After 35 days in Ceuta, Aiman is returning to Morocco. He crossed the border shortly before the massive entry of thousands of people in late July with the hope of achieving a better life, but he has not endured the blockade situation experienced in the city. He says he is exhausted after having spent a month sleeping on the street and this Thursday, finally, he decided to make the journey back. Like the majority of immigrants who remain trapped in the city, he is dirty, wears flip-flops, and carries a small bag where he keeps everything he owns. Although he tried, he did not manage to enter any of the temporary accommodation resources provided by the State, saturated by the high demand of people who are still in the city, and he has fed himself mainly on the food distributed by social organizations. On some occasions, he has even taken food from the trash.

The fight against hunger is part of the daily life of many people in Ceuta. Although many of the immigrants who crossed the border illegally at the end of July have decided to return to Morocco and many others are already in temporary accommodation resources set up by the State, there are hundreds who are still trying to make a living as best they can in the city. They queue in front of supermarkets, restaurants, and bars in the hope that someone will give them something to fill their stomachs, they ask for money, fish, or even take food from the trash. At El Trampolín beach, a couple of boys have improvised a grocery store; they buy food and then resell it at the settlement. "Now we work for Mercadona," joke Ayoub and Imad, who show the purchase receipt to prove that they have not stolen anything. There are so many mouths to feed, however, that the help of neighbors and the solutions they come up with are not enough, and it is the social entities that are ensuring that these people can eat every day, weeks after their arrival in the city.

At the border that a month ago leaked from all sides with the massive entry of more than 80,000 people, normality now reigns, beyond the presence of some of the immigrants who crossed it illegally, who wait to see if someone gives them food or money. The traffic at this point between Ceuta and Morocco –the El Tarajal crossing– is constant; thousands of people cross it every day, whether to go to work, visit relatives, or go sightseeing.

El Trampolín beach is one of the hottest spots in Ceuta's migration crisis, having turned into a village of shacks and survival over the last month. Hundreds of migrants sleep in tents or structures they have invented from reeds, blankets, plastics, and waste collected from the street, under the watchful eye of police and military personnel, who constantly supervise the more than 800 meters occupied by the largest settlement in the city. Cleaning crews do not stop either: they collect the filth to ensure the camp's hygiene, even this Wednesday, Ceuta Day, when many people were off work and the vast majority of businesses were closed.

The rift between the Spanish government and Ceuta is total one month after the start of the migration crisis that still paralyzes the city. About 20,000 people, according to calculations by the National Police, flooded the streets of the city center this Wednesday afternoon, in the umpteenth protest against immigration and the executive of Pedro Sánchez, whom they accuse of abandonment and point to as the main person responsible for the blockade situation they experience day by day since the end of July. To the cry of "Invaders, expulsion", "Ceuta is not for sale, Ceuta defends itself" and "Ceuta is Spain", a flood of Spanish and autonomous city flags filled the streets in a mobilization called to coincide with the celebration of Ceuta Day. The attendees put their heart into it, after an atypical August in which they have not been able to celebrate the festivities or go to the beach like other years due to the unprecedented situation being experienced in the Spanish enclave, where there continue to be hundreds of migrants from Morocco who want to make the jump to Europe.

"If you don't live it, it's very difficult to understand. From the Peninsula you can't imagine what this month has been like," explains the security guard of a large supermarket in Ceuta. A month later, there are still hundreds of people who have nowhere to go, wander aimlessly through the city, and eat, sleep, and relieve themselves in the street, even though many migrants have returned to Morocco and many others are already sleeping in emergency shelters. This fully affects the daily lives of the city's residents, a population that is increasingly tense, as they are the ones responding to the day-to-day crisis. Whether by getting involved in caring for these people or by going to work at the supermarket, restaurant, or mobile phone store. Therefore, no matter who you ask about the management of the administrations, everyone talks about abandonment.

Karima Mustafá probably had never received so many expressions of affection in a row as this Tuesday. She is, along with her son Abdellah, the coordinator of the Sidi Embarek camp in Ceuta, next to the mosque that bears the same name, where in the last month many of the minors and women who arrived in the city during the massive influx of people at the end of July have slept. She doesn't stop shouting and gesturing with her arms at the entrance of the enclosure, where there is a sign indicating that no one else can enter, that they have been full for days. In her hand, she holds the paper with the names of the almost 70 girls that the State is transferring this morning to a new space set up just for them. She tries to organize them, to make them form a line, but they don't pay much attention to her and instead of positioning themselves where Karima asks them to, they throw themselves into her arms and thank her.

L'Ilias, Alfa, and Job have only known each other for a month, but they seem like lifelong friends. All three are Moroccan, they crossed the border by swimming during the massive influx of people on the last weekend of July, and they met in Ceuta. The first is a minor and is the only one who has wanted to give his real name. The other two, aged 22 and 23, prefer to remain anonymous in case of reprisals. They chat animatedly on the promenade in front of Benítez beach in Ceuta, where a few days ago a group of protesters stormed one of the camps in the city and set it on fire. Tonight, there is practically no one on the sand and the sea is calm, everything invites a swim under the moonlight. Although they have been surviving as best they can in the city for a month now and have seen it all, they are still surprised when a neighbor walking her dog glares at them.

Hafed had been sleeping at the doors of the Loma Colmenar emergency reception center, next to Ceuta Hospital, for six days to get a bed. He is 22 years old, from Tangier, and arrived in Spain by sea just a month ago. During this time, he has slept everywhere, especially on the street, and hoped that this Monday he would finally be allowed into one of the centers that are supposed to shelter people like him. New places were opening this Monday in this same complex. The news spread like wildfire among the migrants who have to make a living in the autonomous city, and early in the morning groups of young people began to arrive with the hope of finding shelter, even if only temporarily.

When Malika introduces herself, she says she is Muslim, Spanish, the daughter of a soldier, and a lifelong Ceutian. She walks accompanied by her grandson along the Compañía del Mar avenue, in front of the port where this weekend about 60 boats from the Peninsula have docked to show their solidarity with Ceuta, one month after the massive arrival of thousands of people from Morocco. They have proclaimed themselves the "army of solidarity" and, adorned with numerous Spanish flags, have railed against the inaction of the Spanish government and called for "the expulsion of the invaders" with hundreds of city residents. Malika quickly distances herself from them. "They came for two days to the beach, to sunbathe and to eat and drink well," she complains. However, she agrees that the State has handled this crisis "terribly" and assures that they will only get out of it if they remain united in the face of growing tension and radicalization, also fueled by the far-right and their hate speech.

The worst migratory crisis in recent years, which has claimed at least 140 lives, is pushing Ceuta to its limit. This Thursday, hundreds of people blocked the access of a Red Cross truck to Trampolín beach for more than two hours, where the organization distributes food to the immigrants who have remained there since their arrival on July 30. Afterwards, the demonstrators, many of them carrying Spanish flags, sticks, and stones, broke the police cordon on Benítez beach, stormed the camp where these people have been sleeping for almost a month, and set fire to two straw parasols that had become improvised shelters for the migrants to protect themselves from the sun.

The neighborhoods of Barcelona that climb the Collserola mountain range are trying to return to normal after a night of uncertainty due to the fire declared on Tuesday. In Torre Baró, neighbors curiously approach the edge where the city turns into forest to see the consequences. A column of smoke warns that the fire is still active and the smell of ash still permeates everything, even though the firefighters have stabilized it hours ago and continue to wet the ground with aerial means to finish the job. In the evening, the firefighters declared the fire controlled. There are 54 hectares burnt.

For three years now, Íngrid Ruiz has been unsuccessfully logging into the Generalitat's online services website every day to see if she can apply for the aid that would allow her to finance essential items for her daily life, the provision of social care for people with disabilities (PUA). She has both legs amputated, needs a wheelchair, and during this time she has had to bear the cost of all the products that allow her to have a quality of life. These include a motor that helps her on inclines, a motorized handlebar she uses to move on uneven terrain, and an adapted car without which she could not drive. Ruiz estimates that in total it amounts to over 15,000 euros that she has had to pay out of her own pocket because these benefits have been frozen since 2023. Now, the Department of Social Rights has relaunched the call so that people like Íngrid do not have to bear this expense, although it will not be able to reverse the "economic and emotional toll" they have suffered during this time.

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.