Since last Wednesday, if Txema Escorsa, 34 years old and a struggling secondary school teacher, is still in his home, at Sant Agustí street in Vila de Gràcia, it is because that day, very early, an anonymous crowd, shoulder to shoulder, prevented the judicial procession and judicial device from carrying out the task of kicking him out of his home. Everything stopped at street level and via a human wall, and this is called social unionism, civil disobedience, and community defense. The undeniable evidence clarifies, with lights and shorthand, that the eviction was only blocked by the massive mobilization of the people. That is to say, Txema was saved by the popular initiative of the Tenants Union and not by any calm and severe political, judicial, or police decision. And that the president of the Generalitat even sent a tweet of support – although it will take more than a tweet. The battle against the global market is always local and the image showed hundreds of neighbors against a foreign vulture fund located in New York, which violates and breaks current legislation and which is impudently making prohibited colivings for room rentals, to which it already charges per room much more than Txema pays for an entire apartment. Paradoxically, the main representatives of the speculators were, last Wednesday, the judge and the police – that is, the institutional system – who came to accelerate the expulsion of residents. And from here the creature cries. The judicial procession has left in writing that it will try again on April 15th. The people, undoubtedly, will too. The same day that Txema was resisting at his home thanks to active neighborhood solidarity, Barcelona City Council decided to take advantage of it to evict 130 impoverished people from a vacant lot in La Sagrera. Without any prior notice and without offering them any alternative other than to get out and disperse them throughout the city. Everything happened –words and deeds of urban eloquence, in which the name never makes the thing– under the protection of the alleged Pla Endreça and next to, wouldn't you know it, the Pont del Treball Digne, which the expelled do not have in the open. However, the Quart Món entity was there supporting them. These days a municipal campaign supposedly denounces the uncivil "scoundrels". But what is "shameful" is that the shantytown returns to the city –53 settlements with 299 people as of December 2025– and that so "little" is done to reverse it. Or that the little that is done is to drive them away to an even worse place. Scoundrels, indeed. After all, here in Barcelona as in Badalona, we should insist much more that the different management and narratives –the packaging and propaganda– in no case alter the final product: the abandonment of the kick in the backside. The effect ends up being the same, whether with Albiol's aporophobic shouting, or with Collboni's apparently sanitizing neutrality. One and the other confuse the fight against extreme poverty with the fight against the poor. And that's how we are. Thanks to all the entities involved for years in the fight for the eradication of homelessness, from the Fundació Arrels to the Hospital de Campanya of the parish of Santa Anna. A civil network that has been crying out for years for a law of transitional and urgent measures, still in infinite process and pending approval.

Although we always tiptoe around it, last Thursday marked the 40th anniversary of... No Catalan independence from NATO. With 54% of the vote. And yes, wouldn't you know it, it was a democratic referendum amidst an official fear campaign. And yes, it divided public opinion, but the next day, in a democratic surprise, everyone was still there, on both sides. And yes, look at that—and it's well worth remembering this when the empire howls again—it represented an immense popular mobilization for the NoAs if it were the last exhausted attempt to prove that the mirage of a democratic transition doesn't completely vanish down the drain. Results aside—a resounding "no" from the Basque Country with 68% of the vote and opposition also from the Canary Islands—what remained was a drastic summary, a disastrous trend, and a lasting practice: doing the exact opposite of what was preached.White man speaking with a forked tongue"," Krahe sang about Felipe. That "No way" from the socialists went down in history as a classic example of political maneuvering, chameleon-like ideological defection, and the passage of time as the only true judge. I suppose there's no more iconic image than the rallies of the eighties for the No starring the pacifist Javier Solana, who ended up becoming Secretary General of NATO. Forty years later, oh boy, out comes American Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Trump pawn, bellowing about Spain's lack of cooperation in the imperial and illegal war in Iran, reminding everyone that they were once great allies. We should ask him to clarify exactly what he is. beforeAre we talking about the illegal war in Iraq, the hornet's nest for which we are still paying the price? Or are we referring to something from before the very beginning? If anyone remembers, passed down orally from grandparents, NATO is made up of those military personnel who maintained, legitimized, and sustained Franco's regime for all the years it lasted. Little to be grateful for, as you can see. As an aside, there's the insightful lawsuit that Lluís Llach filed against the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) for failing to uphold its electoral promises. The judge essentially told him he was absolutely right and lamented the lack of any legal basis for issuing a ruling. And all Llach was asking for was a single peseta in damages.

February isn't over yet, and January's economic surge has already left several gaping holes, fallen trees, and collapsed embankments. All the pillars of the country are teetering. And not just from the effects of the winds: farmers are in revolt, education is struggling, doctors are protesting, goods are at a standstill, commuter rail is running at full capacity, and the Rental Companies' Union is poised for another mobilization. In fact, it's not January that's knocking them down: the primary sector is struggling, public services are stretched to the limit, housing is impossible, and the right to mobility has been in turmoil for far too long. In a discordant note, or perhaps as a direct consequence, February has also begun with the stark data from the latest Living Conditions Survey, published by Idescat. It's as if it were yesterday, when we woke up, the dinosaur was still there. A chronic and structural fact: 24.8% of Catalan society is at risk of social exclusion, regardless of the number of pigs we export to China and the number of Seats manufactured there and passed off as European cars. The official survey, worse than last year's, paints a consolidated picture: 47.3% struggle to make ends meet, and only 3.8%—an absolute minority—manage "very easily." 29.4% cannot afford a single week's vacation. And the faces, traces, and remnants of the risk of poverty vary by neighborhood and social class: women (26%), children (36%), migrants (49%), and the unemployed (55%). Against this backdrop, a significant counterpoint exists: in reality, the risk of poverty affects 40% of the Catalan population. This figure is only halved after all public social transfers, especially pensions, are taken into account. Rights born after years of hard democratic struggle and constantly challenged by the same old players: the repeat offenders in power. Locked away in a Belgian fortress, the EU is currently debating whether to expand the general deregulation that has brought us to this very point.

This Saturday morning marks just two weeks since we woke up, first and foremost, to the news of the bombings of Caracas—nearly 100 deaths, unpunished and already forgotten. Then, with radios on and mobile phones constantly connected, like those days when everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing, we heard the live broadcast of the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. So much could have happened, and it's still surprising how little actually did. The next day, that is, the cartel The name Los Soles disappeared from the prosecution's indictment. Only oil and ideology remained. putsch From Trump. Circle the tale. And yes: it's only been 15 days since the Donroe Doctrine—and two centuries since the Monroe Doctrine. And yet, it already seems like an eternity—both the fifteen days and the two centuries. On the tightrope of the cannibalistic raffle of the new year, the thick doubt of who will be next to receive: Greenland, Iran, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Gaza again, or Ukraine again. And the EU playing the fool. 2026 has begun with the jumble of confusion, the farewell to yesterday's world, and teetering along several cliffs whose destination we'll see, because if we already know how the year has started, the important thing is to get involved so that it doesn't end as some intend. Pornographically, there is this brutal declaration from Lieutenant Stephen Miller, both inside and outside the walls, which has blown everything up: "The real world is governed by force and power: these are the iron laws of the world." The brutality being justified is everywhere: Delta Force is now the global equivalent of what ICE is at home. The same cruelty, inside and out, but with resistance both within and outside the country. And with Renee Nicole Good killed by an agent who had fought in Iraq. When Trump kills equally at home and abroad.

"A society is measured by how it treats

On the unconstitutional eve of another momentous anniversary, it must be remembered once again that the last police officer of the Franco dictatorship was the first of the democratic era. There's no need to look for examples; they all are; and all of them mean one; and this includes everyone from the first to the last. Unfortunately, the same logic applies to the murky figure of the police infiltrator driven by state-sanctioned psychosis: the last one still serving under the dictatorship—for example, Mikel Lejarza.Wolf—he was also the first mole of democracy. And so on in so many orders of disorder, with the unfortunate providence that in the case of infiltrators in two seemingly distinct stages—dictatorship and dictatorship—they share a common trait, a trait that is a blessing to any possibility of democracy: the same state impunity. Under both regimes, at such different times, it turns out that they are planned and orchestrated systematically in the same way and from the depths of depravity: in the most absolute and shadowy illegality. Following journalistic investigations by The DirectIt will soon be a year since the documentary Infiltrators broadcast in 30 minutes It awakened us from that opaque figure, unregulated everywhere, calledintelligence agentQuite different from an undercover agent acting under judicial mandate and monitoring, legally permitted under certain circumstances. But the supposed democracy, in that blind spot, draws on a vein of true dictatorship: in the name of the law but always outside of it, without any kind of control, only at the gray whim of the food chain of repression and under the same order: the bottomless pit of national security.

The next day, Franco was gone—but Francoism remained, motionless and with its hands still dripping with blood from that September 27, 1975. The crucial issue, and that's why they killed until the very last second, was that we were still here—this us majestic figures they could never kill, and the scars we still bear, including so many thousands of anonymous names, six thousand mass graves, a country in the gutter, 66,500 Catalans with open military court proceedings, or "the end of so many since that July," as Brossa would say. Five decades have passed, and there are those who continue to perversely confuse the ability to close wounds with the ability to reopen them, and those who, episcopalianly, confuse turning the page with leaving the book blank—not only unable to read it carefully and respectfully, but even unable to write and understand it. There is also an unbridled Bourbon monarchy reclaiming the dictator in the guise of a supposed best-sellerThat's still the case.Spaniards, Franco is dead", announced Arias Navarro, the butcher of Malaga, 50 years ago. And, in proper Catalan, the most faithful and appropriate clandestine translation would be "what more could we want?"

Today 50 years ago, five minutes past eight thirty in the morning, Jon Paredes Manot, Little one, He was executed in a forest clearing near the Can Catà road, then a military base. A platoon of volunteer Civil Guards murdered him at dawn after a charade of a military trial. The death row that dawned had begun in Burgos with the execution of Ángel Otaegi, and would close in Hoyo de Manzanares with the execution of FRAP militants Xosé Humberto Baena, Xosé Luís Sánchez Bravo, and Ramón García Sanz. Two young Basques, two young Galicians, and a young man from Murcia. They were the last five death sentences carried out by the Franco dictatorship, through a military summary and with a semblance of legalism. It can never be said that they were the last deaths of the executioners' orgy of blood. Only six months later, the young Oriol Solé Sugranyes was killed, after escaping from Segovia. Just seven months later—another death knell—the massacre of the Vitoria workers took place. And then Montejurra. And then the lawyers of Atocha, Javier Verdejo, Gustau Muñoz, and so many others. There isn't enough space to house the political violence of the Transition, but there is enough to emphasize the paradox that the Portuguese Carnation Revolution left only 19 dead. exemplary and peaceful Democratic transition, on the other hand, close to 700. 50 years in freedom.

It was market day, Josep Palau i Fabre

The outbreak of the Montoro case brings together all the immutable ingredients of the traditional manger, stripping away every strand of corruption that is more systemic than systematic, and shaking the political-emotional counter to the provisional benefit of Vox. As always, fashions pass, and only the rubble remains, amidst an oblivion that only cracks when a new mess erupts. Then we look in the rearview mirror, remember where we came from, and wonder what the hell has never changed. In memory corner, regarding the judicial state of affairs, we must remember that three former ministers were convicted and imprisoned from the Aznar regime—Rodrigo Rato, Eduardo Zaplana, Jaume Matas—and that others were also investigated, with cases closed or narrowly acquitted. From the Felipe González administration, with a firm judicial signature, the following were convicted, among others: a Minister of the Interior, the party's finance coordinator, several bankers, the brother of Vice President Alfonso Guerra, and CESID sewer errand boys—and an entire Minister of Defense, Nar, resigned, all in the Royal Household. From Mariano Rajoy's governments, Montoro is currently in the air, but Fernández Díaz is awaiting trial, where he is facing a 15-year prison sentence for patriot While his Minister of Health was already convicted, for profit, in the Gürtel case. In the preliminary indictment phase alone, three people have already left Sánchez's Peugeot—two of whom were party organizational secretaries—and now only one remains at the wheel, named Pedro. That's how things stand. As if we forget every day that the flagship of the series is called Juan Carlos I and still lives like a king in Abu Dhabi.

Koldo-Ábalos-Cerdán. And the Civil Guard entering Ferraz 33 years later. It's happened again—the same old story, it should be said. Returning to the past is always regressive, involutive, depressive. And yet the novelty is that there isn't any. And the only surprise isn't that it's happening again, but that it's happening again, immutably, in the same way, without any change and in the most clumsy, botched version—dirty money and the ministry, recordings and envelopes, prostitutes and construction companies. No added sophistication. The septic tank of the trinket-trinket and downstairs. The same old story. But in the 25th century. That is, it happens when we wanted to believe that we had learned something from the previous decade, the ominous decade of corruption's metastasis—1,611 corruption cases in 2014, 305 of which were macro-summonses—that solid firewalls had never been established, and they had never been established again. And no. You see. Holy, we're back to it. The same thing. On the street. Both the crater of the black hole and the dense frustration, impotence, and democratic devastation.

If the municipal, Catalan, and state governments have established democracy and transparency as their guiding principles and driving forces, perhaps it's time to remember the potential dangers they face. Starting with the Ábalos case, who isn't just anyone, nor the last councilor of the second-to-last town, but a former minister. apparatchik, promoter of Sanchismo and all-powerful former secretary of organization of the PSOE. And ending with Leire of Spain, with its stellar appearance of Celtiberian vaudeville, including the Madrid farce scene with the appearance of Víctor de Aldama: like so many years ago the stellar appearance of Juan Guerra or the "I'll hit you, milk" by Ruiz-Mateos with Boyer. From this perspective, the Poland gag Last Thursday's episode is the most lucid summary, a laugh track to keep you from crying, of a paradoxical panorama, so interchangeable and inverse that the PP and PSOE exchange the same accusations, without distinction and in both senses. They accuse each other of the same thing, and yet we're talking about quite different scales, dimensions, and intensities, which don't diminish any seriousness. And yet, if we've known anything from the start, it's that these plots, quagmires, and pottery works take a much heavier toll on the left than the right—and that's why the right is pushing so hard. That the demonstration called by the mafia this Sunday invokes precisely the fight against the mafia, in the name of democracy, is nothing less than an iconic mirror of time. If this government is a mafia, how would we describe the previous one? Chinese mirrors without magic: if some have Villarejo, we must remember that the infiltrators in social movements are the exclusive courtesy of Grande-Marlaska. And that both used Pegasus equally. After all, the practical joke of the week is that Blanca Serra is not allowed to consult, in the National Archives of Catalonia, the files that document the details of her complaint about torture under Franco. The macabre joke is that those files are hers, and it was she herself who gave them many years ago to the institution that preserves memory and today prevents it. One after another, without interruption.

On the occasion of the official events commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps, all the news stories this Monday highlighted that, for the first time, a head of state of the Kingdom of Spain was finally visiting the Mauthausen camp. Where 7,000 Republicans perished under the perpetual infamy of Nazism. That the first time was in May 2025 almost explains everything, and almost nothing more needs to be added. And yet, the headline isn't accurate either. The newspaper archives don't exactly say the same thing. First and a half times, first time around, first and only once, if anything. Because it should be added that in February 1978, Juan Carlos I went, and then didn't go at the same time. On tiptoe. During an official visit to Austria, he preferred to send a minimal delegation to the camp, outside of any official agenda, while he visited the powerful steel industry in Linz and went to the Vienna Opera. Minister Marcelino Oreja also avoided any visit. The discreet, smaller delegation consisted of two people, a chief of protocol and a member of the Royal Household Secretariat, who left flowers that read:"The King of Spain in the Spaniards who died outside their homeland". How could I say nothing – they died away from home and that was it.

On the occasion of the official events commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps, all the news stories this Monday highlighted that, for the first time, a head of state of the Kingdom of Spain was finally visiting the Mauthausen camp. Where 7,000 Republicans perished under the perpetual infamy of Nazism. That the first time was in May 2025 almost explains everything, and almost nothing more needs to be added. And yet, the headline isn't accurate either. The newspaper archives don't exactly say the same thing. First and a half times, first time around, first and only once, if anything. Because it should be added that in February 1978, Juan Carlos I went, and then didn't go at the same time. On tiptoe. During an official visit to Austria, he preferred to send a minimal delegation to the camp, outside of any official agenda, while he visited the powerful steel industry in Linz and went to the Vienna Opera. Minister Marcelino Oreja also avoided any visit. The discreet, smaller delegation consisted of two people, a chief of protocol and a member of the Royal Household Secretariat, who left flowers that read:"The King of Spain in the Spaniards who died outside their homeland". How could I say nothing – they died away from home and that was it.

It's pouring rain, just when you think it's over again, the never-ending story—first as tragedy, then as farce—and we're back at the top of the heap. Or to put it another way: Sisyphus in the race after the stone that goes up and down and never stops rolling, but in this case only down and never up. I say this because Catalonia has been the country with the least emphasis on philosophy in the educational curriculum for a long time, blow after blow. And if we've been here for so long, it means we've been in a worse place for years. From the school of freedom, it's always urgent to think—against those who only want us to be subjects, consumers, spectators, and users—and rethink everything. Because if today, for example, is April 25th—with Valencian roots, a Portuguese soul, and an Italian partisan spirit—we will have to consider why we have the Valencian Country we have, what has become of the democratic revolution of the carnations fifty years later, and how the hell we ended up in the sinister state of Liberation with Meloni governing Italy. It makes us think—not so much. Because they have also been inviting, inciting, and clumsily modulating us to stop doing so for too long.

Segundo Marey died, after a long illness, in August 2001, only two months after José Barrionuevo and Rafael Vera left Guadalajara prison, behind the most exceptional open prison regime granted by the double misfortune of Aznarity and the reconsecrated impunity elevated to a reason of state. That is to say, a murky coincidence, just 20 years ago this Saturday, immunity was granted to those who gave the direct order to kidnap Marey, the son of a socialist republican exiled in 1936 and captured in Hendaye when he was mistaken for an ETA leader. And yes: they had previously received a partial pardon, requested and justified unanimously by the Supreme Court, while the victim and the prosecution opposed it. And also yes: that automatic and instantaneous open prison regime came after a pardon in 1998 that was considered the fastest in democracy, according to the newspaper archives: "Never in Spanish judicial history has a pardon been processed so quickly [...] in less than three days". This was said by the then minister Mariscal de Gante, daughter of a Francoist judge of the TOP and today's continuator, from the Court of Auditors, of the inquisitorial economic extortion and the long wave of repression that besieges us.