“They live off this imaginary, off the cousin who studied in a public school and now works in what she wants,” says Àsia. She is 24 years old, was born in Catalonia, and is the daughter of Moroccans. They often visit family, especially in the summer. “What do they tell you?”, I ask her. “Well, that I can choose and do what I want,” she replies. She recently graduated in law, and is doing an internship at a law firm while studying for a master's degree in legal practice.

He is seen smiling, with his finger raised and a backpack on his back. But Jordi Sarrats chose this photo for what is behind it: a river. "The horseshoe-shaped curves of rivers have always seemed to me a whim of nature, and this one, of the Colorado River, is iconic." Today he is retired, but he owned an elevator company for many years and today he presides over the guild that groups this sector.

She and a camel. Both in an extreme close-up. It is the photograph that Carla Polo has on WhatsApp. She is in the desert of Oman, where she traveled alone in February 2022. "There was no one there, obviously. Who travels alone in the middle of covid to Oman?" That morning she wanted to see the sunset, and she found the animal. Sometimes she thinks she should change it, because it is not very serious, but it reminds her of a good moment and she leaves it for later. In her status she has written: "I can" (I can). A reminder for the bad moments, she says, so as not to forget that it is worth trying what you want.

Mònica Bernabé is one of the European journalists who best knows Afghanistan. She first went there in 2000, during the first Taliban regime, lived there between 2006 and 2014, and has returned on several occasions, the last one this August 2026, when it has been five years since the withdrawal of American troops. We speak with her about what she has seen, what they have told her, and how she has disguised herself to be able to narrate the reality of Taliban Afghanistan, a regime that does not want foreign journalists and makes it difficult to report on what is happening in the country.

Josep Masalles (Barcelona, 1956) is known as the eclipse hunter. Or Mr. Eclipse Spain. He holds the record for being the person in Spain who has seen the most eclipses - a total of 43 - and is the president of Aster, the Astronomical Association of Barcelona.

"The snail no longer sticks out its horn, it no longer climbs the mountain. The snail no longer brings wine and a Moroccan crushed it", sings a young man, inside a car while with other friends. "We are young Catalans with a reputation for being traffickers", he intones in another video. He is Naim Smaili, a young son of Moroccans who has accumulated millions of views on TikTok by covering Catalan children's songs and placing, with humor, anti-racist messages.

Masculine sphere and heteropessimism. Gimbro and girlboss. They are concepts linked to gender that somehow indicate the cultural acceleration experienced in this area. This is analyzed in Tristes y salvajes by the philosopher and sociologist Lionel Delgado, who has a digital platform –Broders– for young people to express their emotions and concerns.

Daniela de Francisco was told she would never walk or speak again after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage at just 12 years old. But today she speaks, walks, and has completed her final year at the UPF in the degree of philosophy, politics, and economics, one of the most competitive courses in Spain. She has founded the anti-ableist student association.

If nature was the answer, what was the question? It is the quote that appears at the beginning of La respuesta (Destino), the book that paleontologist and co-director of Atapuerca Juan Luis Arsuaga has just published. It is more than 500 pages where there are some answers – let's not confuse them with certainties – and especially questions that help us to fascinatingly retrace the history of evolution and to understand ourselves, humans, in comparison with the rest of the animals.

Chandra was adopted in Nepal in 1998, the year in which a boom in international adoptions began in Catalonia, which lasted well into 2000. Today, those boys and girls are already of legal age and have been able to reflect on what happened to them. Some of them have created an association, Apacat, the first created by adopted boys and girls in Catalonia. And Chandra, who is now 33 years old, is its president.

His hands extracted the DNA of Lasa and Zabala, of the terrorists from 11-M and of the victims of the Civil War buried in Cuelgamuros. Antonio Alonso is a privileged witness to criminal history and forensic medicine in Spain. A forensic geneticist, he directed between 2019 and 2024 the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences. Retired, he now recounts in the book La huella invisible (Crítica) how DNA has changed the history of justice in Spain. 

In 2004, Sonali Deraniyagala was 40 years old and lived in London with her husband and two children. They decided that they would not spend that Christmas in England but in a nature reserve in the south of their country, Sri Lanka. On December 26, the tsunami –a word she didn't know– swept away the lives of her husband, her two children aged 5 and 7, and her parents. For a long time, she only thought about killing herself, but she found comfort in memories and in writing. What remains of those we love when they are gone? What do we remember? Questions and reflections that she wrote over seven years and which became the book Wave (wave), which is now being translated into Spanish by Capitán Swing and will be in bookstores from this Monday, June 8.

Andrea Marín (Barcelona, 2001) is a psychology graduate and one of the technicians researching at the Barcelona Institute of Neurosciences, where she works with cutting-edge equipment to conduct research on brain behavior.

Mayor Jaume Collboni (Barcelona, 1969) receives ARA when there is just one year left until the municipal elections. We talk about housing –the main problem for Barcelonians–, tourism, security, and also about the situation of the PSOE amidst the Zapatero storm.

Not missing a dinner. Filling holidays with things. Fighting to get tickets to all concerts. It's been a while since this accumulation of experiences was named FOMO, fear of missing out, according to the English acronym. A way of living that has also found a reaction in those who now defend the need to do fewer things and make room for rest. They've changed the f for the j: JOMO (joy of missing out), that is, the enjoyment of missing out on something. Juan Evaristo Valls, professor of cultural philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid, analyzes it in the book JOMO. El gusto de perder (Quaderns Anagrama). 

He is riding a bicycle. She is looking at her phone. The child must be 3 or 4 years old. "She can't be the mother, can she?" I think. I ask Nati, who is walking beside me. She smiles. She wouldn't be surprised, even though that girl – she looks like a girl – could be 15 at most. In this area, the street names are litanies, that is, religious supplications: refuge of sinners, comforter of the afflicted, help of Christians. On these walls, divine proclamations take on another dimension. Nati explains to me that one of the concerns she had during the years she was a school principal was precisely that the girls would not stop studying, especially when they were asked for their hand in marriage. And this could happen very soon. At 11, at 12, at 13. "How did you do it?" I ask. "By trying to work with the families," she says. After a while, they call me: "Did you see what Nati said?" I approach. "Oh, yes, I forgot something," she says. And she blurts out, with a tone of normality: "They also put cribs in the classrooms." "What?" I say. "Yes, cribs, so they wouldn't leave.

Juan Manuel García had just retired when he was awarded a grant of ten million euros with an objective as ambitious as it was complicated: to study the origin of life. And, specifically, the role that silica played in making this possible.

One of the firecrackers hit him in the leg. He shows it by lifting his trousers. Pere Tordera, the photographer, also grabs a handful of hair: "Look, it's burned." But far from worrying, there, everyone laughs. We are at calle Pelay Correa number 25 in Seville, the headquarters of the Peña Bética Triana. Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta. Betis has just beaten Elche, returns to the Champions League 21 years later and the streets are filled with the smell of gunpowder. "Come on, we'll buy you a beer," say Charo and Rosa. Football doesn't matter to them, they were just looking for a place to eat snails. 

Lucy Worsley (United Kingdom, 1973) began her career as a curator of historic houses and learned that history is not only explained through parliaments and battles, but also in the kitchens and bathrooms of the house. How was laundry done? What was the bathroom like? These are questions she addresses in If These Walls Could Talk (Capitan Swing). By joining small details, she achieves a reconstruction of the great changes that have occurred in our society.

Vania Arana was born in Peru in the late sixties, but she has been living in Catalonia for over thirty years. She arrives at the interview wearing a green t-shirt with the phrase: "Organize yourself if you don't want to be organized." It is the motto of Las Kellys, the union she presides over, which brings together hotel maids, that is, women who, like her, clean hotels.