Notice for castaways and other products derived from existential shipwreck: this article is based on real-life flotation devices. It begins on a moving island. Zulu time. September 2026. Interior day. Public transport in Barcelona (it could be any other space-time of the bitter Catalonia). The boy (9 years old) sits on the floor like a rock from the Upper Chalcolithic. The mother: "Oh, honey, stand up, the floor is dirty". Rock boy: "I don't want to!!!" (A unique phrase, like an expansive sonic destructive missile.) More mother: "Oh, honey, it's dirty, people can't pass, oh, your trousers, oh, oh, oh...." Operation dialogue and more dialogue. Final result of the journey: the kid didn't budge a micrometer. Nor will he for the next thousand years. 1st Century of the human rock.

In 1945, Franco traveled to the future. It was the most decisive journey of the dictatorship. The master of it all landed in Extremadura. There was a promise: to redeem the poorest land in Spain. Franco changed the future, but also the past.

On July 24th, there was a moment at the church of Sant Domènec in Balaguer when everyone looked back. The tap-tap; tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap moved along the central aisle at the speed that President Jordi Pujol always maintains. Seen and gone. He parked without saying a word. Few words. But it came out of him from who knows where: “What a man!” That is how he said goodbye to his friend: Josep Vallverdú.

Now that school is starting, one could try the pedagogy of Enric Arderiu Valls (1868-1920). He was seven years old. His parents dragged him from Linyola to Lleida. They got it into their heads: off to the seminary. The whole thing was so devilishly didactic that he had to repeat a year for arriving late to mass. That divine failure led him to embrace two other infernal beasts: culture and Catalonia.

Scenes of marriage. Mercè Rodoreda used to say that “love, the further away the more beautiful”. A writer and a street name in towns in Catalonia by the cartload. There are many little birds that choose small towns to build their warm-blooded nest. They don't come from far away. They are couples who take flight from nearby cities (15, 20, 30 thousand inhabitants) and land here, parading their close passion that comes out of their mouths in Spanish.

No, no, no… We multiply like Dr. No's clones. He ends up winning and James Bond is condemned to live in a prison tent, a PVC dungeon, or a nylon cell. The Nos are now starting New Year's Eve. Amidst the drunken congratulations. Casually, but they mean it, in those emotional, liquid, pathetic, failed hours: do you know of any flats for the boy, the girl, or the marsupial?

One of these days, chatting with some celestial bodies, they all agreed that this eclipse in Catalonia had been unique. They know what they're talking about: they are professionals at getting in each other's way. They always want to get ahead… But what surprised the celestial family (stars, planets, asteroids, satellites, comets) was that this eclipse could only be seen "in the territory". A phenomenon more earthly than astronomical.

There were human wardrobes. Wide open. On the table their ice cream that didn't melt: a speaker. At full blast, at full throttle, at full speed. And the people who watched them also licked, without stopping, bad temper. They looked at no one. They only had eyes for the nervous acoustic box that moved as if it were a ouija board. A woman, defying the evil spirits, approaches and makes a move: turn down the music. They do. Without saying anything. Without looking. With that concentrated bad mood they have transported, exported here. But, hey, hey, ow, they are just a few more.

The other day there was a huge confusion. Some people thought it was a street name. Others, an expat pastry chef who invented the ensaïmada. Even some argued it was a product of AI. With time, all is revealed. July 27th: 750 years since the death of James I, our king. Because here we had kings, princes, counts, knights, ponies… We know nothing. Normal. James was not meant to exist. It's a mistake.

The summer main festivals of the post-war era dance with sheetless ghosts. In the square, there is a human ration card. My grandmother Rosa Finestres Oliva was 18 years old in 1939: “You went to a main festival and a majority of pretty girls and a few young men, because many took a long time to come back from the concentration camps, from exile… It wasn't lively like before. That youthfulness wasn't there...” Main Festivals Intensive Care Units. Hospitals of the soul. No one wants to remember the nuclear explosion of the War. The first massive collective therapy. The catharsis of the pasodoble of forgetfulness. Binary rhythm to move forward. To bob not to drown. Dance, dance... to float. And the traditional, homemade, natural remedy, as always, worked.

The beginning of the Civil War in Catalonia cannot be understood without Shakespeare. The British man had been there for a long time. In the 19th century, the way to make him superpop, mainstream, cool was to transform his works into lobotomized parodies, adaptations with "costellada" Catalan, cuttings from the original tree, or textual grafts from lysergic minds. This way, a very wide audience got it in a fun way (calm down, Christopher Nolan's friends-enemies, the Odyssey, everything is done, you know). But comedy is tragedy plus time. And the shadow of Shakespeare-Hamlet turned Catalonia into a stage with a full program of calamitous doubts in 1936-1939.

The snow is stepped on. The beach is stepped on. The asphalt is stepped on. The Pyrenees are stepped on, the Costa Brava, Daurada, Domesticada, Gasificada… But the stubble is not stepped on. The bare fields. The fields that are the heads of when we were little and they used to peel us at 1. The cereal stalk standing up. We sip the cocktail of sun and earth. The smell of the stubble. Fresh, tender vanilla. And before us that golden hair like a fairytale princess. That flat expanse of red potatoes. And the man gets off the harvester with a munch-munch in his eyes. Looking at the dream of the future: bread, pasta, rice, popcorn… Food for others, food for you, for us.

I see Don Joan Maragall rolling down La Rambla with a Mexican hat, reciting in a LOUD VOICE and passing the little plate: “Our Barcelona! The great enchantress!”. Charming, fascinating, magnetic. Like a human, cultural, social, spiritual synchrotron, Barcelona is transforming into a Latin American city. Extremes. Rich and poor. Abundance and misery. Possible and impossible. One and the other. Between. In the middle of.

To know how on earth I should see this eclipse, I read a book. I recommend it to you: On Astronomy: Its Origin and the Origin of the Laws of the Universe,from 1863. I haven't understood anything. This reaffirms me in the fact that the Universe, as Woody Allen said, is expanding, expanding… Is it a spasmodic bubble gum? The cheese in the shape of a taut bow without an arrow of a bikini? I would like to ask the author, but the ouija board doesn't suit me. What's up? Hey, wait.

Last year, some scrawny, sickly, and lazy creatures ended up in a health center. They made them open their mouths and their tongues were blue. Ovine catarrhal fever. The veterinarian discovered, however, symptoms of another pathology. One more proof that it was a plague, a blight: the lambs were stolen.

These days Antoni Gaudí is celebrating. June 13th is Saint Anthony of Padua. Patron of bricklayers, master builders, constructors, of armchair psychoanalysts and mortar. You can find Gaudí at the very top of his friend Jesus's tower. Celebrating on life's scaffolding. Having an oily herring sandwich, a cold beer, and the dessert of an eternal roll. Do you see him?

God is Catalan. We have scientific and metaphysical proof. Even though we are far apart, there has always been a very good relationship. From km 0. The gas station philosopher Francesc Pujols creates God's first service station on earth: Catalan religion. "Because if having your own system is equivalent to having your own car, having your own religion is like having your own home." It is a natural, real religion, which is why faith here is everything that surrounds us. And Catalans are "compatriots of truth." The mission is to offer truth to the world: "Catalonia will link the two paths, material and spiritual, of humanity, in a cross, not of death, but of life, not of war, but of peace and moral progress." But war arrives. Catalan religion, Catalonia, found itself "between the flames of fire and the rivers of blood of the Civil War unleashed by the supporters of Spanish Spain against the supporters of Catalan Spain." Fire in the shack.

The other day in a village a man fell. He was picking the hen on the upper floor of the farm. Poof! All-you-can-eat broken ribs. A lifetime of working, a lifetime of loving the land… And he fell to the ground at the end of his life. He is old now and no one is coming after him. There is pain… His broken ribs are our pain. A world, some people, are leaving. Without saying goodbye. Playing the last game on a mandatory horizontal bed playing field.

What color is the outfit Bad Bunny always wears? Tick-tock, tick-tock… Pantone Puerto Rico. Everything is blue, red, white. Tricolor 3HD. What is seen and what is not seen. United Colores of San José, Bayamón, Carolina, Ponce… Motley Caribbean. Gaudy Antilles. Kaleidoscopic island. Polychromatic nationalism. Nationalism through the eyes. Nationalism for all senses. But he is not a nationalist. Can you imagine a Catalan musician doing this?

The new-old pedagogy is textile. Polyester, cotton, wool, linen, silk… But also influenced by other currents: cellulose, rubber, polyethylene, PVC… There are parents who opt for this type of education. As good parents, they think about the future of their offspring: Spain must shelter Catalonia.