Morocco projects stability, modernization, new and large cutting-edge infrastructure, a stadium that rivals the Santiago Bernabéu to host the final of the next football World Cup, and regional alliances strong enough to bury the Western Sahara issue. But behind this facade, there is a society marked by youth unemployment, political disaffection, territorial inequalities, the crisis of public services, and demographic change. It is the reality from which tens of thousands of Moroccans who saw an exit in Ceuta tried to flee this summer.

The Dutch sociologist and geographer Hein de Haas (1969) is one of the leading European experts on migration. Director of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford and professor at the University of Maastricht, his latest book, The Myths of Immigration (Península), dismantles the discourses on the right and on the left. He has lived and worked in Morocco.

The Kremlin broke the truce promised to Donald Trump's emissaries tonight and has returned to bombing Kyiv with missiles, with a toll of 3 dead and 19 injured. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is facing more internal problems. Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko announced his resignation on Monday amidst corruption scandals that are splashing the management of the war and while the crisis over the dismissal of the young Minister of Defense is still simmering.

With a historic result of 44% of the vote, the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has fallen just three seats short of an absolute majority in the parliament of the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The party, founded in 2013 during the height of the euro crisis, will not be able to govern alone as it wanted, and most parties have committed to the policy of a 'cordon sanitaire' to block its path. But the game of alliances with a small group that has managed to enter parliament still gives it the possibility of accessing power in a federal state for the first time since Nazism.

Ansam al Ruhal (Beit Lahia, Gaza Strip, 1999) was until two months ago a nurse at the Indonesian Hospital, one of the few medical centers still operational in northern Gaza, amidst the relentless Israeli offensive on the ground. She arrived in Barcelona in June, welcomed by the refugee student program at the University of Barcelona (UB). She is 27 years old and has survived five wars. As a child, she was injured in an Israeli attack that killed two of her sisters.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the international order born out of World War II seems to be in its terminal phase. The symptoms are clearly visible: wars that drag on, borders as spaces of conflict, a new arms race, protectionism, trade wars, disinformation, electoral interference, a crisis of liberal democracies, and a growing inability of international institutions to impose rules.

For a few months in 2015, Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis and his comrade Alexis Tsipras challenged all the economic and political powers in Europe – the feared troika: the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank – when they resisted the austerity plan that Berlin and Brussels wanted to impose on Greece. As Greece's Finance Minister, Varoufakis leaked the content of the Eurogroup discussions and stood up to the men in black who landed in the Athens offices with the aim of brutally dismantling public healthcare and education and applying the austerity recipe, until the people in Greece said enough.

"They brought me here to kill me. I don't think I'll get out alive." This is the last message that pediatrician Hussam Abu Safiya was able to convey through his lawyer from his captivity. He had recently been transferred to Rakefet, an Israeli underground prison where inmates never see the light of day. When lawyer Nasser Odeh visited him on July 2, he barely recognized him: his face was full of bruises, he had difficulty speaking and breathing, and he could barely stay seated. Several times he seemed on the verge of losing consciousness.

While Morocco rushes to build football stadiums for the upcoming World Cup, thousands of its citizens are trying to leave the country to earn a better future. Among the images of these days from the breakwater of Tarajal, families with small children clinging to floats or toy vests attract attention. Don't forget that on this very beach, in 2014, about fifteen young sub-Saharan Africans drowned while the Spanish police fired rubber bullets at them.

Hamas announced on Monday the name of the man who will politically lead the Islamist organization after the internal election process to replace the last leaders killed by Israel. It is Khalil al-Hayya, a hawk from the old guard who participated in the founding of the organization in Gaza, on the eve of the First Intifada, in 1987. Al-Hayya was already part of the five-man council that was provisionally appointed after in 2024 Israeli soldiers killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Islamists within the Strip, considered the mastermind of the October 7 attacks. In turn, Sinwar had replaced Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the movement who died in an Israeli attack in Tehran in 2024, a few months before his successor.

The Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet, a neighbor from Barcelona, who had been detained since Sunday, has been released, as announced by the Casablanca Prosecutor's Office. "After reviewing and studying the various procedural documents, completing the investigation, and carrying out the necessary technical tests, the Prosecutor's Office has decided to release the individual and return the items that were confiscated from him, namely, two computers, a storage device, and a mobile phone," the statement details. Lmrabet has been interrogated and a medical examination has been performed on him. The investigation continues, but he has been informed that he can leave the country.

Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet, who has lived in Barcelona for more than twenty years, was arrested this Sunday in Morocco after landing at Tangier International Airport. According to his wife, Laura Feliu, dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Barcelona, who spoke to ARA, the journalist has been transferred to the National Brigade of Judicial Police in Casablanca, and the charges against him have not been communicated.

The dam of cross-attacks between the United States and Iran this week has left the ceasefire signed on June 15 not dead, but with assisted breathing. At the center of the resumption of hostilities is, once again, the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the key passage for gas and oil and other strategic goods that Iran has brought under its control. A weapon of mass economic destruction that has served it, so far, to survive an attack that surpassed it militarily.

The Egyptian diplomat Nasser Kamel (Cairo, 1959) has been the Secretary-General of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) for the last eight years, the only forum that brings together the 43 countries of the region (including Palestine and Israel), under a European and Jordanian co-presidency. The organization, based in Barcelona, navigates in a very difficult context to try to facilitate cooperation between the two shores of a Mediterranean marked by political, social, and climate crisis. He has agreed to speak to ARA in the final days of his mandate, before retiring.

The Catalan psychiatrist and researcher Pau Pérez Sales was appointed this Wednesday as the UN's special rapporteur on torture. He will thus become the world's leading authority on torture and other ill-treatment, with the responsibility of ensuring compliance with the Istanbul Protocol, which obliges governments to investigate and document cases of torture. Pérez Sales will therefore have to visit and engage with states, national and international institutions, and civil society organizations in order to formulate recommendations and present reports to the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly. His appointment is exceptional due to his profile and comes at a critical time of questioning international law and multilateralism.

Hamas announced this Monday the resignation of the members of the provisional government of Gaza to cede it to a Palestinian technocratic committee, as foreseen in Donald Trump's plan. The measure remains, however, a symbolic gesture, because Israel has not allowed the committee members, who were constituted a few months ago in Cairo, to enter the Strip. The Islamists send the signal that the government of Gaza is not an obstacle to advancing the plan of the American president, which only carries peace in name, since the genocide of the Palestinians has not stopped.

Iran is preparing for the massive funeral celebration of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader who died on the first day of the joint attack by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic. It will be six days of a ceremony that has had to be delayed and which finally arrives with a taste of victory that the regime will strive to exhibit as a demonstration of strength. Khamenei decided the political and spiritual destinies of Iran for 36 years and has risen to the rank of martyr.

An investigation led by the police forces of Germany and the United Kingdom has identified 158 cases of drug-facilitated rapes, a practice known as chemical submission. The so-called Operation Medusa, coordinated by Europol, has so far led to 57 arrests and provided protection to 158 victims, almost all of them women, who in many cases did not know they had been raped due to the effect of drugs. The investigation has opened leads in 274 more cases. This form of sexual assault came to light thanks to Gisèle Pelicot's denunciation, who in 2024 wanted to make public that her husband and 71 other men had raped her after sedating her for years.

History's ironies, Donald Trump chose Wednesday the Palace of Versailles to sign the understanding agreement with Iran, precisely the place where the German empire accepted its capitulation in 1919 after the First World War. The analogy is inevitable: the 14-point document that Washington has finally accepted after almost four months of war is a full-fledged surrender.

Mariam Barghouti (Atlanta, 1993) is a Palestinian journalist and researcher born in the United States who has become a reference for her articles from occupied West Bank in media such as The Guardian, the BBC, Al-Jazeeraand Mondoweiss. This year she is the international resident of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB).