for the Popular Party in Parliament, Juan Fernández, “has attacked the independence movement for demanding that the pontiff defend Catalan and has blamed it for the «failure of linguistic policies»" (the independence movement, not the Pope, poor man).

Admired Rosa Romà, president of the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals, which everyone knows as the Corpo:

I am writing these lines from a cafe, in Barcelona, the kind that has wifi and where they don't judge you if you write for a while (and they also don't want to serve you toast with alvoexpat). There's a driver who has left his car in a no-parking zone to quickly go buy something at L'Ametller. He didn't realize that by leaving it on that corner, he's blocking the bus, which is stuck in the middle of the road. The chaos is phenomenal. And lulled by the sound of horns, I hear, on El matí de Catalunya Ràdio, the mayor of Barcelona. He says he will eliminate the service of I am therefore calling on all users, especially tourists, who use them. There is very, very little time left and the rate of fines cannot be reduced! The service must continue to be a disaster until 2027. You must rent bikes and park them wherever you feel like it (or wherever your ramen is), as you have been doing. You must rent bikes and abandon them in the middle of the sidewalk, because you're too lazy to park them where they belong and you prefer to get a fine that you won't pay. You must hurry across pedestrian crossings, trying to run over any grandmother crossing with her walker. You must ring your bell, with pleased hysteria, in the Francesc Macià lane, when someone crosses your path with the noble and extravagant intention of catching a taxi from the stand and hasn't brought – to avoid stepping on your sacred path – Doraemon's gorrocòpter

Dear bureaucrats of Europe who, nestled in gamer chairs, make decisions about our way of life and being:

Pope Leo XIV, who will visit us soon, has appointed prefect of the dicastery of communication: which is what would be the head of press for heavenly affairs. Hold the mares: she is a woman and she is lay. If it is already difficult to have directors of conventional newspapers, imagine having one in the Vatican. She is the first, therefore, to lead a papal office, in the midst of that – and forgive me all and even all – immaculate turnip field. When Garrofa, from Pitarra's Pastorets, returns from hell, he says: “I can tell you wonders...! / The demons are female.” This informs us of what it means for a woman to lead Vatican News, Vatican Radio, L'Osservatore Romano, Vatican Media (audio, image, and video services), the Holy See Press Office, the Vatican Publishing House, the Vatican Printing Press, and the Vatican Film Library. And here I go, after an elegant and even feminine full stop.

We often say that politics seems like a schoolyard, and we say it to indicate childish attitudes on the part of leaders, who precisely if they have to seem like anything to us, it should be "parents", not "children". We've said it lightly and we've said it more times than we should. But here it is, today I open the ARA and I come across the words that leader Trump dedicates to leader Netanyahu. And I tell myself yes, that the phrase to define him had never made so much sense. He told him this (we translate as best we can): "You are a fucking crazy person. If it weren't for me, you'd be in jail. I'm saving your ass. Everyone hates you. Everyone hates Israel for what you're doing".

The master's student's mother occasionally forces him to glance at the newspaper, especially if it carries news about his future profession. “Here, read this!”, she tells him this morning. And she hands him her mobile phone with the ARA news. She waits behind him, because if she sent it to him on WhatsApp, she knows he wouldn't look at it. The text says that teachers “have displayed banners and chanted slogans against the pre-agreement, which they describe as a patch because, they assure, it focuses mainly on pay aspects but does not address the problems affecting the daily life of educational centers”.

“A coffee with milk and two croissants, these, with ham and cheese”, I tell her. She opens her eyes not like plates, like platters, like trays, like saucers, like industrial lids. She says nothing. She stares at me without moving a muscle. Not a word. So, I stare back at her. Her and me, staring at each other intently, like in a duel. Finally, to break the ice, I say: “Yes?” That slightly impertinent “yes” you use when you think someone hasn’t understood you but should have, or when someone is distracted and isn’t paying attention. She remains astonished; but does she know she is astonished? I don’t think so, because she surely doesn’t know the meaning of the word, and if she doesn’t know it, she can’t, in any way, name what is happening to her. If you simplify language, you simplify feelings.

It was at Sants station, contemplating with delight a very young father with a backward baseball cap and sagging pants who was spasmodically moving his baby's stroller. A baby, needless to say, that came as a surprise, not being "planned." At first, I thought the father was traveling alone with the child, but soon a girl, also very young, appeared, sipping a soda. "I come from Accessorize", she said. And immediately, to the baby: "I've brought you a little something". She gave him a lollipop, without opening it.

I am at a party dedicated to wine, with all sorts of farmers who have dressed up for the celebration and where the care of the landscape by those who dedicate themselves to it is celebrated.

We read that the short story The Woodsman's Snake (I translate freely, without ChatGPT), winner of a Commonwealth Foundation prize, written by Trinidad and Tobago author Jamir Nazir and published in the magazine Granta, is suspected of having been created with artificial intelligence.

I read in ARA an article about nutrition during menopause. Nowadays, many news items of this kind are published. Until not long ago, you could find something about it in the medical advice sections of gossip magazines and in specialized publications for professionals. There wasn't any fiction that touched on it. Now, however, advertisements, podcasts, shows, and monologues talk about it. The other day, a friend and I were saying: "Can you imagine our grandmothers?" There were no lubricants, no estrogens, nor much oily fish here or there available to them. They must have commented at the washhouse that sexual relations hurt them, and they must have been prescribed ointments and potions, just as midwives or older women knew how to "help" with childbirth. I remember a phrase – that I kept for a piece of fiction – from my grandmother, which I now revisit with current eyes, knowing what we know that they didn't know. "It's just that grandpa looked for me until the last day. Until the last day he looked for me."

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