“The entire basement was a terrifying expanse of dead men, and examining them all, one by one, was a harsh test of my endurance. The thought of finding Planes there troubled me more than the thought of not finding him. He was there, however, and before recognizing the person, I identified a navy blue suit with white pinstripes, which I had seen him wear many times. He also wore an unmistakable sky-blue shirt. I leaned over him until my face was level with his, and there was no longer any hesitation, despite an unknown grimace of terror that had remained frozen on his lips”.

Dalí, God rest him, was wrong. So was his father, the God of Catalan religion, Francesc Pujols, from Barcelona-Martorell. The one from Figueres dared to say that the center of the world, of the universe was… “This place is located exactly in the center of the Perpignan station.” And more disoriented than clock-like mustaches that strike neither quarter hours nor full hours, he recalls God the Father: “All important things happen there, and Pujols also saw it clearly, because Montpellier, Perpignan, is the place where truth is to be discovered.” We can't stop laughing. The truth is at La Panadella.

Tractors, at night, are advancing spaceships. Luminous, dominant giants. These days our terrestrial aliens are sulphating the land. Up and down. If you stop and start an intersidereal dialogue, they don't attack you. From these colossal beasts, worth two hundred, three hundred, four hundred thousand euros, pilots descend with a thousand missions in their hands and on their knees.

When I was Superman correspondent covering all of Lleida from top to bottom, if I climbed the stairs towards heaven I would stop for breakfast at Cal Farré de Baró. Over time I was becoming integrated as just another being in the fauna of those Pallars feasting tables. There I related to one of the most mythical orcs of that land. J.C. showed me the future and told me what would happen. Everything was backwards: the return of the meatball to minced meat. One thing he got right before the internet: “Everyone will live in human farms.” Amen.

There are some heroes. They are real and moral heroes. In the square. You won't see them. You won't hear them either. Let me introduce you: they are the teachers of the reception classrooms. But, hey, the ones who always speak in Catalan. Hello (in Catalan).

In the real Catalonia, repetitive, recidivist, bounced back… Rrrrrr. The van arrived and said we didn't exist. I reread: "Oops! Your shipment could not be delivered due to an incorrect address.". All my life living in a wrong place. A: we check. We reiterate: correct address. The same as always. Nothing to say? Neither reread the paper. Nor trace the streets. Nor look with your eyes. No scratching. Rationality 0 - Irrationality 10. If the GPS says that it is not here: it is not here: it is not here. The important thing is the trip. Rrrrrr.

This is the story of a sleepy girl and a bouncy fish. Many years ago, in a place called Catalonia, some grumpy gentlemen with mustaches and beards the color of shoe polish, or nuclear detergent, believed that Catalan wasn't dead but rather a Sleeping Beauty. They set up franchised stores throughout the country and christened them "La Renaixença" (The Catalan Renaissance). What did they want to sell? Salt spray! No, just kidding. They believed that Catalan would awaken after its narcolepsy of 1714, possessing a literary language, a language of culture. And how would they achieve this? With sex.

Today's Barcelona was born from a boom-boom. Hiroshima my loveThe demolition of the walls in the 19th century. Without a nuclear explosion, there is no love. As a Barcelonian said in 1854: Barcelona explodes and we fall in love… with a new Barcelona. Without the first great explosion, there wouldn't be the other two major upheavals: the War-Dictatorship, which is the transition from a free city to an occupied one. And the final explosion: the Olympic atomic dog, Cobi. A grand finale that leads us to the Barcelona of today, ripped open and with pieces damaged by the city's skin. And the umbilical cord?

In Barcelona, ​​authentic Italian restaurants are full of authentic Italians. You walk through the door and out pops a waiter, a busboy, a cook, a kitchen assistant, a phonetics expert, a toponymy trainer… All Italian. And the flour is Italian and speaks Italian to you from every pore. So do the tomatoes, the cheese, the olives, the thyme, the bay leaves, the wine, the beer… Even the air you breathe has been bottled in Castelvetro di Modena or Pieve di Teco. If this happened in a Catalan restaurant, it would be shut down immediately (by some law of the dictatorship of lethal morality) for being racist, discriminatory, unwelcoming, etc. It's easier to be Italian in Barcelona than in Catalan. Or… not.

There was a moment during the journey when my daughter would bounce out of her car seat. She has matured and understands that this is natural. It's who we are. It's our character, our identity, our culture. Accepting ourselves is a form of love. We feel it when we pass that exact, precise, unique point on the A-2 that tells you you're entering the "provinceFrom Lleida, the asphalt changes. You smile: we're home now. Immediately, you're doing space capsule-style pirouettes, dancing the twist in space, and inside you're an astronaut with ill-fitting dentures, a gravitational slave. The tremor of truth.

In Barcelona in 1761, people wielded a machine gun of whispers. Maria Badia's lawsuit against the Carpenters' Guild and the carpenter Pere Campañà was urban guerrilla warfare. She was a reseller and defended the right to buy and sell pine wood. There was litigation. She wasn't the only one: Isabel Surroca, Gertrudis Rius, Agnès Capella, Teresa Prats, Eulalia Alabern… There were many women. And before. And after. And they weren't there for the chickens. Because they were the ones who ran the restaurant.

Spain is a nation-state embroiled in civil war. The problem is the Civil War. Clinging to the conflict like junkies. Pay attention to the latest narcotic. Congress has exploded. 1936: The War We All Lost. It wanted to be a sisterly hodgepodge of the war we all wagedThe writer David Uclés has said that he wouldn't sit next to Aznar and Espinosa de los Monteros. The two Spains, locked in a struggle with the sword and the bomb. Here's a microhistory of the War.

Rafael Campalans, which isn't a street name, saw polymorphic lights and heard crashes and whispers. He called them "signs." There was a time when Catalonia was absolutely extraterrestrial. To be earthly, one must be Martian. And those Selenites were.

Catalan has been sunk by people who claim it wasn't already sinking. Liars. Frauds. Polished cowards, not enlightened ones. Delusional about the afterlife. Choose death. The worst thing in this life is when someone tries to tell you your life story when they haven't a clue about life, or about your life. It's like sweeping the dirt under the rug: you keep sweeping it under the rug so nothing can be seen until that mountain range, those Pyrenees, starts to rise... And you trip and everything gets messed up. Yes, Catalan is atomic shit.

In 1944, Robert Surroca's family moved from 108 Muntaner Street to 128 Rocafort Street in Barcelona. He was 10 years old. They took him to study at a local academy. We went in…

The other day Antoni Gaudí resurrected for a little while. He went down the slide from heaven. He did a somersault and rolled down to the Sagrada Família. He set up the portable scaffolding he always carries in his pocket. He took out the sandwich wrapped in brown paper and took a bite of the oily herring. And, well, off to work.

We must turn back. November 4, 1926, which shouldn't have been, but it was. Courtyard of the Perpignan barracks. Look at them: "All the prisoners are gathered, in formation, with the flag. When Macià appears, accompanied by Bordas de la Cuesta, an impressive silence falls. All eyes are fixed on him as he advances slowly. Then he stops and begins to speak. They are words of affirmation, words of hope, of hope for the ungrateful present. The ideal remains burning brightly and is the main focus of the task to be done. Catalans!

The men laugh in sync with the ice cubes in their glasses. They stir. They're in luck. A winning number comes up: another one! They laugh again, they drink again. It's that week before Christmas, when Christmas is like the calamitous storm that must inevitably arrive, and everyone prepares, with diving suits and defensive party gear ahead of time. Cheers!

The Cold War is back. Spies have more work than ever (CV here). Today the curtain isn't made of steel. The walls aren't made of cement. There are no barbed wire borders. But encryptions, ciphers, invisible languages without photosynthesis are more alive than ever. Real, genuine, good information rules today, just like in the days of the Big Bang, Adam and Eve, or theHomo habilis Doing DIY on a Sunday morning in the cave-house. Information is like tap water: if it's not drinkable, I get disoriented and lose my way through life, I get sick, I die. Information is either healthy or toxic. There's a lot of contamination. A lot of crap in the brain. A lot of filthy human wild boars. This is passed on to me by one of the spies we have scattered throughout the unoccupied country.

Wild boars are the new territorial division of Catalonia. Soon there will be districts for wild boar, rabbit, roe deer, cat, dog, hamster, marsupial… The boo-boo, meow-meow, cluck-cluck, glug-glug, nyak-nyak… Nyam-nyam.