At just 28 years old, Marcela was already running a newspaper with almost a hundred collaborators in Colombia. Despite having to deal with threats due to border conflicts – several journalists from the area were killed – and promoting dozens of initiatives to revive her town's community, what finally blocked Marcela was motherhood. After fleeing the country pregnant and accompanied by her partner, she arrived in Catalonia a year and a half ago, and when her son, Fer, was born, she collapsed. "You have 20,000 personal things inside, but then motherhood arrives and it hits you like a slap," she admits.

The images of saturation on the platforms and crowds on trains to travel by train to the south of the country on the day of the eclipse continue to have repercussions. This Friday, two days after the chaos, the Government admitted that there was a "collapse" on Rodalies (commuter rail) during the afternoon of the astronomical phenomenon. But the Secretary of Mobility and Infrastructure, Manel Nadal, defended that it only occurred on the way south and that, on the other hand, the return "was orderly". However, in the evening, scenes of queues to enter the stations, especially those in Tarragona, and platforms packed to the brim were repeated, and Civil Protection had to activate the Ferrocat plan for crowds in pre-alert.

Officially and according to the school calendar, the 2026-2027 school year in Catalan schools and institutes begins on Tuesday, September 8. However, the teacher unrest of recent months may mean that classes do not start normally this year. This Monday, the spokesperson for Ustec, Iolanda Segura, stated in declarations to RAC1 that it is "complicated" that the strike planned for the first day of school is called off, and denounced that there is no negotiation with the department. "We had a meeting with the [Education] counselor at the beginning of July and we haven't heard anything since then," she told RAC1.

Not even the guitarist of Queen wanted to miss it. Brian May has been just one of the hundreds of thousands of people who this Wednesday have dropped everything to experience a minute and a half that is already history: the only total solar eclipse that will be seen in Catalonia —and in part of the Iberian Peninsula— in more than a century. From the Trabucador sandbar in the Ebro Delta, from a cove in Mallorca, from the Prades mountains, or even from an industrial estate in Valls or from a municipal football field in a Lleida neighborhood. Neither the heat nor the fear that the clouds would play tricks have hindered this astronomical phenomenon for which Catalonia had been preparing for more than a year.

"I wasn't very aware of what it meant to be the first... I took it naturally," acknowledges Miriam Galisteo, the first woman to join the Barcelona Fire Department. It was 2007, and she was 31 years old. "My colleagues had to get used to my presence. It wasn't difficult for me, but for them, a more paternalistic streak emerged, trying to protect me or not seeing me as capable of doing certain things," recalls the firefighter. She also explains that she didn't consider herself a role model until new generations of female firefighters joined and told her she was for them. "There are already 20 or 22 of us girls, but there are still attitudes and comments... In the end, it's like society, it moves slowly," she warns.

It will be only 1 minute and 32 seconds for those who see it from places where darkness will be total, but in Catalonia, an equal event will not be seen for another 154 years. This exceptionality makes the solar eclipse of this August 12th a milestone marked on the calendar for months –or years– for many, and the adventures to achieve the best experience to see it are almost infinite.

This Friday, the Department of Education communicated that, due to an error, Catalonia's results in the PISA tests will not be valid for comparison with other territories nor with Catalan results from previous years. The reason is that when deciding how many students did not take the tests due to learning difficulties, Catalonia exceeded the limit: it discarded 23% of the students in the sample when the OECD marks that the maximum number of exempted students cannot exceed 5%.

This Friday, the Government announced that an error in the sample of selected students has resulted in Catalonia's PISA test results being invalidated for comparison with other territories or previous years. The error by Education means that the sample is not representative and it will not be possible to know if the Catalan educational level has improved or worsened. L'ARA interviews Francesc Pedró, who has worked for a decade with the OECD in the educational field. He is also a professor at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and co-director of the 2026 Yearbook of Education in Catalonia from the Equitat.org Foundation.

The Catalan education system has experienced a real upheaval: an error in the sample of students who took the PISA tests will make Catalonia's results in the OECD tests unrepresentative and incomparable with the scores of other countries or with the results that Catalan students achieved in previous editions. In other words, the PISA tests will not serve to know if Catalan schools have improved or worsened compared to the last report in 2022, which was a disaster for Catalonia, nor to know the level of Catalan students compared to that of boys and girls from other territories. Broadly speaking, the problem is that there was an error in deciding which students should be excluded from the tests due to learning difficulties: Catalonia exempted 23% of the students who were part of the sample, when the OECD sets a maximum of 5% of participants to be exempted. But what is the process for deciding which adolescents take the PISA tests?

Serious setback in the Catalan education system. The results of the PISA tests in Catalonia, which will be made public in early September, will not be comparable with other territories or with previous years' editions. In other words, the PISA report will not allow us to see if the level of Catalan students has improved or worsened. The reason is what the Department of Education has described as a "technical, isolated, and isolated incident." Broadly speaking, Catalonia has not correctly applied the criteria set by the OECD – the initiators of the PISA tests – to justify that a student should not undergo the tests, which has resulted in the sample of students who did take the exams not being representative of Catalan students aged 15. The Government received an alert about the error in March and communicated it this Friday, July 24. An investigation has been opened to clarify the causes of this fiasco.

It is one of the elephants in the room when talking about cut-off grades and university mobility, and also one of the areas the Government has tackled: the management of places to study medicine at a public university in Catalonia. The main problem that has been dragging on for years is that the demand to study this degree is much higher than the number of places offered. Faced with this reality, the Generalitat presented a plan in April to increase the vacancies to train future doctors. However, in the university pre-registration for this 2026, there has been a surprising change: the demand to study medicine at a public university has decreased.

The Mossos d'Esquadra are investigating the violent death of a 75-year-old woman found last night in Soses, in Segrià.

New firearms confrontation in Catalonia. This afternoon in Badalona there was a fight that ended with four injured. Specifically, for reasons that are still being investigated, there was a confrontation that left two men injured by firearm, another injured with a bladed weapon, and a fourth who was injured by a blow to the head. At the moment, as confirmed by the Mossos d'Esquadra to ARA, none of the injured are critical and their lives are not in danger. According to the Catalan police, the events took place on Marquès de Montroig street.

It is one of the historical demands of Maresme and this Saturday the Government has begun to give it shape. Two and a half years ago – still with the government of Pere Aragonès –, the State and the Generalitat signed an agreement for the transfer of 420 million euros to unblock the works to pacify the N-II. Now, President Salvador Illa has presented the deployment of the so-called Conveni Maresme to the mayors of Maresme, which accumulates 384 million from the pact until 2032. Among other things, it foresees reducing traffic on the N-II by 10,000 vehicles, a road that will have one lane per direction in a large part of the region and for which better connectivity with the C-32 will be sought.

Nine out of ten graduates in Catalonia are employed three years after leaving university. However, this does not mean, obviously, that the conditions of these jobs are the same. In fact, according to the employment integration survey of degree holders published this Wednesday by AQU – the Agency for Quality of the University System of Catalonia – the salary difference between graduates of one degree and another in Catalonia is close to 2,000 euros gross per month.

The poor results in the scientific mathematics exam of the PAU continue to keep the Government busy. After the average grade for this subject was 4.18 –the lowest in twelve years– and a certain controversy arose around the test, now the Department of Research and Universities has asked 15 experts to produce a comparative report on the test. As the minister, Núria Montserrat, has announced, the department has made this request to several professionals "to take measures" in the mathematics exam, "but also in all subjects".

The Mossos d'Esquadra have found the bodies of two eleven-year-old children lifeless in the Ter river, in Manlleu. As reported by El Caso and confirmed by police sources to ARA, this Monday a family alerted the police that their two eleven-year-old twin sons had gone to play football and by one in the morning they had not yet returned home. The same sources detail that the twins used to always go to play football on a sports court near home and returned around nine in the evening, but yesterday morning they had not yet returned and the local police were alerted.

Neither mathematics, nor physics, nor the much-desired medicine. The university degree with the highest cut-off mark in Catalonia this 2026 is the degree in Law and International Relations at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). In this way, with a 12.97, the degree makes the sorpasso to the degree in Physics and Mathematics, also from the UAB, which has topped the podium of Catalan cut-off marks in the last three academic years.

Administering insulin to a diabetic student or changing a gastric button are needs that teachers or school assistants at schools and institutes often have to manage. These are tasks for which many have no training and which generate insecure situations for families and also for the teachers who have to manage these types of cases. Now, however, in some educational centers these episodes will be reduced, as the Government has announced that next year half of schools and institutes – public and private – will have a nurse who will come to the center to provide care. This does not mean that each school will have a nurse permanently, but rather that the same professional will be responsible for this task in several schools and institutes in the area in a programmed manner. The forecast is that this Education and Health program will reach all centers in the 2027-2028 academic year.

With two months to go until the results of a new PISA report are known – the exams that sounded all the alarms about the level of Catalan students in 2023 – the OECD presented its analysis of the Catalan education system this Monday. A report that Salvador Illa's government asked the OECD a year and a half ago with the aim of finding the longed-for recipe to improve educational results. Although the recipe is new, the ingredients are well known: more inclusion of diversity within the classroom, incentives in the teaching career, strengthening of the role of management, and a "coherent" and aligned evaluation.