The division of the left is as old as the left itself. Ideological purism, doctrinal rigidity, and poor tactical ability, sometimes compounded by a personalism they theoretically reject, are characteristics historically associated with the groups and factions that have positioned themselves to the left of the "official" left. These conditions often lead them, almost inexorably, to dissent and fragmentation, ultimately resulting in political impotence inversely proportional to the ideological virtue they preach.

In February of 1926, exactly one hundred years ago, the Magazine of Catalonia He initiated a survey on "Catalonia-City," a concept coined in 1905 by the modernist writer Gabriel Alomar. From a Catalanist position, but one entirely opposed to conservative regionalism, Alomar advocated a revaluation of the idea of ​​the city, which in his view was where, historically, "the strength of nationalities" and their resurgence resided. For this reason, the Mallorcan writer (who would later become one of the founders of the Socialist Union of Catalonia) maintained that it was necessary to undertake "the Barcelonaization of Catalonia"...of the old mountainous and rural Catalonia, distorted by centuries of coexistence with Spanish Spain." Furthermore, he predicted that "until the Catalan people resume their orbit around the new Barcelona, ​​there will be no revived nation."

"The United States innovates, China manufactures, and Europe regulates." With deceptive simplicity, the phrase attempts to summarize a supposed division of labor in the global economy that relegates Europeans not only to a secondary role, but clearly to the most unsympathetic one. According to this view, the United States would continue to play the pioneering role that history seems to have reserved for them (aided, in the vision that Trump is imposing, by a military power capable of intervening without legal restraint throughout the continent), while China would have become the world's factory (not always through its own merits: another version of the phrase says "China copy" rather factoryAnd Europe appears determined to hinder the free market while sinking into ineffectiveness. But the truth is more complex.

One of the central concerns of democratic forces is how to counter the simplistic and deceptive, yet widespread and seemingly effective, discourse propagated by the far right, especially through social media, which is replacing our traditional ways of getting information and forming our opinions. (The other day, in a shop in downtown Barcelona, ​​a young woman working there was surprised to see me carrying a diary under my arm and exclaimed, naively, "In yours?") Spanglish: "But Mr. Josep Maria, how old-fashioned, reading a paper newspaper!")

When Trump first became president of the United States, New York Times posted a comment saying that when you turn politics into a three-ring circus, there's always a chance the dancing bear will win. I was thinking the other day, reading here theinterview with writer Melchor Comes, who, speaking of his latest novel, states that "the far right should be attacked more for being clowns than for being fascists." In fact, part of the current debate about the rise of the far right (an issue we should consider so that it doesn't become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that's why we could start, for example, by not taking the results of a survey for granted) tries to find out what leads some people to vote for a group of politicians characterized by ideology or psychology.

On July 20, 1969, two American astronauts, Edwin Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, landed on the moon. It was the first time a human had set foot on it: those of us old enough to have seen it live on television (a friend of our parents brought a small, white, portable television with horn-shaped antennas to our summer vacation spot) still remember the hopping sounds the two astronauts made, seemingly floating on the surface of planet Earth. Armstrong, the commander, was the first to set foot on the lunar surface, a moment he summed up in a historic phrase: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." The imprint of their shoes on the dusty ground became an iconic image. Afterward, they both planted an American flag, which they had enriched because otherwise, in the lunar atmosphere, which is despicable, it wouldn't have flown. And they returned to Earth. (Even today you can find some lost denier who insists on saying that it was all a television montage.)

Last June, an unprecedented military parade took place in Washington, DC, officially to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the creation of the United States army (and, more or less unofficially, to celebrate the 79th birthday of Trump, eager to emulate his admirers Putin and Kim Jong-un). American journalist and academic Linda Kinstler wrote that, as she watched the tanks pass by, she thought of "Chekhov's gun," the principle that says that, in a play, a gun that appears in the first act must be fired in the third act. She said: "When you watch a military parade, you must ask yourself when and where lethal weapons will be deployed, in whose name and for what cause."

In 1992, Barcelona achieved one of its primary objectives with the organization of the Olympic Games, which became known as "putting the city on the map." Indeed, after that event, the Catalan capital once again became a "point of attraction for outsiders" (to use the terms used before the war to promote tourism). Mayor Maragall, who chaired the Games' organizing committee, feared that the city would not have sufficient hotel supply to cope with the challenges. With his well-known stubbornness, a Hotel Plan was implemented in the late 1980s, which even included the allocation of public land for the construction and operation of establishments. The measure was strongly opposed by a lobby that would eventually become very powerful, the Hoteliers' Association, which believed it would generate excessive supply that would be impossible to offset by the then-subdued demand. For very different reasons, the neighborhood movement also spoke out against it, one of whose leaders stated in an assembly that "the next time Barcelona is proposed for an international event, we should say no." And this "no," explained journalist Maria Favà, "is the result of a feeling that is taking root in the most critical sectors of the city, who believe that because of the Games, they are selling us the city piecemeal, that a city is being built for us." yuppies from which the working classes are scared away."

The cliché says that it is in exceptional circumstances that a man is known (the saying, which is clearly from another time, does not seem to apply to women). Ábalos-Koldo-Cerdán when they talked about how they shared the money obtained from commissions and (in the case of the first two) choosing the prostitutes on which they spent it. heroic circumstance to know what stuff they are made of.

The anecdote, which I know firsthand, is strictly true. In the mid-1960s, historian Jordi Nadal, professor of economic history at the University of Barcelona, ​​failed a student because, on the exam, she had written foreign with g. Nowadays, a student in the Faculty of Economics failing an exam due to a spelling mistake would seem exaggerated and might even provoke a minor scandal. The question, naturally, is why? Why can't every university student be required to write correctly? Why do some people argue that spelling rules aren't that important? The answer is that spelling is merely a symptom, a manifestation, of something much deeper and more transcendent: mastery of the language, which includes grammar and vocabulary, and spelling, of course.

One day, in the days that now seem so distant from the Process, I met an old colleague again, and we inevitably ended up discussing current politics. I remember that, with a condescending smile, he said to me: "You know, when people vote with their feelings..." It was his way of explaining the election results that he, a member of what should be called the right-thinking left, didn't like. Although I can't say it came to me as a new one, the phrase struck me, and it made me wonder if we could seriously establish a clean separation between rationality and feelings when choosing our vote (or when deciding whether to vote). And even more: how do we decide which votes are the result of applying strict rationality and which are the result of falling into the temptation of feelings? Who judges them, and on what basis? (The criterion can't be, of course, that if you vote for "ours" then you're behaving rationally.)

A recent survey warns that 59% of the Catalan population feels democracy is threatened, mainly by the fake news, the rise of the far right and economic inequalities. This fear, which is entirely well-founded, has been heightened by the arrival of a "new sheriff" in Washington: Donald Trump, an apprentice dictator (or absolute monarch) who does not hesitate to tweet – on an account on the X network that has more than 100 million "followers" – that "He who saves his country does not rape. His co-pilot, Elon Musk – who has more than twice as many followers – has hammered home the point by saying that "democracy" is that the president can do whatever he wants. This makes many wonder, despite the substantial differences between the two historical moments, about the parallels that the situation today presents with that of the 1930s.