During the darkest moments of the covid-19 pandemic, when healthcare centers were on the verge of collapse and new spaces were hastily set up to care for all the people falling ill from an unknown virus, pharmacies became the most accessible community health agents in the country. To alleviate the care burden, they took on diagnostic testing: they trained and prepared teams to perform tests and thus relieve hospitals and primary care centers, which were overwhelmed with caring for the most seriously ill. Likewise, those responsible for pharmacy offices in Catalonia claim that this is just another example of their social commitment.

When Enric and Flore were young, they shared everything they had. A good example is Flen, a small box they named with the first two letters of each of their names, where they kept all the pesetas they managed to collect during the post-war period. It didn't matter who put in more and who put in less; when they had enough money to buy a snack, they would empty it, divide the loot equally, and start the process again. It's just an anecdote of a lifelong friendship, but there are clearly many more.

The Government of Ceuta has estimated between 3,000 and 5,000 people are still in the autonomous city after last Thursday's massive entry that has caused an unprecedented migratory crisis. Of these, at least about 900 are minors who are in reception centers and other extraordinary resources that have been set up in the city. However, the executive led by Juan Jesús Vivas (PP) is aware that there are many other children who entered the city illegally on July 30 and who have not yet requested to be assisted or continue to be hidden in illegal settlements — especially in the mountains — or have not been detected by the Local Police, which is responsible for transferring them to reception centers.

Until now, the Spanish government had avoided harsh rhetoric against Morocco over the crisis in Ceuta, but this Monday, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, broke this pattern and raised the tone: Robles urged the Alawi regime to get to the bottom of the issue: "I ask the Government of Morocco to investigate and get to the end to find out what happened with these movements that have occurred on [social] networks, because we cannot look the other way. Neither Spain nor Morocco can look the other way in the face of this human drama." "I insist, I ask Morocco to get to the end," Robles reiterated in a statement to the media from Zaragoza.

The covid-19 pandemic caught the world off guard and, when the virus broke out in Catalonia, Joan Guix (Barcelona, 1950) was the highest authority in public health in the country. He was at the forefront of the health emergency and lived with uncertainty the arrival of a new disease caused by an unknown virus that was fully impacting a health system ill-prepared to face it. An epidemiologist and doctor in preventive medicine and public health, Guix was the number two in the Department of Health during the first months of the crisis, and also the person who represented Catalonia in the meetings of the interterritorial council with the Ministry of Health.

Jesús Moral (1959, Còrdova) is a mathematics professor and has worked for almost two decades in the Department of Education. He has been head of the Center Organization service, secretary of the School Council of Catalonia, secretary of the Higher Council for the Evaluation of the Educational System, and deputy director general of Innovation and Training. In 2018, he was part of the department's team responsible for organizing the PISA tests. In a conversation with ARA, he analyzes the error that has invalidated the inclusion of Catalonia's results in the international tests and which, therefore, makes it impossible to compare the level of Catalan students with that of other territories and with previous years.

It was one-thirty in the morning this Wednesday and all of Barcelona's police had his photo and were looking for him. The man turned himself in at the Mossos d'Esquadra police station in Eixample, located in Plaça d'Espanya. He was deeply disturbed. In fact, he initially received psychiatric treatment. Finally, however, the police arrested him as the alleged perpetrator of the murder of his partner, a 34-year-old woman, a few hours earlier at their family home, on Andrade street, in the Sant Martí district. It was not the first time the police had been to that address.

Despite being aware of it since March, the Government still does not know how the error occurred that invalidated the inclusion of Catalonia's results in the international PISA tests and, therefore, makes it impossible to compare the level of Catalan students with that of other territories and with previous years. In a parliamentary appearance, the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, admitted this Monday the "gravity" of the situation, but defended that the executive launched an internal process four months ago to gather information and reconstruct the facts with the aim of clarifying the origin of the incident that led the Generalitat to dismiss 23% of students, even though the OECD sets a maximum of 5% for this percentage. The report has not yet been prepared and, therefore, Niubó said that they still have no conclusions on why the high rate of students exempt from taking the exams was not detected in time.

A blockage in the connection well of the works to bury the R2 line, on the border between Barcelona and Montcada i Reixac, swallowed a large crane and more heavy machinery this Wednesday at noon, but it did not cause injuries. Adif sources explained to ARA that no personal injuries were registered as a result of the incident, but the sinkhole has forced to to preventively interrupt the railway traffic between Montcada i Reixac and Sant Andreu without a specific restoration date, with affectations on R2, R2 Nord and R11.

In the last decade, there have been supply problems in pharmacies and difficulties accessing certain therapies that the Spanish government attributes to scientific, industrial, and social changes that have fully impacted the pharmaceutical industry. For this reason, this Tuesday the executive has approved in a Council of Ministers the draft law on medicines and health products, a comprehensive reform that seeks to prevent shortages, facilitate access to innovative medicines, and adapt prescription and dispensing to the new needs of the national health system. It also incorporates a new pricing system with which it aims to "promote competition and the penetration of generics".

Key step by the Spanish government to toughen the crackdown on tobacco. This Tuesday, the Council of Ministers approved the new anti-tobacco law, which includes new smoke-free spaces, such as bar and restaurant terraces, and also new ways of smoking, such as electronic cigarettes and vapes. Minors will be prohibited from smoking, as until now only sales to this group were prohibited, and it foresees sanctions starting from 200 euros. Now the text will be sent to the Congress of Deputies, where the different parliamentary groups will debate whether or not it is finally approved and in what way.

Elisabet Jané (Barcelona, 1951) thought that this spring she was going to take the trip of her life and, in a way, it has ended up being so, but not for what she expected. She is a doctor and a lover of birds; in fact, she defines herself as a birdwatcher. On April 1st, she embarked on a cruise that would take her to see remote islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where species of birds live that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. However, what was supposed to be a unique experience about nature and biodiversity ended up becoming a global public health crisis, spurred on by the specter of the covid-19 pandemic. The hantavirus outbreak detected on board the MV Hondius has closed with 13 positive cases, three of whom have lost their lives, and now Jané reviews how the episode was experienced from inside the ship.

For a year now, Europe has had two approved drugs to slow the progression of Alzheimer's, but Catalan patients have not yet been able to benefit from them because they are not yet authorized in Spain, which continues to unsuccessfully negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies. This week there was a new meeting that ended without an agreement. The interministerial Commission on Drug Pricing has rejected their inclusion in public healthcare, considering that "the demonstrated clinical benefit is very limited" and that the cost of the drugs "is very high for the clinical value they provide," according to sources from the Ministry of Health. The two drugs are approved in about fifty countries, including the United States, Japan, China, and the United Kingdom, and are the only ones to date that have shown they can change the course of the disease.

Just a month ago in the Bon Pastor neighborhood of Barcelona, two people were evacuated to Vall d'Hebron Hospital with gunshot wounds. A street argument in broad daylight ended with one person seriously injured and another slightly injured who was hit by a ricocheting bullet. Like them, up to 27 people have been injured by firearms in the first half of the year in Catalonia, just one less than in all of 2025. The same applies to firearm deaths: last year there were eight, and this year seven people have already lost their lives to a firearm. The Government attributes a large part of the proliferation of firearms to drug trafficking and calls for harsher penalties for their illicit possession and also for large marijuana plantations.

Neither medicine nor mathematics. In recent years there has been a paradigm shift in Catalan universities, which are seeing their students show increasing interest in studying a double degree. This 2026, for example, the highest cut-off grade in Catalonia is for the first time the degree in Law and International Relations at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), surpassing the degree in Physics and Mathematics, also from the UAB, which has topped the Catalan cut-off grade rankings for the last three academic years. Paula Ramió is one of the graduates from the latest cohort of this double degree and explains that, although it was very demanding, it was also very rewarding.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended modifying the flu vaccine to provide better protection against circulating strains, which is why the campaign to vaccinate the most vulnerable citizens against respiratory viruses in Catalonia is being postponed until October 5, one month later than in previous years. This was announced this Wednesday by the Department of Health, which, to compensate for this delay, will open appointment booking systems at the end of July with the aim of allowing the population to schedule their injection in advance. One of this year's novelties is that vaccination among teachers and professors will be reinforced, as children are the main transmitters of the flu and are highly exposed.

Some 200 million people worldwide suffer from a disease that causes blindness due to the malfunction of photoreceptor cells, which are responsible for detecting light in the eye. Although the rest of the retina functions, the brain is unable to process vision because it does not receive light signals. Now, researchers from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) have led a study in which they have managed to restore the vision of blind mice with a new class of drugs called photosensitive drugs, a type of medication that is activated precisely by light. According to its authors, the research published this Wednesday in the journal Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) represents "a major step forward" in the search for treatments to restore vision in humans.

Civil Protection has ordered the first preventive evacuations this Monday due to the fire in Aiguamúrcia, in l'Alt Camp. An ES-Alert message has asked residents of Ranxo Bonany, Can Llenes, Can Joan de la Costa, and les Cases Romanill, in the municipality of Querol, to leave their homes in an orderly manner. In any case, they emphasize that there is no imminent danger from the advance of the flames and expect that the evacuees will be able to return to their homes in the evening. The rest of the areas affected by the fire remain confined. Civil Protection has asked the evacuated residents to take their documentation, medications, and pets with them, and to leave their houses and windows closed. People who do not have a vehicle will receive transport from emergency teams.

The Generalitat Firefighters have had to make a very great effort this week to respond to hundreds of fires, many of which, moreover, have burned simultaneously. The high temperatures and low humidity have favored the fire making its way easily in different parts of the country, and this has forced hundreds of people to be confined and also to review forest management in recent years. The forecast was that this Saturday there would be a respite in the form of a temperature drop, but it hasn't been enough to prevent new fires that have maintained the pressure of recent days on emergency services ahead of a new heatwave next week. One of them broke out in Mont-roig del Camp and forced the confinement of several housing developments, in addition to closing roads and train lines. The other originated between the Camarasa reservoir and the village of Fontllonga, in La Noguera, where a hundred firefighters were mobilized to extinguish it.

The Department of Health reported this Saturday afternoon that the suspected case of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, hospitalized in the high-level treatment and isolation unit of the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, has tested negative for the tests performed. It is a person who had been in the north of Spain, an area where the ticks that transmit the disease are present, and presented a compatible clinical picture, which led health professionals to suspect it and activate the relevant protocol. Once the case has been ruled out, the patient will continue to be studied at the hospital to clarify their diagnosis. Health officials emphasize that the episode poses no danger to the population.