1. In February, the Goya Awards for Spanish cinema were presented in Barcelona. In March, Cornellà hosted a Spain-Egypt football match that went around the world because of the massive chant of “Muslim, he who doesn't jump”. In April, on the eve of Sant Jordi, AENA invents a literary prize for published works with one million euros for the winner. Maurici Lucena's intention is to re-stitch Ibero-American literature through a literary air bridge, a prize that excludes novels written in Catalan, Basque, or Galician if they are not translated into Spanish. Shall we continue? What are they preparing for May? The agenda for the Hispanization of Catalonia seems set and strategically prepared. It is, almost, a post-war plan, made with more subtlety and elegance because with culture and leisure, everything goes down better. After severing the Procés, after beheading its leaders, and once they have the troops demoralized, enraged, or resigned, the plan to dilute residual independentism is systematic.

1. While here we are eating the 'mona' cake, in Madrid they are working. The third term of the school year begins with one of those news items that will have repercussions. This Monday, the trial for Operation Kitchen begins at the National Court. The case will once again place the Popular Party at the epicenter of the mire. And this is not just a case of corruption. It is much more than that. It is being investigated whether the party in power used the State to cover up its own corruption. The indications seem clear, but justice, in Spain, can always come out with a broken candle.

1. Life goes on and we normalize everything, with trained resignation. Waiting lists, the difficulty of having decent housing, inflation that threatens to skyrocket, or the resistance of Catalan are the worries of a day-to-day life that we face stoically and, perhaps, with excessive understanding. For others – beyond the traffic jams on the AP-7 for the outgoing or return operation – the big concern seems to be Raphinha's umpteenth muscle injury. They talk about it on the radio as much or more than about Trump and Iran. To escape our accepted miseries, wars, destruction, and death, in Ukraine or East Asia, people need to laugh. I notice it at the Condal Theatre. They are performing A Brilliant Idea, the most awarded comedy in France. The adaptation to Catalan by Susanna Garachana is accurate, rigorous, and extremely fine-tuned. The protagonist, Lluís Villanueva, can already make space to collect all the acting awards for a production that forces him into exhausting meticulousness. An hour and a half of laughter. People leave it better than they entered.

1. La Trinca was very generous to the Besòs River when, taking advantage of the well-known waltz by Johann Strauss Jr., they wrote the lyrics for their song. The Blue DanubeIn 1975, he said that "the Besòs is green." And that was a gross understatement. Back then, it was one of the most polluted rivers in Europe. There was no life, practically no fish. Toxic foam was visible, and the stench was overwhelming for many days of the year. The lack of environmental regulations during the Franco regime and the scarcity of effective legislation meant that pollution went almost unpunished. Uncontrolled industrialization in the river basin, in the Vallès region and the Barcelona area, turned the river into a dumping ground with virtually no treatment. As a result, textile, chemical, and metallurgical companies contaminated the water with heavy metals and a whole host of toxic products. And it wasn't a crime. And there was no awareness of the damage being done to nature and the landscape. Furthermore, urban wastewater—in a time when towns and cities lacked treatment plants—turned some stretches of the Besòs into an open sewer. We can add that it was a river with a low natural flow, where pollutants became highly concentrated, and that aggressive urbanization along the riverbank gradually devoured the native vegetation. For all these reasons, the Besòs was the shame of Barcelona's northern border.

1. On Saturday night, at the MNAC, We celebrate the Night of Catalan LiteratureIt's been 75 years since three hundred brave souls locked themselves inside the Catalonia bookstore to celebrate a clandestine literary festival. Here's a historical fact, from 1951, to remind us that the Catalan language, culture, and freedom have weathered far worse times, and we've persevered. For those of us who are nostalgic by nature, the tradition of Saint Lucy's Night was already quite fitting. Just before Christmas, the most prestigious literary prizes were announced, and a couple of months later, the books went on sale. It was a very guild-like celebration, for the guild. Now it's different. Even those of us who, on Saturday, looked askance at this new festival invented by Òmnium, the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, and TV3, should tip our hats. As Xavier Antich said, never before in history has such a powerful communicative act about Catalan literature been broadcast. Our literature needs to shed its inferiority complex and embrace ambition, joy, and self-respect. If the world of books is the spearhead of our cultural industry, it was about time that was reflected in prime time. In this respect, and although everything can be improved, Saturday's event achieved its goal.

1. If today is Monday, March 9th, it means there's one year left until International Women's Day. I wonder how we'll get there in 2027 if, locally or globally, we continue to take so many steps backward at such a rapid pace. Equality—if it is true equality, it must be without nuances or footnotes—still seemed a long way off, and suddenly, regression is more than just a palpable threat. It's a stark, bitter, and daily realization that the gains we've made are in danger. The far-right wave sweeping the world and the fundamentalism common in religions rooted centuries ago are striving to subjugate women once again to limits that seemed to have been overcome. Irrelevance, dependence, complementarity transformed into inferiority, being told "don't say much" and "you have an opinion, but not much" are the new social condemnations. This is what Katherine Graham, the editor of the Washington PostWhen her husband made her feel, at all times, like she was the tail of a star. The nucleus of the comet that shone, of course, was him. Always him and only him.

1. He wanted the Nobel Peace Prize and created the War Department. It was a contradiction that should have given us clues not only about the intentions of the most powerful man in the world but also about the flaws in his intellectual capacity. When he changed the name of the Department of Defense in September, we already suspected that Donald Trump would go on the offensive. And he came close. In January, US military forces entered Venezuela, captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and transferred them to a US prison. In February, the raid by US troops, in alliance with Israel, killed Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Between Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela and Operation Epic Fury in Iran, the death toll is in the hundreds. For now. The consequences of the attack on Tehran are impossible to predict. According to the Financial TimesThis decision by Trump is "the most fateful of his presidency."

1. Every February 23rd, we remember that the trio of Tejero, Armada, and Milans del Bosch attempted a military coup in Spain. The assault on Congress lasted less than 24 hours and brought an end to the "cowards." But the army and the Civil Guard had tried to reverse, through the intimidation of arms, the nascent democracy that was beginning to emerge in Spain. From 1981 to 2026, we've seen it all, but 45 years later, the uniforms, the medals, and the peaked caps still think they are above good and evil. It's not enough for them to flaunt their pathological supremacism with an offensive self-importance. Like the stars they wear on their lapels, they display a moral superiority anchored in outdated values ​​from another century, or from another regime they seem to yearn for. Do high-ranking police officers in Spain believe they are untouchable because they have turned the old question of who watches the watchmen into mere rhetoric?

1. I suspected the situation was serious. And I decided to document it. I wondered when Spain, Catalonia, and Barcelona started living with extended budgets. Spain is just getting by on the 2023 budget. Catalonia is also barely surviving on the 2023 budget. Barcelona, ​​for its part, is just scraping by with the budget approved in May 2024 thanks to a special procedure: a vote of confidence. The paralysis, therefore, is threefold and affects all areas. For three years now, so to speak, the planned structural spending—on healthcare, education, social services, and civil servants' salaries—has been maintained, but new programs and structural investments cannot be implemented. Extending the budget means ensuring that, administratively, the country doesn't grind to a halt, but neither does it improve in any way. It's a death sentence. Projects, infrastructure, and, consequently, the citizens suffer. And that's how things are going for us, for example, with doctors protesting a new agreement, teachers in the streets, and commuter trains at a standstill. But let's take it one step at a time.

1. Luckily, the sun is shining. A clear blue sky helps to soothe sad souls. Perhaps it doesn't offer complete comfort, but on a funeral morning, and even more so at a winter burial, it's a relief to have no rain, no fog, no added inclement weather to drag you into treacherous nostalgia. Behind a secular altar, with the Collserola forests as a backdrop, the friends speak first. They are the group, immune to the bombshell that is the passage of time. They had met at school and continued seeing each other, with a schedule and enthusiasm, until a week before, when they had all sat down together at the best restaurant in Bellaterra. They recount anecdotes of meals, cigars, rum cigarettes, and trips to Colombia that make us feel as if we had been there ourselves. Lluís Llach's music begins, and the six siblings—three boys and three girls—appear on stage. Sixty-three years is too short a time to die, but it's a long time to live together, to know your brother better than anyone else, through every stage of life. Their memories sway between humor and a newly discovered nostalgia that hurts as much as a new pair of shoes. They tell you what a mischievous boy he was, and those who knew him later in life, in his professional affability, laugh. They confess they're astonished by the media's praise in the news reports about his death. And even more so in newspaper obituaries. They suspected he was doing well at work, but not this well, or not so well recognized. The six of them embrace in an elegant dance of brotherhood, and more notes of Lluís Llach play while, on the screen, slender photographs, from here and there, capture scattered moments of happiness. "I didn't know he was so handsome," a cousin sitting next to her tells me. We began a pointless, hushed debate that abruptly ended. Suddenly, the thickest silence fell over the oratory. Behind the secular altar of the ceremony stood the only two people in the room who didn't call him by his name. They called him "Papa." His two children, the older and the younger, spoke hand in hand. They weren't even thirty yet, and their memories, like brushstrokes, were piling up, moments they felt compelled to share. Trips, laughter, their unique way of gazing at the sea from Menorca, or of cooking spicy paellas for large groups. And, above all, their love for their mother, the story they had built together in Sabadell. The emotion reached the back rows, those of friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. Someone felt a wave of emotion wash over them, another sniffled discreetly, and when a tear was glimpsed, a hand on the shoulder was appreciated, no matter where it came from. Every sentence spoken by the son exploded, like a hand grenade, in someone's heart. Not all emotions erupt at the same moment. Feelings often explode when you least expect them. Sometimes the trigger is a word, a memory, a sudden emotion that has taken a shortcut. The widow doesn't speak. Neither does Mom. Too much grief. It's not the way of life, saying goodbye to a child. And it sounds Crazy about you...the anthem we've made our own for every expression of love. How lucky I was to do it alone. And what a shame I didn't get to try your shrimp pan.

1. Adif and the train drivers who operate in Catalonia have thoroughly inspected all the tracks and identified the number of dangerous areas. They have reported that the sections of commuter rail lines that need repair are exactly 155. Not 154, not 156. 155. Does anyone think this number is a coincidence? Those of us who have been suspicious for some time now see it as a provocation every time this number is mentioned.

1. This was the collapse. The continuous rain, the landslides, the AP-7 wall, and the serious train accident in Gelida paralyzed the country for a week. In the name of safety, Renfe, Adif, the ministry there, and the government here played a farcical role that will have no consequences for any of the four public institutions. For the people and private companies, however, it will. Minor personal dramas greatly anger those who suffer them, but they are merely a side effect that tickles those in power. A user's tantrum rarely goes beyond a token complaint in a NewscastThe burden of having to fend for yourself or of perpetual traffic jams never penalizes those in power.

1. A possible summary of the situation. Spain has told Catalonia that it will never have independence. Judicial, police, political, and media repression made that abundantly clear, and we are still paying the price. And a referendum on self-determination? Never. The obtuse State has also told us that quite plainly. And a special economic agreement, at least? Never. They should have asked for it back then, as the Basques and Navarrese did. And special funding, then? Never. We have already seen how the extreme right, Feijóo's lying right wing, and the... have responded in a cascade. males The most re-established members of the PSOE. If necessary, then, and so as not to offend so many people, we'll call it special funding, even though it isn't. Right? Not quite. We already saw this Sunday the response from the presidents of the autonomous communities where the PP governs. They prefer to give up billions of euros for services for their people rather than allow Catalonia to live somewhat better. That's how absurd and how outrageous it is. And, while we're at it, how about a principle of ordinality? Not a chance. Theory can withstand anything, but in practice, Spain doesn't want to allow a system of solidarity where the third-highest contributor is the third-highest recipient. Why? Because it's not fair to say that Catalonia could ever benefit from anything. Faced with the "everyone wins" argument that Minister Montero uses to defend the new funding model, the Socialist president of Castilla-La Mancha is calling for "the complete abandonment of this attempt at blackmail and granting privileges to the separatists." What privileges?

1. Barça won the Saudi Arabian Super Cup (3-2) because they were far superior to Real Madrid, always leading on the scoreboard and showing much greater determination. It's the third consecutive final that Hansi Flick, as Barça coach, has won against their biggest rival. The German coach's 100% win rate in finals remains an unbeatable record. The match won't be remembered for its beautiful football – in fact, until the hydration break in the 33rd minute, it resembled a preseason friendly – but Ronald Araujo lifted the trophy to remind us how much we enjoy making them suffer. The Barça players wanted revenge for their defeat at the Bernabéu, and yesterday, defying fate with a psychedelic jersey, they got it. In a final alongside some of the protagonists.

1. Under the guise of combating drugs, you seize our oil. In 2012, when Trump was presenting reality showsHugo Chávez, even at that time, made two predictions. The Venezuelan president said: "When the world runs out of oil, there will still be five countries with significant reserves: Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Venezuela. All the presidents who have come and gone in the last hundred years, who have tried to control the oil business, have believed that oil is essential because the powerful Western countries need it." Months later, Chávez elaborated further: "There's an operation brewing, one they've been preparing for some time. They warned me about it years ago. They told me: 'They'll end up accusing you of being a drug trafficker. Not that the government supports it, or that the government allows it... No, no, no. You, Chávez. Chávez. The United States is preparing it. They're directly linking Chávez to drug trafficking, and then anything goes against a drug trafficker. The script was written, and fourteen years later, it's been followed to the letter."

1. With a day without a newspaper and more family after-dinner conversations than hours of television, a news It has been largely hidden amidst the brambles of the Christmas holidays. Its significance has made it all the more inconspicuous. The judge in Catarroja requested the WhatsApp messages exchanged between Núñez Feijóo and Mazón on the day of the storm. And the president of the People's Party, who hadn't deleted the messages, has had to hand them over. Now that they've been made public, these conversations further expose Carlos Mazón's weakness. If it weren't for the trump card of parliamentary immunity—a strange invention that allows politicians and monarchs to commit crimes while the justice system turns a blind eye—the former Valencian president would be in the dock and would face a court ruling that would prevent him from compensating the 229 families who have suffered. Beyond the seriousness of the irresponsibility, the terrible crisis management, and the sheer indifference of that day—whether he was at El Ventorro or in the parking lot—we now have proof that he has accumulated fourteen months of sustained falsehoods. But Mazón is not the only one who has repeatedly lied to the public. Alberto Núñez Feijóo has also been exposed by this collection of text messages.

1. This Monday, a handful of anonymous people will appear in the media with euphoria in their eyes and a glass of cava in their hand. They will be the lucky ones who won the raffle. If you've bought a lottery ticket, there's a 0.00001% chance of winning the jackpot. Therefore, if you have a one in a hundred thousand chance of keeping a ticket with the winning number on your nightstand, it's only natural that you'd be very happy. I don't know what the odds were for a Rosalía fan to get a ticket for one of the four concerts she'll be giving in Barcelona in April, but I imagine they were much lower. The overall demand was enormous, and the Sant Jordi venue has a limited capacity. And perhaps that's why I don't know anyone who managed to buy a ticket on the day they went on sale. (During the presale a few days earlier, for people with regular accounts at Banco Santander, I do know of one girl who managed to buy two.)

1. Last week I attended the conference on the state of the Catalan language in the Catalan-speaking world. It consisted of two intense sessions of analysis aimed at capturing a snapshot of the linguistic reality in the Catalan Countries from different perspectives. At the IEC (Institute for Catalan Studies), there was as much knowledge as lament. Rigor and apprehension went hand in hand in many of the presentations. Therefore, when Albert Cuesta appeared to speak about "the opportunity of artificial intelligence" and said, To begin with, he was optimistic.All of us in attendance perked up. Cuesta is, besides being the best-informed journalist in the sector, a real pain in the neck. To put it more delicately, a stubborn man who, many years ago, managed to get us a Catalan version of Twitter and who, just this week, Seat and Cupra have announced that from 2026 onwards there will be two cars –Raval and Born– which will incorporate Catalan into their infotainment menus. A small step for the language, but a very significant one, after nine years of struggle by Cuesta, the first six of which he fought alone. Pressuring companies here or in Silicon Valley, with sound judgment, reasoned arguments, and persistence, ultimately pays off. When politics fails to intervene, global platforms and large corporations have no choice but to yield to linguistic and social logic.

1. The 2026 World Cup kicked off on Saturday with an embarrassing act just before the draw in Washington. FIFA presented the Peace Prize to Donald Trump. It's an award created specifically to spite the US president. Trump doesn't have the Nobel Peace Prize—yet—but UEFA is giving him this consolation prize to nibble on. It's just another chapter in Gianni Infantino's subservient role, as he grovels before power in order to, paradoxically, gain even more. Where does this connection between the White House and the FIFA president come from? It sounds like the beginning of a novel that started fifteen years ago, but it's not fiction.

1. In one month, on January 1st, 2026, we will say "have a good time" to the triangles that during twenty-six years We've used them to warn other drivers that our car has broken down and we've had to stop in an unusual place. Luckily, these drop-down triangles will have expired for most drivers before we've even had a chance to use them. But since there have been hundreds of people hit by cars while trying to plant the damn triangle fifty meters from their vehicle, and since time marches on and technology advances at an incredible pace, from now on the Spanish Directorate General of Traffic (DGT) will require us to carry a new gadget in our glove compartment. It's a light beacon that, in case of emergency, is placed on the car and flashes to signal our situation. The unique feature is that this approved V16 beacon connects directly to the DGT; this way, they'll know where you've stopped or where the incident or accident occurred. But this device doesn't put you in contact with emergency services (112) or make any kind of distress call. And this is perhaps where the inconsistencies begin.