Yesterday Junts played hard in Congress. It overturned the investment consortium and the rental decree.Regarding the extension of rents, Junts reproached Sumar for having a "systematic allergy to all landlords". And regarding the consortium, it said that Catalonia does not need more "side businesses" but rather to receive the money it is owed.There is no surprise in Junts' position, on either issue. Regarding rents, Junts relies on the fact that, in Catalonia, 90% of the apartment rental market is in the hands of small landlords, and only 10% in investment funds. It seeks to position itself as a defender of the interests of tenants who bear the pressure of the historic lack of public rental supply. However, voting against this extension has a social cost that yesterday Gabriel Rufián solemnized with two gestures: displaying a banknote and pointing out the Junts deputies one by one. Gabriel Rufián: "Do you know what your flag is? Do you know what it is? I have it here. It's small, but it's very effective. And besides, one of the ones you like... Fifty bucks. It could be more. I'll leave it here. This is your flag. The one you share with the PP and with Vox. To screw almost three million people. I want people to know them. They are Josep Maria Cervera, Josep Pagès, Pilar Calvo, Isidre Gavín, Marta Madrenas, Josep Maria Cruset and Miriam Nogueras”.

It's not that anyone's breakfast was getting stuck this morning, but unemployment and inflation have shown their faces, and if the war in Iran continues, they will end up showing their whole face. The rising cost of living is a fact and prospects are for the worse, with prophecies of energy shock and disruption of international trade, including food.

Today the analysis could last as long as a news broadcast. Let's begin: today marks one year since the great blackout. April 28th. It was a day like today, more or less. We were heading into summer. Sunshine and mild temperatures. Lucky for us. And it started when the kids were at school and people were at work. And it ended at night. The responsibility for the blackout has been diluted in a chain of problems that occurred in a cascade, and nothing has happened here.Jordi Pujol has already slept at his home tonight, in Barcelona, where he arrived yesterday evening quite tired, with the frustration of not having been able to declare and of knowing that he has not been able to receive an acquittal of which he was convinced.Don't miss this chronicle by our delegate in Madrid, Núria Orriols, full of details about the two hours the former president spent at the National Court. They asked him which years he was president and he got it right, from 1980 to 2003. But when they asked him if he knew what he was being accused of, he started to ramble.But, above all, don't miss the in-depth reflection by Jordi Nieva-Fenoll, professor of procedural law at the University of Barcelona:

Today the analysis could last as long as a TV news broadcast. Let's start: today marks one year since the big blackout. April 28th. It was a day like today, more or less. We were heading into summer. Sunshine and mild temperatures. Lucky for us. And it started when the kids were at school and people were at work. And it ended at night. The responsibility for the blackout has been diluted in a chain of problems that presented themselves in a cascade, and nothing has happened here.Jordi Pujol has already slept at his home tonight, in Barcelona, where he arrived yesterday evening quite tired, with the frustration of not having been able to declare and knowing that he has not been able to receive an acquittal of which he was convinced.Don't miss this chronicle by our delegate in Madrid, Núria Orriols, full of details about the two hours the former president spent at the National Court. They asked him what years he was president and he got it right, from 1980 to 2003. But when they asked him if he knew what he was accused of, he started to ramble.But, above all, don't miss the in-depth reflection by Jordi Nieva-Fenoll, professor of procedural law at the University of Barcelona:

“I am not willing to allow a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to stain my hands with his crimes”, wrote the man arrested on Saturday night when he was allegedly going to attack Donald Trump at a press dinner. 24 hours later, journalist Norah O'Donnell reads these words to the President of the United States in an interview on CBS's iconic 60 Minutes.

The trial for Jordi Pujol has ended. The court has removed him from the case due to his inability to defend himself. What we advanced could happen last Wednesday has happened. They have excluded him because the man was not in condition and because, fundamentally, it was much more convenient for them to remove him from the case than to acquit him, which, judging by the trial, was going to happen. A few minutes before eleven in the morning, two hours after the former president's arrival at the Audiencia, the president of the court, José Ricardo Prada, explained it like this:Court President: “The court had a very special interest in having an interview with Mr. Jordi Pujol Soley and knowing firsthand what his personal situation was. / The conclusion that the court draws or obtains is the impossibility of Mr. Jordi Pujol Soley remaining with full knowledge and capacities in this trial. Therefore, it is agreed that from this moment on he is… I don't want to use the word ‘expelled’, but yes, effectively, he is out of the proceedings. / The decision of the chamber has depended on the medical reports that existed previously, on the forensic medical report, which had already been provided at the beginning of the hearing sessions, and on the last medical report that the forensic doctor has issued to the court. And, as I say, also on the essential personal contact, since it is the court that must make the decision and cannot defer this decision to anyone else.”In this conversation that the judge mentioned, Pujol told the doctors he wanted to testify, which is what he had to say. Pujol is not one to hide, and if they were going to remove him from the case, the judge had to do it, not for him to ask for it. But, obviously, everyone knew that Pujol was not in a condition to testify, because he gets tired quickly, he doesn't hear well, he repeats himself and makes others repeat, he is nearly 96 years old, he walks with a walker and gets up late. The questions we have been asking ourselves these days persist: if the doctors had already said he couldn't go, if to have this final conversation with Pujol it wasn't necessary to make him go to Madrid, why did they make him go?  Well, so that it wouldn't be said that he was soft, and so that… I already told you last Wednesday. I told them: “Don't think that what I'm going to say now is an exaggerated flourish. Making him go to Madrid can also have another meaning (besides the mockery): that the judge covers himself and can say that, after making him go and have him examined by the forensic doctors, they are removing him from the case. Fundamentally, it is very possible that the court deems it better to say that they cannot judge him than to have to acquit him, which, seeing how the trial has gone, would not be at all unlikely.” And so it has been. Of course, let him pay the penalty of the news first, if nothing else. President Pujol is out of the case, but the trial of his children continues. Pujol will not have an acquittal from criminal justice. He will have the judgment of history. Good morning.

Happy coincidence: the two books most sold by Sant Jordi share the fact of being written with a lot of humor. The fiction of Crispetes de matinada is a wisely managed festival of hilarious situations, conversations, and thoughts, and the non-fiction of Manual de defensa del català (yes, unfortunately, it is non-fiction) presents itself to readers with humor that acts like the mustard and ketchup that make a shoe-sole type burger digestible.

Allow me, to begin, to express the pride and satisfaction, as someone would say, that a day as well celebrated as yesterday's Sant Jordi provokes. We can congratulate ourselves. We can congratulate ourselves.We know Regina well, at ARA, especially the newspaper's audiovisual team, of which she was a part. Regina, more than connecting with readers' tastes, has connected with readers' hearts, and such a phenomenon is unbeatable. Regina conveys truth. Added to this is the mastery of fresh and fun narrative technique, the result is yesterday's: number 1. This morning I spoke with her and she told me she was happy, for among other reasons, because it was also the triumph of humor in Catalan. has connected with readers' hearts, and such a phenomenon is unbeatable. Regina conveys truth. Added to this is the mastery of fresh and fun narrative technique, the result is yesterday's: number 1. This morning I spoke with her and she told me she was happy, for among other reasons, because it was also the triumph of humor in Catalan.

When I saw that American high schools were divided between those that had a metal detector arch at the entrance and those that didn't, I thought how lucky we were in Catalonia to be so far from that situation. Until yesterday El País published that unarmed plainclothes police officers would enter high schools, for now as a pilot program. How we must see ourselves. The measure is a painful leap in scale, a before and after in the state of social conflict in our country.

Today the day breathes the happiness of a festival, of a festival that has a unique particularity: it is simultaneously a national festival and a universal festival. And, frankly, as the world is (and with the busy day that awaits us), with this we would have enough to analyze this April 23rd, which today could have a very simple title: Long live Saint George.But current events are what they are, imperative and capricious, to the point that today it brings us the other side of life. If Sant Jordi is the perfume of a rose and the smell of a new book, the pact between the PP and Vox in Aragon is as if it rained shit and the air had been smeared with the stench of rot.The PP and Vox have agreed in Aragon to demand "freeing Aragon from the imposition of Catalan" to invest Jorge Azcón, from the PP, as president. Yes, as it sounds: "Freeing Aragon from Catalan." There is a section of the agreement titled "Freedom in the face of indoctrination and imposition." The law stating that Aragonese Catalan is a co-official language is being reformed, and the Aragonese Institute of Catalan, which oversees the application of Catalan norms and the social use of the language, is being abolished. Let's see, the PP already invented the name LAPAO to avoid saying Catalan, but now they are not hiding anything and are talking about "freeing Aragon from Catalan," as if one were talking about freeing it from a foreign invasion or a disease, as if it were not the language spoken and that has been spoken for centuries by the Aragonese who live in La Franja.  

Look how big the Sant Jordi festival is, that every year it completely bypasses all the country's news agendas and reduces the day's events to the category of “the rest of the day's news”.

Jordi Pujol i Soley will have to go personally to Madrid next Monday for a forensic doctor to examine him. If he gives the green light, Pujol will have to testify as a defendant in the trial against his family and several businessmen that has been taking place at the National Court for five months. In November, when the trial began, five forensic experts said he "is not in physical or cognitive condition" to be tried. Five months have passed and here we are again, the court wants to re-examine Pujol.Today the children are meeting with their lawyer, Cristóbal Martell, but there is nothing to be done to prevent the trip. In terms of cognitive abilities, Jordi Pujol is more or less the same as in November, although in an obvious process of regression. Consider that at the beginning of June, less than two months from now, he will be 96 years old. Apparently, Pujol does not understand why he was able to testify from home, remotely, when the trial began, and yet now they are making him go, even though, however old he may be, he understands that the images of him heading towards the Court and on the defendants' bench are very tempting.The question remains: why don't they want Pujol to testify telematically now? Why don't they trust what the forensic experts said in November? Because since November, Pujol may not have worsened, but he certainly hasn't improved. And why don't they send the forensic experts to Barcelona and examine him here? President Puigdemont yesterday cried out: “They can’t be more miserable”, he denounces. He believes that the National Court is seeking “scorn” and a photo to “humiliate not only a person, but above all what he represents”, and says that if it weren’t for his condition as an exile, he would have accompanied Pujol to Madrid “with great pleasure”. It is true that we saw Pujol not many weeks ago going to vote in the elections of Barça. And that he attends public events. But let's not be mistaken. One thing is to go to vote, which only requires a physical effort, and another is to sit in a trial in which you are accused and they ask for prison for you, and in which you have to defend yourself. Everyone who has spoken to Pujol says that he doesn't hear, that he makes them repeat the questions and that he asks you again something that you have only just answered him a moment ago.If we talk about justice, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office is asking for nine years in prison for the former Catalan president for the crimes of illicit association and money laundering. But you know what happens? That over thirty sessions, with 95% of the trial held, with expert and face-to-face testimonies, the former president's name has practically not even been mentioned. Therefore, and do not think that what I am about to say is an exaggerated pirouette, sending him to Madrid may also have another meaning (in addition to the mockery): that the judge may cover himself, may say that, after having him go there and have him examined by forensic experts, they are removing him from the case. In essence, it is quite possible that the court would prefer to say that they cannot judge him rather than having to acquit him, which, seeing how the trial has gone, would not be at all unlikely.Good morning.

In an infrequent reaction, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apologized and issued a condemnation "with all his might." A few hours earlier, his Foreign Minister had done so, admitting that the act had been "serious and shameful." And both have assured that "harsh" and "strict" disciplinary measures will be taken against the perpetrator. What big thing happened? Well, the photo of an Israeli soldier in southern Lebanon hitting the head of a crucified Jesus Christ with a hammer, lying upside down after being taken down from the cross, an image that has caused the usual tearing of clothes on social media.

I begin where we left off yesterday: the creation of the Investment Consortium that the Government and Esquerra have agreed upon to direct and control state investments in Catalonia. It was presented yesterday as a tool to guarantee budgetary execution in Catalonia. Well, yesterday a prominent Esquerra leader pointed out to me, through a message, in good humor, let it be clear, that I had been very harsh saying that while the Chinese were making humanoids run, we were creating consortia. I hope I am mistaken, but in Catalonia, political consensus on anything significant has disappeared a long time ago. And the State, the governments of the PP and the PSOE, have shown that there are a thousand ways to budget and not execute, making it look like an accident, and even your fault. Nevertheless, as I tell you, if the invention works, we will be here to acknowledge it.And speaking of inventions, Bárcenas and the Kitchen. What the PP treasurer declared yesterday before the judge and for five hours is that the PP itself set up the Kitchen as a way to save Rajoy. That when they saw that the accounting records of M.Rajoy and MR could incriminate the party president, they set up the patriotic police to steal and destroy documentation from Bárcenas. Bárcenas is today a free man, he was in prison for eight years, convicted of corruption. What he came to say yesterday is that Rajoy was aware that the party had double accounting, that Rajoy was paid under the table (because it was he, Bárcenas, who paid him in envelopes), that Rajoy made him destroy the evidence but that he recorded it. What happened is that later most of it was destroyed by the patriotic police. The undeclared money came from commissions paid by companies to which the PP government awarded public works, and it is the money with which part of the renovation of the party headquarters in Madrid was paid for. Yesterday, therefore, Bárcenas sang La Traviata and Rajoy and Cospedal will declare the day after tomorrow.So the Kitchen operation would have been mounted from within the state itself by the PP government to prevent it from splashing Rajoy. These were the "patriots" who were to save Spain from the clutches of Catalan independence. The same "patriots" who will now investigate the United States to find out if Spain deceived them to close Banca Privada d'Andorra. "Mariano, be strong".Good morning.

The TV3 reporter was interviewing the excited players of Unió Esportiva Sant Andreu on the pitch where they had just achieved promotion, and a fan showed their mobile phone to the camera. The screen read: “Collboni, put in the grass”. It referred to the natural grass essential for playing in the new category and was addressed to the mayor, as the stadium, Narcís Sala, is municipal.

After seeing humanoid robots running and winning the Beijing Half Marathon this weekend, anything is possible. Humanoid robots are no longer that broom handle with legs that stumbles and trips spectacularly, but they already have enough coordination to be running for 50 minutes faster than a person. The applications of the invention, military, labor, social, are so great that we must resort to the classic “the future is already here”. As I said, robots surpassed people, which is no longer news if we think that machines have been surpassing us in computing power for a long time. Therefore, the news is once again a geopolitical warning: the Chinese race in robotics is also going very fast. And us with Trump, the Strait of Hormuz and Rodalies.The progressive festival that Sánchez brought to Barcelona this weekend had a curious epilogue: The President of Brazil, Lula de Silva, went to pray for a while in the main nave of the Sagrada Família, where he gifted himself “a moment of peace, prayer and reflection in a place that inspires unity and hope”. This moment is very well, considering that politics does not grant any respite. Example: while Sánchez was gathering the left-wing parties in Barcelona, who was Feijóo meeting with? With the Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado. This morning, Machado was the guest at an informative breakfast in Madrid. And who introduced her to the audience? Felipe González, who runs in the opposite direction to Pedro Sánchez in everything.Finally, in more predictable territory, the Government and ERC are presenting today the Consortium for Investments in Catalonia, which will be the body responsible for monitoring the compliance of State investments in Catalonia. The investment consortium was one of the agreements included in Salvador Illa's investiture pact. This consortium must monitor the number and destination of investments, but also their execution, to prevent the amounts that Spanish governments, whether from PP or PSOE, allocate in budgets from being an approximate reference: less than half of the planned investments are executed. If you think about it coldly, how are we to see ourselves: creating an organism to ensure that the government complies with the budgets, that is, with the law. Hopefully it works, but allow me to express all my skepticism, based on real facts: governments make agreements, but senior officials, or unions, or a PP-VOX majority, will come along afterwards and decide.Good morning.

The yellow, the green, and the red are bursting all over the country. The pledge we had to pay this foggy and rainy winter had a reward: the colors are vivid, saturated, and the sun, which is already organizing the first summer drills, makes everything shine as if visitors were to come. With the white background that still holds in the Pyrenees, one has the impression of walking through the awakened and rich country of the poet.

After hearing Carles Rabassa's undeniable speech at the Catalan Literature Night, I bought his Prometeu de mil maneres (Univers Llibres) out of solidarity and curiosity. I found a solid, sharp, dense novel that directly hits the universal chord of the contrast between who we are and the character that, as Martí i Pol would say, we put on like a sweater or a tie when we go out on the street. All from Palma and from a linguistic, political, and cultural position that reviews, without concessions, like the speech, the state of affairs in this “society of tiredness,” as Han calls it.

Pedro Sánchez has brought to Barcelona the Brazilian president, Lula; the Mexican president, Sheinbaum; the Colombian president, Petro, and the South African president, Ramaphosa, among other leaders of the global left and center-left, with whom he has already been meeting in recent years.Everyone has rushed to say that this is not an anti-Trump summit, but nowadays there is no more effective cement to unite the always individualist left than the current and egomaniacal president of the United States. So yes, it is a way of telling the world that the center-left is raising its voice against Trump. With the apparent endorsement, by the way, of Pope Leo, who is now openly speaking out against Trump. The choice of Barcelona is no coincidence. In socialist terms, it has it all: Collboni's mayoralty and Illa's Generalitat. In Madrid, this summit, with Ayuso and Almeida, could not take place. In Catalonia, the PP and Vox are minor, and at times, residual. In social terms, Barcelona was one of the capitals of the "No to war" against Iraq. And in national terms, Sánchez's message is twofold. To the world: "Do you see? The separatist problem in Catalonia has disappeared with me. There is no separatist problem in Catalonia." And in Catalonia: "Barcelona is a world capital when it passes through Spain." He already did it with the Spain-France summit, and now he has returned. In reality, Barcelona's capacity for attraction has often existed without the State and even against the State. Just one example: if the Pope comes to Barcelona in June (if there is fuel for planes then), it is because of the Sagrada Familia, a marvel of the modern world, in which the State has nothing to do. Barcelona always looks good.Speaking of all this, yesterday we were telling you that the new Minister of Finance had dismissed the possibility of Catalonia collecting income tax. Well, yesterday we heard that Aena –the airports– are also not touched.The company's president, Maurici Lucena, made a “serene call” to shareholders yesterday to remind everyone that the Constitution – no joke – prevents the State from ceding the governance of airports. At most, a bilateral consultative body can be created, but neither transfer nor co-management, at most coordination. In this way, he denied President Illa, who had said this week in Parliament that Catalonia would have immediate presence in governance. Well, what Aena has immediately responded with has been the exact opposite.Good morning.

Pedro Sánchez admits privately what everyone else knows: that no matter how often he lands on his feet, next year it will be difficult for him to repeat the feat of 2023, that is, to lose the elections but end up governing thanks to the votes of a parliamentary majority Frankenstein. (Especially if the left-wing majority continues to make friends as Rufián usually does or as Vice President Yolanda Díaz did yesterday, when she called Junts a “classist and racist” party, despite being the first to rush to Brussels to ask for Puigdemont's party's votes for the investiture.)