In 218 BC, the Carthaginian general Hannibal undertook a daring action to surprise his bitter enemy, Rome: he crossed the Alps with 40,000 soldiers, 7,000 horses, and 37 war elephants with the intention of invading Italy. For centuries, historians and archaeologists have debated which mountain pass the Carthaginian army used. An interdisciplinary study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has launched a new theory with a highly innovative approach: bioenergetics. The research, led by the University of Oxford and Friedrich Schiller University Jena, indicates that the Col de la Traversette, located at an altitude of 2,914 meters on the current border between France and Italy, was the chosen route because it required less energy consumption, especially for the elephants.

AI is very tempting. You draft a quick post and, before publishing it on social media, click the magic button: "Improve my post." In the blink of an eye, you have a theoretically more understandable text. You find it magnificent, accept it, and share it. You feel it captures what you wanted to explain and that it hasn't practically changed the content or modified what you wanted to say, only made it more attractive. But is it really your opinion?

Karim Kattan (Jerusalem, 1989) is a Palestinian writer, doctor in comparative literature from Paris University, who explores through poetic fiction exile, memory, and violence, but also love and eroticism. He has lived in France since he was 18, but his family remains in Palestine. In his acclaimed debut novel, Le palais de deux collines (2021; The Palace of Two Hills in the Spanish edition published by Deleste),there is the return of an exile to his village and to the family palace full of ghosts and stories of a past that seems unreal. In L'Éden à l'aube (2024; Eden at Dawn in the Txalaparta edition) he narrates a story of love and desire between two men traveling under a hurricane wind that buries Palestine under the sand. His third novel, to be published in France in September, is even more apocalyptic.

La Redenta, the protagonist of the novel Els dies de vidre (Amsterdam), by Nicoletta Verna (Forlì, 1976), is born on the same day that the socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti is assassinated by the fascist squads. “It is a crucial moment,” recalls the author, because that June of 1924 Mussolini assumed moral and historical responsibility for the crime before Parliament. “It was the beginning of the dictatorship. The birth of La Redenta becomes a tragic succession: if Matteotti was the political victim of fascism, she will be the civil victim,” says Verna.

The Parliament demands "immediately" the transfer to the Generalitat of the properties and health facilities located in Catalonia that continue to be state-owned. The motion, promoted by ERC and approved with the votes of all groups except Vox and the PP, which voted against it, gives the Catalan executive a maximum of six months to prepare and present a fully updated inventory of all properties of the Generalitat's health system that are not its own. The report must specify the legal status, the registry status, the estimated asset value, the net book value of the assets, and the investments made by the Catalan administration.

Almost a decade after the ambitious project to convert the central nave of the Can Batlló industrial complex into a large agora open to neighbors and the sole headquarters of all Barcelona's archives was presented, the municipal government has taken a step forward to unblock a long-claimed infrastructure. "With this announcement, what we have had to wait for so many years, we make it happen. Work begins in the first quarter of next year," highlighted the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni.

When it's 21 years since the law on the return of the Salamanca documents and four of the democratic memory law, the process of restitution of documentary heritage plundered by Francoism continues to be stalled. According to the Dignity Commission, around 35,000 documents still remain to be returned to Catalonia, a figure representing approximately 5% of the total fund. Faced with this situation, the entity has urged the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, to convene the joint State-Generalitat commission to unblock the transfers with the Ministry of Culture.

The last twenty years of archaeological research have completely transformed the traditional view of Tartessos. Excavation work at the Casas del Turuñuelo site, in Guareña (Badajoz), has uncovered a bronze chariot from the 5th century BC with a structure and decoration absolutely unprecedented in the Iberian Peninsula. According to the initial interpretations of the research team, the only parallels for a piece of this kind are found in ancient Etruria, in present-day Italy, from where it could have originally come. The discovery confirms that it was a complex civilization connected with the great powers of the Mediterranean, which inhabited the southwestern peninsula between the 8th and 5th centuries BC.

Alongside the invention of the first stone tools, between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago, there was another great silent revolution: the invention of rope and sewing. In the archaeological sites of this period, ornaments made of bone, teeth, and shells with extremely fine perforations have been found, which were sewn onto clothing. The most conclusive evidence of this birth of textiles is a sculpture: the Venus of Lespugue (France), a statuette made of mammoth bone dated around 20,000 BC, which shows a woman dressed in a skirt (sculpted) made of long strips of twine suspended from a belt at the back of her body.

What happens when women take to the streets? This is what the exhibition Vindran les dones. 150 anys de lluites als carrers de Barcelona, which can be seen at the Barcelona History Museum (Muhba) in Plaça del Rei until September 13, attempts to answer. The exhibition recovers the invisible thread that unites 19th-century anarchists with 21st-century young women who claim the right to decent housing, all through the eyes of some eighty writers, artists, and activists who have lived in the Catalan capital.

After fifty years of state, autonomous, and municipal governments of all political stripes, there are still educational centers with names of Francoist leaders and from the dictatorship (1923-1930) of Miguel Primo de Rivera. It is not just a matter of slowness, but also controversy. This Monday, the newspaper El País reported that in Alcántara (Cáceres) controversy has erupted because the educational community has been fighting for a year to remove the name of the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera from the facade of the public school. The school has encountered threats from the far-right, insults to teachers, and obstruction from the City Council (PP) and the Junta de Extremadura (PP-Vox). The argument of the popular mayor, Mónica Granados, for not proceeding with the name change is to preserve "social peace".

The British Mary Beard (Much Wenlock, 1955) has popularized the history of Ancient Rome through television, books, and lectures worldwide, and her works have been translated into over 35 languages. At 71, this emerita professor from Cambridge remains tireless and optimistic. She has just published Classics without filters (Edicions 62 / Crítica; with Catalan translation by Joan Solé), which she dedicates to the curator who, when she was little, opened a display case at the British Museum to show her a fossilized bread. In the book she talks about her career, but also about how both sides have used the Roman past. Among other things, she argues why the far-right is mistaken and what the statues admired by supremacists hide.

A few weeks ago, ARA published a report that highlighted that all the major public hospitals of the Catalan Health Institute and the historic primary care centers (CAP) are attached to the Generalitat. However, in many cases, ownership does not belong to the Catalan government, but to the General Treasury of Social Security (TGSS). This situation forces the Generalitat to assume the maintenance, renovation, and investment costs of facilities it does not own. This Wednesday, ERC deputy Carles Campuzano, following the ARA article and the research by historian Neus Morán, brought this issue to Parliament, and the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, has committed to negotiating with the state for the transfer of ownership of the buildings.

There has always been talk with pride about the library service, especially if we look at the data: 95.9% of the population has a public library service in their municipality. In 2024, the centers received 22.6 million visits, registered 14.9 million loans, and there are already more than 3.3 million citizens with library cards. The other good news has to do with language: there has been a notable increase in the percentage of Catalan loans, which went from 38% in 2021 to 52% in 2024.

The Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg has died at the age of 87, as reported by the newspaper Corriere della Sera. Born in Turin in 1939, Ginzburg was a meticulous teacher, with an insatiable curiosity, who revolutionized historical studies. He grew up in a home that strongly fueled his vocation. His father, the philologist, journalist, and editor Leone Ginzburg, was a prominent anti-fascist who died tortured by the Nazis in 1944. His mother was the writer Natalia Ginzburg, author of seminal works of Italian literature such as Family Lexicon. The historian would confess years later that his mother's passion for literature, combined with the stories he heard as a child about the persecutions and repression of the war, was decisive for his future.

88 years ago, the citizens of Barcelona and other Catalan towns looked at the sky with terror. "The terrible hecatomb that punishes Barcelona continues. A couple of thousand victims and more than a hundred buildings destroyed in two days. Panic and horror. Let's all go to Vallirana. The scenes of exodus and sheltering witnessed at the metro stations and platforms are unforgettable," wrote Josep M. López-Picó on March 18, 1938. On Saturday, June 20, however, one will be able to look at the sky with optimism: 100,000 poems will fall. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Franco's death, a helicopter will fly over Plaça Nova and the surroundings of Barcelona Cathedral to drop verses, in Catalan and Spanish, especially from emerging poets.

"Lola, I ask you and it is my wish that of these letters I am writing to you, you have an enlargement made, in the form of a diploma, to have it displayed in my bedroom or my dining room, because I want my children to know it thoroughly and that if they kill me, they will not have to lower their heads for anyone. And another day they will know how to defend the rights that belong to them, for me, for the Republic. Goodbye. Keep this writing, which is the original. Barcelona, May 25, 1939." It is the farewell letter of Salvador Ros i Ros before being shot at Camp de la Bota on June 20, 1939, and buried, without his family being able to say goodbye, in a mass grave in Montjuïc cemetery. He was 41 years old and left behind a widow and two children, Lluís (1927) and Maria Carme (1930).

There is a certain sense of déjà-vu when it comes to the diagnosis of the Catalan cultural system that the National Council of Culture and the Arts (CoNCA) produces every year. There is creative effervescence, but structural problems persist, such as job insecurity, territorial inequalities, and a decline in the social use of Catalan.

"I have a craving, oh, relentless, / for the knight who has served me," wrote the Countess of Dia in the late 12th century. "I am the bad whore, all dirty, a creature responsible for desire," writes Paula S. Piedad in the 21st century. Between one and the other, nine centuries. The path, however, has been very slow. "Female desire has been systematically demonized or misinterpreted," assure Raquel Casas and Lídia Gàzquez, professors, researchers, and creators of the podcasts geMMinades and LiteraCura't, who publish Foc al cos (Proa). It is an anthology that traces erotic poetry written by women in Catalan, from the medieval trobairitz to the youngest voices of today.

January 2024, ARA revealed for the first time some staggering figures. During the Civil War (1936-1939), the cemetery of Sant Boi de Llobregat – a municipality that at the time barely exceeded 10,000 inhabitants – registered the death of more than 3,000 people admitted to the municipality's psychiatric hospital. This Saturday, finally, the memory of those men and women has been rescued from anonymity with an institutional tribute. A plaque from the Directorate General for Democratic Memory makes them visible and recalls their history. Their descendants not only have a place to bring flowers, but they also know something more about those who died a few meters from the cemetery. Just a week ago, after many demands, they received the medical records of some of their relatives.