Last season, in the Sequence diagram of La 2 Cat, Jordi Basté interviewed Salvador Illa just after he returned from his sick leave. This time, the journalist opened the season by visiting Carles Puigdemont in Waterloo just before returning to Catalonia. Without a doubt, he has the gift of timing. “Should I address you as ‘tu’ or ‘vostè’?”, the presenter asked him as soon as he opened the door. He had no choice but to answer “tu”. Answering “vostè” would seem like a symptom of haughtiness. But in journalistic contexts, both with presidents and official positions, the you should be an unquestionable formula. No matter how personal you want the interview to be, what brings the journalist there is the institutional figure. Puigdemont opened the door wearing a tailored suit, tie, stiff-collared shirt, and the lapel pin. And he made it very clear that that attire had become an important symbolic element for him, to maintain the solemnity of the institution he represented, despite being in exile. Even anticipating a possible arrest, that clothing preserved the dignity of his office. No matter how personal or informal the interview was, and even if they were talking in the kitchen, losing the you is one more symptom of how values are distorted: decorum is also a way of recognizing the importance of what is being done. Using the informal 'tú' does not in any case imply a loss of respect, but the formal 'usted' respects that institutional awareness that Puigdemont seemed not to want to lose even on that occasion. Although Basté always prioritizes showing the audience the level of trust with the guest, the use of you should not affect the closeness in the relationship.

On Wednesday night, La 2 Cat premiered Cervells mínims, the new TV show by Toni Clapés, which, in reality, is radio with cameras. Like a good portion of the television programs being made, you can turn your back to the screen and follow everything that happens. It can have an audience, it can make connections with the street, they can think up a setting... but it is radio. And it maintains some of the inertia, such as adding obvious sound effects depending on the topic. If someone talks about money, we hear the "clink!" of a cash register. It is curious, however, how the medium conditions the host. Clapés, seasoned with thousands of hours with listeners, took a good while to seem comfortable and have the demeanor of Versió RAC1. The trouble the glasses gave him didn't help.

Shane Gillis' monologue on Saturday Night Live this Saturday was like a trip to the past. A slap of alleged humor smelling of mothballs. It is not that this historic NBC sketch show has always been characterized by high-brow comedy. SNL has had very crude periods. Surely, through its sketches, one can observe how television humor has evolved in line with social transformations. For this reason, the opening monologue by Gillis, the host this past weekend, belonged to another era. All the jokes had to do with people's physical appearance and, furthermore, the everyday conflicts he posed to get laughs targeted women. Gillis appeared on stage lamenting being too fat and called out other people in the audience who were “fat as a cow.” Mocking himself and his bad appearance in a beer commercial, he claimed he looked like a lesbian. When he explained his supposed attempt at hiking, he joked about the day he encountered a girl alone on the mountain, implying she might think he could assault her. He claimed it had been so long since he went to the gym that “he didn’t know that women now dress like whores.” He said it was because of the shorts that women wear: “Neon-colored, with wrinkles that wrap around the buttocks and meet at the anus area.” He also lamented that now you cannot look at girls at the gym because they record you with their phones and post it on TikTok to report you. He spoke of some hypothetical older sisters: “I have two huge, fat, very bitchy sisters.” The way to protect himself from this crude humor was to include himself in the physical humiliations. He closed the monologue commenting that the hairstyle he had either looked gay or looked like Hitler. It was predictable: unimaginative comedians, when they want to be provocative, always make Hitler appear in their jokes as the only resource they have to achieve irreverence.

On Monday, Salvador Illa posted a tweet on the X network to protest against the approach of the program Vèrtex for having given a voice to anti-vaxxers and demanding responsibility for not putting public health at risk. The day before, Ramon Pellicer had introduced the debate on vaccination with a very fragile premise: “This week the flu and COVID vaccination campaign has begun, and we wanted to focus on the other side of this reality: that of the people who distrust vaccines.” The program turns a minority position into a counterpart to the vaccination campaign, endorsed by the journalistic cliché of “the other side of reality.” This other side perhaps does not justify so much attention. In any case, the video of the anti-vax couple they interviewed did not last more than three minutes, and they used very vague arguments. The man said that for him, smiles and hugs were more important for maintaining good health. They were not presented as experts, nor did they use a falsely scientific discourse. The program then dedicated four times as much time, twelve minutes, to refuting the anti-vaxxers' arguments with two expert professionals: Gemma Moncunill, lead researcher of the Caixa Research Institute group, and Judit Vall, professor of applied economics at the UB, to clarify aspects linked to the interests of pharmaceutical companies. Both insisted on the benefits of vaccines, and Moncunill stressed that it was advisable to get “all the vaccines recommended by the Generalitat.” A reporter provided statistical data that consolidated their explanations, including figures on the lives that vaccines save.

Insults against Pedro Sánchez have become the trendy chant at mass events in Spain. The October 12th parade is the origin of this trend and, once again, the news programs echoed it. On the Telenotícies migdia of TV3, they recovered one of the moments of the booing, adding subtitles to specify the chant of the famous "¡Pedro Sánchez, hijo de puta!" On the Telediario of La 1, they glossed over it quickly as if it were secondary: “También se han repetido los abucheos e insultos contra Sánchez”, including only the background sound without subtitles.

The one in the photo is Caldwell. This week his owner, Katie Brockman, won the Dog Photographer of the Year award at the 2026 Dog Photography Awards. It is the chosen photo from among all the winners of the different categories. It is not one of the major photography awards, but it has repercussions because images of beasts, especially if they are endearing, are grateful content for many media outlets.

Ten years after being found not guilty of the murder of Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman, O.J. Simpson agreed to participate in an unscripted hidden camera television show that was absolutely grotesque. The program was part of the trash TV boom of the early 2000s, where degradation and dehumanization were considered the most effective entertainment formula to capture audiences. The former NFL star would dress up, play pranks, or appear by surprise in different contexts induced by the program itself to prove that Americans still accepted him. The result of Juiced was rather dubious and pathetic, and once the content leaked, no television network wanted to air the program to avoid the controversy and the bad image of validating a murderer.

On Wednesday, TV3 aired the third episode of País d’altura, the program that travels across Catalonia from a bird's-eye view, with the ordeal of the corny jokes in the script read by David Verdaguer. During the aerial journey, from time to time, it touches down to earth to interview people linked, both geographically and emotionally, to the area being discovered. The episode was dedicated to the Terres de Lleida, and three of the interviewees in the latest broadcast were very interesting because they are profiles that, unfortunately, are not often seen on television.

On Tuesday, on Horizonte, twenty-four hours before the death of Maricarmen Abascal, they excelled in their sensationalism with one of the most delusional comments ever made about this woman. Chapu Apaolaza, columnist and editorialist for Abc, claimed that the social mobilization around the eviction of this Madrid resident was actually a smokescreen created by the Spanish government itself to cover up the Ceuta crisis. According to the journalist, it was a cover-up strategy through a fiction constructed at the publicly owned residence in Lanzarote that Spanish prime ministers use to spend their vacations: “Tienen que sustituirlo por algo más grave. Hacen un casting y eso es lo que deciden en La Mareta. Todo lo que está sucediendo ahora es una operación que se decidió en La Mareta, con un casting para buscar a una mujer que sale con camilla de la casa, con un delegado del gobierno que, con un sindicato de inquilinas 'fake', termina acampado en Sol”. In other words, Maricarmen was an actress used to construct a farce to mobilize the left. No one contradicted the theory. Eduardo Inda confirmed it with histrionics and they claimed it was a system where every circumstance was replaced by a more serious one. They exhibited their concern about what the next action they would come up with would be. Íker Jimenez had a name for this type of operation: “Lo llaman la doctrina del shock”.

The Movistar+ platform has premiered Believe me (Black Cab), a four-episode series that takes us back to the multiple rapes that occurred in London between 2000 and 2008. More than a hundred women who took one of the city's iconic black cabs were drugged and raped by their driver, John Worboys. For years, that taxi driver was able to act with absolute impunity because the police looked down on the complainants and judged them for their state of unconsciousness or for having been out partying. They also failed to properly file the reports, and this meant that the evidence and the victims' accounts were lost in the databases without being able to trace the culprit or detect a pattern of criminal behavior. It is inevitable that this series reminds us of another very similar one that Netflix released in 2019. Unbelievable (Unbelievable) dramatized a very similar true story that happened in the United States. The series showed how a police investigation can aggravate the trauma of rape victims, subjecting them to suspicion and blaming them. That production explained how two police detectives took on the cases with the necessary rigor, establishing essential protocols. They demonstrated how respect for the victims was essential to find the culprits.

After Pedro Sánchez's call for elections, Spanish television stations have increased the level of political tension. Even Ana Rosa Quintana, who has been demanding the end of the legislature for years, seemed angry when the moment finally arrived. She has been indignant at any decision by Sánchez for so many months that on the day her wishes came true, she did not know how to change her mood. How difficult it is to stop the informative hamster wheel when you have been pushing it by inertia for so many years.

On Saturday afternoon, on TV3, the tension of the storm was already felt during the broadcast of the film Escape room by Joel Joan and the series Tàndem that followed. A banner was scrolling along the bottom of the screen announcing that President Salvador Illa would soon appear live due to the weather alert. An unsettling countdown for viewers, eager to discover what the sky had in store for us. At that moment, in the top left corner of the screen, they were still advertising Col·lapse for prime time. At seven-thirty, they cut the episode to connect with 3CatInfo presenter Anna Barreda, who had been on air live since seven in the evening. The journalist introduced the appearance of Minister Parlon.

Simone Risoluti is the Vatican photographer in charge of documenting all of Leo XIV's activity. Last Monday, he captured the moment when the pope was talking to the pilots of the plane that was taking him from Lourdes to Metz, on the last day of his visit to France. The scene has a touch of irony that the photographer seems to accentuate: the pope in the sky, closer to God. He is there thanks to aeronautical engineering and the work of the pilots. The ecclesiastical authority who speaks of elevating souls and guiding them to heaven in the cockpit of an aircraft. Here, faith is not as important as mechanics and technology. The scene also recalls those old jokes where all kinds of celebrities would coincide on a plane and, faced with a critical situation, everyone had to jump, but there was always one parachute missing.

What is Mario Conde doing in a documentary about Chiquito de la Calzada? The former banker appears, in a somewhat sinister way, in a room and explains the day he met the comedian who monopolized the television of the nineties. The production transports us to the Spain of after the Seville Expo and to the emergence of private television channels. Also to the pretensions of a country that thought it was more modern than it was. And in this breeding ground, no one could escape the tsunami of the “Fistro pecador de la pradera!” and those “¿Cómorrrr?” and “¡No puedooorr!” that so many people used as a crutch in any conversation. An unbearable wave with that stocky gentleman who dressed like a flamenco singer walking up and down the screen moving his legs and arms as if he had a bad ailment. Warning: viewers of the younger generations will not believe the spectacle.

On Friday, Els matins on TV3 paid attention to the debate and the vote on the housing decrees in Congress. Ariadna Oltra interviewed representatives from different political parties to analyze the consequences of the standoff between the Spanish government and Junts. A tense countdown with a lot of political and popular tension. One of the connections to Madrid was with the Comuns spokesperson Aina Vidal. The deputy was wearing a very bright yellow t-shirt with a printed legend that said, in huge capital letters, "Catalonia is not CiU". "There are slogans that unfortunately do not go out of style," Vidal noted sarcastically when Oltra asked her to clearly show what the slogan said. This staging for the media was already an indicator of the virulence of the day in Congress and the climate of hostility between parties.

In Masterchef Celebrity Legends on Monday on La 1, they presented an unusual challenge in the final pastry test. The contestants had to prepare select desserts with an added difficulty: since the six contestants did not have all the products or appliances they needed to make the dish, they had to strip to get them. They had to play strip poker with cards that were used to exchange ingredients for the pieces of clothing they were wearing. If they did not do so, they had to settle for supermarket substitutes that did not guarantee the success of the recipe. Santiago Segura even took off his underpants, and covered himself only with his apron. Paz Vega, after giving up her shoes, socks, and trousers, also handed over her panties and bra. Nobody showed their naked body, but the idea of having to expose oneself to complete the test successfully was exploited. It is a scandal that a public television station tolerates the body becoming a bargaining chip. The privacy of the participants is violated for the benefit of the show, with rules that do not fit the dynamics of a gastronomic program.

TV3, oblivious to the debate over the influencers crisis, chose Dulceida to present the Mercè Piromusical. Very timely, because her limitations in front of the camera added a few sparks to the fireworks festival. The crisis was confirmed. The presenter expressed herself with an unnatural affectation because she had to read the teleprompter script as if it were an exercise that caused her enormous tension and difficulty. She exposed herself. Once the initial introduction was finished, her cry of relief for having managed to read the entire paragraph was leaked through the microphone. Cheer up, then. 3Cat is giving a crash course in TV presenting to the country's influencers.Next, Vèrtex, premiered, and with the return of Ramon Pellicer to the screen it was inevitable to observe a symptomatic fact. Three of the most important programs on the TV3 schedule are presented by men over sixty years old: Xavier Grasset on La Selva, Jordi González on Col·lapse and now Pellicer. Experience is a virtue, above all because it has to do with authority and credibility. But it turns out that female presenters over sixty, on the other hand, are not seen leading a program. TV3 prefers influencers, young and inexperienced, like Dulceida and Laura Escanes. In the promotion of La travessa they show us Escanes playing a mermaid underwater and emerging from the sea in a swimsuit just like James Bond's partners used to do. They even include a close-up shot of her hip. They are presenters who have to work in recorded formats to hide some of their shortcomings and who struggle in live broadcasts. Their level would not be accepted in professionals of the network. But these shortcomings are tolerated because it is considered that they compensate for them with arguments of image and impact. The physicality of these digital celebrities is prioritized over their television skills. Escanes herself acknowledged this in an interview on El matí de Catalunya Ràdio. “I am a very empty entertainment profile,” she said, and she generalized it to the influencers who dedicate themselves to explaining “what clothes they wear and where they have eaten.” Plain and simple. But TV3 chooses them over professional presenters with talent and background. And this reveals a sexism improper for a public television station. Meanwhile, on Saturday, Col·lapse kicked off with Jordi González making an announcement to the audience: “I have agreed with the management of this company that I am happy to do this season, but with one condition: this show is long and I need to rest a little and they have granted me this whim. To rest for a minute and a half every night, because, otherwise, I won't reach old age, do you understand me?” Afterwards, he interacted with the audience with his usual condescension and added that he didn't remember what else he wanted to say. It is understood that the whole thing was an implausible little comedy to try to energize a show that remains as stiff as ever. So many weeks of vacation to start with a Jordi González who already seems to begin tired.

On Sunday night TV3 premiered Vèrtex. It is a success that the channel is betting on current affairs and the desire for analysis, because the shortcomings in the schedule in this regard have been obvious for a long time. It is also appreciated that the program has not incorporated the talk show, a genre that has been so abused that it has lost its capacity for influence. Vèrtex hinted at a desire for informative transcendence, especially in the choice of guests, although it became evident that the program still needs experience and determination. The desire to delve deeper is an excellent approach. With such a format, however, the persistent background music is not necessary. There is a disconcerting aspect of Vèrtex . The young writers who delved into the different topics, Enric Botella and Júlia Peguera, showed more confidence and expository firmness than Pellicer himself, who was painful to watch. We found a stiff, insecure presenter, making memory efforts and hesitating. It is surprising that, not being a live program, they did not even fix the blunder of showing him running across the set in front of the camera. Pellicer's strong point has never been interviews, in which he seems cold and so focused on the script that he forgets to listen and ask follow-up questions. His elegant prudence keeps him in a discursive lightness that falls very short when it comes to delving deeper. He conducted the first interview with the top official of the country's police, the Chief Commissioner of the Mossos, Sílvia Catà, and the Telenotícies the next day could not include any of her statements. The script had no journalistic ambition. A program like this must have a desire for impact, at least within the Corpo. The Andic case was used as a draw, and an influential personality and close friend of the deceased businessman was invited: the president of Grupo Planeta and Atresmedia, José Crehueras. Pellicer called him "Pepe" with a confidence that drew attention; the screen caption specified "José"; Andic called him "Pepín", and Crehueras himself referred to himself as "Josep". The secret to success must be this. The internal pact to only gloss over Andic's personal figure without entering into the investigation of the case became too evident. If they had agreed not to touch the subject, even worse. But Pellicer didn't even know how to play with cunning. The euphemism "with everything that has happened" was used to avoid talking about Jonathan Andic's homicide accusation. When Crehueras explained that he went on excursions with Isak Andic, he did not ask him if the Mango businessman was in shape after the case's defense had circulated videos to sell the thesis that he suffered from leg weakness. Pellicer evidenced a disappointing cowardice. Many other questions could be asked of the president of Atresmedia and Grupo Planeta, but dealing with current affairs, he didn't even ask him about the Setmana del Llibre en Català, which had closed that same Sunday with record figures. If one wants to analyze current events from different angles, it is necessary to demonstrate a broader view, more firmness, and more journalistic vigor than Pellicer demonstrated. More than a veteran, he seemed like a beginner.

For ninety years, the photograph Death of a Loyalist Militiaman has been attributed to Robert Capa. The image of a republican combatant at the moment of being struck down consecrated the Hungarian photographer. The precise instant it portrays, with the militiaman losing his balance but not yet having touched the ground, gives it a drama that condenses the cruelty of war. The rifle seems to slip from his hand and the barren landscape further accentuates the tragedy of the soldiers. An atrocious and lonely death. It is impossible to identify his face, and the slight lack of sharpness of the image allows one to intuit the urgency of a photographer who triggers the shutter at the same moment they are startled by the horror of the scene.

It is very possible that some of you remember Super Size Me, that 2004 documentary where Morgan Spurlock took on the challenge of spending thirty days gorging himself on McDonald’s food. He wanted to demonstrate how it harmed health and to make the low quality of food in the United States evident. He gained eleven kilos, developed liver alterations, and his cholesterol increased drastically. In 2017 he directed a second part that went more unnoticed: Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!. Spurlock opened his own fried chicken establishment to show how these businesses work, creating a false image of natural and healthy food.Netflix now has in its catalog a new production that emulates Spurlock's work. In Big chicken: A fast food conspiracy (Big chicken), comedian Mo Gillighan sets the goal of eating only fried chicken for twenty-eight days to see how it affects his health. At the same time, he explores the chicken business in both the United Kingdom and the United States in the face of the massive expansion of this food around the world. He investigates how the industry manipulates and processes it to give it an appetizing appearance. The chicken is the most farmed land animal on the planet. In the United Kingdom, traditional fish & chips businesses have disappeared, swallowed up by a plague of fried chicken businesses: more than six thousand establishments across the country. Every day, twelve million pounds are spent on chicken consumption.Gillighan tries to keep a sense of humor during his investigation, but after the first week his mood declines and he feels unwell. The same thing that happened to Spurlock in Super size me. In the research process, the comedian interviews various experts in nutrition, food chemistry, and sensory scientists who explain to him how the entire chicken farming and meat ultra-processing industry works. You should know that if you decide to watch the documentary, it will be a few days before you eat chicken again, because there are sequences that are very disgusting. Gillighan shows terrible fattening farms. They make a forceful comparison: if a human baby grew at the same speed as chicks are made to grow, a baby would be the size of a sow after two months. Big chicken is a documentary that works above all because of the curiosity about the aberrations we will find. But the data is devastating. It makes us look at these fried chicken places installed in our cities differently after watching the documentary. We give them a new meaning, from an economic, as well as a social and cultural point of view.However, twenty years after the documentary Super size me, repeating the experiment forces us to ask ourselves how many times we will have to show the consequences of this food model for something to change. Documentaries are being made to denounce this industry, which keeps transforming itself to survive by doing the same as always.