There is an age from which, we have been told, women stop being relevant. We disappear, we become invisible just because we have stopped being fertile. Reproduction or death, tied to the imposition of the duty to be pleasing to the eyes of men. We don't feel that way, of course, it's how they continue to represent us in high-impact media: series, films, advertising. The idealization of youth (to which many of us wouldn't return even if crazy), the creation of needs derived from the desire to preserve it at all costs, and the lack of women's voices telling us the real and honest experience of what it means to grow old create a terribly cruel imaginary for those of us who are still alive past forty, fifty, sixty. Smear yourself with creams, exercise, starve, mutilate yourself.

The latest book by linguist Steven Pinker, When everyone knows that everyone knows...Published in Spanish by Paidós, this book deals with common knowledge, the cognitive system that allows us to be aware of what others know. That is, what we know everyone knows. These are the kinds of mental faculties that allow us to navigate life as couples, families, in society, and as citizens. Without an awareness of what we think and what we know others think, it is impossible to share a common space, impossible to live with others. It is necessary to establish tacit consensus, norms we follow even before they are codified in law. This is why common knowledge becomes an essential vector of freedom of expression, academic freedom, and freedom of thought.

I've only seen David Uclés once, on the day of this year's Nadal Prize ceremony. When he gave his acceptance speech, I found that he spoke like no one I've ever heard anyone speak, that he expressed himself in a way as singular as his attire. Something unusual in our field: we're all quite original. When I was young, I used to say that I only wanted to be a "normal" writer, until, after meeting many colleagues, I realized that "normal" writers don't exist. There are mediocre ones, of course: the efficient mercenaries of the written word who churn out a book every year and produce novels like they're churning out sausages. I don't consider these writers—you'll have to forgive my professional purism, but I say this more as a reader than a writer. When I read, I want access to a consciousness, a world, a perspective on life, and an artistic work created with words and with the pieces and mechanisms inherent to literature. If I want to be entertained by stories told in a flat, soulless style, I already have afternoon soap operas. Anyway, I don't want to talk about books, since I haven't read either of the two novels Uclés has published; I want to talk about writers, the press, and all that part of the work we usually call "promotion."

Quality education accessible to all, regardless of a student's family's economic status, is one of humanity's greatest achievements. It is essential for building a society of free citizens who think for themselves and understand the many alienating strategies employed by political and economic powers. Emancipatory education is not instruction aimed at producing functional, efficient, and obedient adults who can easily integrate into the productive machinery of capitalism. Good education equips children with the necessary tools to understand themselves and their place in the world, to be aware of the importance of the bonds that unite us with others, and of the human and humanistic values ​​that make collective life a good life. It is an education that fosters kindness, that nurtures and develops each child's innate abilities, that empowers them to stand firmly on the ever-shifting ground of existence. It is not about curricula or projects: it is about connections and coexistence, about recognition and respect. And we will have role models who guide us beyond the family sphere.

The woman suffers all day long, worried that someone will occupy the apartment she bought with her life savings. Not a day goes by that she doesn't turn on the television and see images of vandalized properties, terrible violations of private property rights. These scare tactics dominate the morning news. The woman, of course, doesn't see the perversion of a system that speculates on housing, dominated by large landlords and vulture funds that make access to decent housing impossible, and that uses her as a pawn to impose a general climate in which evictions are not only acceptable but absolutely necessary. It doesn't matter if the "evictions" are of families, of children. Property is more sacred than compassion for the homeless, and lumping them together with opportunists and freeloaders makes their dehumanization easier. So, the fear of the woman is, in reality, a fear of poverty, of those who have nothing. If they have nothing, they have nothing to lose and, therefore, can risk much more than someone who has something.

We talk a lot about the violence that occurs in the intimacy of relationships, but very little about desire, about what happens to us women in the murky waters of sexuality. Like any other human experience, sex, love, and eroticism are also learned; they don't arise instinctively, detached from culture. From the available representations in literature, in the audiovisual world, in the stories told about us, we know very well what men's desire is like, what it consists of, how it is expressed, and how far it can go. Or rather, we know the desire of men who feel entitled to display their size, to put on a show of strength not only to impress their potential romantic conquests but also to compete with other men like themselves, to demonstrate that they are bigger, more potent, and more powerful. The sexuality that dominates the collective imagination is, therefore, the sexuality of predators who experience conquest as a hunt. To avoid appearing weak and helpless before their male counterparts, they pursue, harass, dominate, and sometimes even domesticate women to the point of annihilation, turning them into trophies.

Only bad faith or utter ignorance could give credence to Vox and its proposal to ban the burka and niqab in public spaces. They speak of "our culture" as if theirs were everyone's. Their stale patriotism, their Francoist nostalgia, their radical misogyny, and their freedom-crushing attitude are certainly not "our culture." But what's surprising isn't Vox's racism, but the ineptitude of a left wing that doesn't seem to see these things coming, and out of laziness, mediocrity, or cowardice, allows certain thorny issues to fester until they erupt in controversies like the one we're seeing these days.

Young people today lack private and shared spaces where they can interact freely and independently without adult intervention. There is the space dedicated to formal education and extracurricular activities, but outside this broad range of organized time, what is left for them? In the physical, analog world, only consumption: streets full of shops and shopping malls. The available parks are designed for toddlers. In a few squares, there are still some ping-pong tables. In any case, there comes a time when children disappear from the city. If we look at the types of people we find on the street, outside of school hours, we see older people or very young children, but it would seem that teenagers don't exist. Where are they? Locked away at home, of course, and, in many cases, in their bedrooms, where all the social life they once had in person, as a real, physical being and not a digital avatar, has been displaced. The virtualization of childhood and adolescence is an unprecedented phenomenon whose long-term consequences are unknown. Currently, the data on mental health problems in this age group are so alarming that they should prompt us to reconsider this social shift, which we have neither decided upon nor thoroughly evaluated. Those of us who had children at the turn of the millennium were later told that we couldn't do anything, that we couldn't oppose the digitization and virtualization of our own offspring. To be against it is to be old-fashioned, technophobic, and practically an internet-bound Amish.

I've been to prison several times, always as a guest writer at the adult education centers they usually run. The visit that affected me most was to the youth detention center, which used to be in Trinitat. It was an old, dilapidated facility with thick metal doors. Just being inside already caused me a certain anxiety, and I find the work of the professionals who go there every day admirable. When the buildings are new, like Lledoners or Puig de les Basses, the space is more sterile and the architecture less prison-like, but the knot in your stomach is still there. Especially as you walk in and the doors close behind you, and you put yourself in the shoes of those who never get out. I say the youth detention center affected me the most because it was full of kids who seemed very familiar. In fact, I found some from my neighborhood, who gave me greetings for my brothers, and some didn't want to attend the event because they were embarrassed to be recognized. Among those children were likely career criminals, real movie villains, but I got the impression that many were there because of bad choices, getting involved in illegal activities without really considering the long-term consequences of their actions. The boys from my street who ended up in prison—I knew them—were products of poverty, of parental neglect (boys were street kids and girls were homebound, so the boys were the ones who suffered from sexism), and, in many cases, of drug addiction. I remember Musta, for example, affable and friendly, whose name I came across one day in a short note fromHe 9 NewHe had died of an overdose.

Every now and then, a rumor would reach me: "They're about to open, they'll open soon," and I wouldn't understand a thing. For the papers, they'd say, they'll open for the papers, and that meant they'd give them to those who didn't have them. That people's administrative legality depended on such a mundane verb, one that applies to doors, made me raise an eyebrow in skepticism, but bureaucratic language is transferred to everyday speech in useful and effective similes and metaphors. That they would "open" the papers meant there would be an extraordinary regularization of immigrants. As the young interpreter I was, I also had to learn to find the correspondences between the language of the legal system and the words chosen by family and neighbors to refer to it. In any case, when it was announced that they would "open," a feeling of euphoria and joy spread, along with the hope of achieving legal status, having rights, paying into the system, and, above all, leaving behind the possibility of being taken to an immigration detention center or being deported. Although there are no specialized brigades here like the US ICE, not having a residence permit means always living on the margins, in the insecurity of the outcast, treading on perpetually unstable ground. Administrative vulnerability is vulnerability even if the person has a roof over their head and a job. The status of being undocumented entails a specific vulnerability, which is exploited by all kinds of predators.

Of all the means of transport, the train has always seemed the most comfortable to me. It takes you there without you having to drive it; if the tracks wind, you don't notice them like on a bus; the carriages glide along as if the ground were flat. Unlike airplanes, it doesn't expose you to the vertigo of heights, and even if the journey is long, you don't have to sacrifice your dignity going through security like at airports. I've spent half my life on trains, from the worst commuter lines to high-speed trains where they offered me cava. A unique kind of coexistence always takes place; it's a space where you can observe other people's lives, attitudes, and ways of doing things, far removed from those familiar to us. On the last train I took, last week, a woman with a Brazilian accent was asking for help stowing her enormous suitcase, shouting, "Isn't there a man here?" "I'm not a man," I told her, "but I can help you." Other times, I've been offered a helping hand. That someone is willing to do it fills me with hope and confidence. As we help each other carry suitcases, unload strollers, position wheelchairs, and offer an arm for an elderly woman to lean on, we will preserve the most important and most human evolutionary trait of all: empathy.

It's sad to read the witnesses of the women who denounce the alleged abuses of Julio Iglesias published by Eldiario.es and not feel surprised, that the events explained are perfectly plausible, that they don't surprise us in the slightest. Which doesn't prevent, of course, the shock caused by some chilling details about the system of exploitation to which he subjected his victims. We could have easily deduced, from how he spoke of the ladies and how he treated them in public, that the Latin lover He was, in reality, an unscrupulous predator. But that's how these inveterate seducers are; they can't help it. They have such sexual prowess that they have to go around the world sleeping with anyone who crosses their path. It was one of the things the singer was admired for worldwide: for being a conqueror without anyone questioning what his conquests thought. And what must they have thought? What an honor, what a privilege to be chosen by a man who could have them all, with success, money, and power. What could they say, barely reached adulthood, when, in the middle of an interview, he made comments about their appearance, asked them if they had a boyfriend, or planted a kiss right on their lips? With the scandal of the accusations, television networks have compiled the most shocking moments of the man, because they constitute outright assaults committed live before an audience that laughs, applauds, and celebrates this normalized violence. Who could say a word if he was like that? You know, men. Seeing the images of kisses reminded me of all the disgusting strangers, the flexibility women's necks acquire from doing the cobra, all the strategies we've had to adopt to avoid those who think they're good lovers when they don't have the slightest idea what good sex means, which always begins with...

When my children were little and I took them to play in the park, I was always surprised to find the same scene: mothers who would get right into the sandbox with their offspring, taking up a huge amount of the little space the children had to roam in the middle of the city; mothers who would climb to the top of the slides, go down themselves to accompany that budding person who now must have serious problems managing life's normal frustrations. So many theories about parenting, so much information, and so much effort to do what we parents of today shouldn't have to do: rob our children of the ability to become resilient by gradually facing difficulties, systematically depriving them of the sense of power that comes from solving problems on their own.

It's not that they don't address her formally; it's that they treat her like an idiot. Or worse, like a little girl. She, who has lost count of the decades she's spent working, striving, constantly adapting to a changing reality, has to put up with this pair of idiots who show her cowardly contempt. Yes, cowardly, because they certainly wouldn't confront someone with their same vitality, or even a man, no matter how big or tall. It's ageism, but also sexism, forming a repugnant mixture that falls like sticky tar on the women who suffer it. Imagine being sixty, seventy, eighty years old and having these young guys come along and lecture you. Or worse: telling you things as if you didn't understand, or as if you didn't touch, or as if you had no idea how the world works. Back then, you did enough educating the men around you, patiently and pedagogically showing them how they should treat you and other women. Putting them in their place, dodging them, and avoiding them when you sensed they were dangerous was something, but now, now that it's been so long since you took to the streets to protest the criminalization of adultery, now that you've stood up and, along with so many other women, entered offices, political parties, universities, government offices, and other institutions to win your own independence, now that it's been so long since you won the right to be a person, these pathetic fools come along and treat you with such contempt. Don't they have mothers? Don't they have grandmothers? Has no one ever taught them how to behave in society? It's not that you've become invisible, as they say happens when you get older. I wish they wouldn't even see you and would just leave you alone, but it's even worse. You bother them. You can tell by the way they look at you, the way they wrinkle their noses. It's not so different from what used to happen, when the burdensome nature of this non-reproductive stage turned you into a useless old thing worthy of being relegated to a corner. They laugh, like skunks, if you mispronounce a word when they serve you in any establishment; they speak to you slowly and shouting as if all old women were deaf and slow-witted, they tell you grandmother Without being able to answer "Grandma Auntie" because they'll still think you're crazy. If they have to come fix an appliance at your house, prepare yourself for a lot of explanations full of technical jargon, all to pave the way for the exorbitant price they're going to charge you. The last idiot who came addressed you in diminutives: "See that little snail, Grandma?" What should you do? Bite your lip and walk away, or you'll spend the whole day arguing and getting indignant. "What a disappointment," another one writes when you demand that he fulfill his obligations. Ageist and sexist emotional blackmail is what these kids often practice on you, because they think they have the right to take advantage of older women like you. Even more so if they find you alone.

This year, television stations will not need to broadcast any version of the A Christmas Carol Dickens's novels illustrate the inhumanity of a miserly capitalist. In Badalona, we have a mayor, elected by the voters, who shamelessly displays, and one might even say with a certain satisfaction, his boundless cruelty. With the world dominated by psychopaths who wield power in both politics and large corporations, it seems the floodgates have opened, and mediocre local leaders have taken over. empoweredThey no longer need to hide it and are crossing lines they've never crossed before. That's why Dickens is such a good mirror: they want to take us back to a time when the sense of justice hadn't yet been embodied in such revolutionary inventions as human rights.

Within the feminist movement, the phrase is so well-known that it has become a slogan: "Nothing is more like a right-wing sexist than a left-wing sexist." Women who have fought for equality from a progressive perspective have always faced the dilemma of dual membership: forming their own party or joining the ranks of those who, due to the nature of their social justice principles, could accommodate feminism. The first option may seem radical and exclusionary, but considering the systemic hostility that has characterized political parties and the price so many women must pay to have a relevant role, it is no wonder that it is valued. To avoid segregation and changing the structures of solid and powerful organizations, many feminists opted for dual membership. They have worked tirelessly at the grassroots level to make the equality agenda a priority, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the veterans who endured everything to be part of it for many of the gains we all now enjoy. They too suffered abuse, harassment, paternalism, and exclusion from the fraternal understanding of the men because they had a long-term goal.

There is a vast difference between living in a secularized society and one that is not. Getting rid of theocratic domination and separating religious power from political power is undoubtedly one of the culminating moments in human history. Those of us born into a democracy have already found ourselves in a world where no religion is law, but anyone with a modicum of memory can recall what it was like to live under the obscurantism of National Catholicism.

Millions of tons of oil cross continents and seas to end up in the cramped closets of Western citizens. Polyester in all its forms, synthetic fibers that can only be destroyed by burning, fabrics treated with toxic substances that poison rivers, plants, animals, and people. We live in oil, we sleep in oil, we sweat oil. Many of these garments, presented as attractive and desirable in the physical and virtual windows of stores, are not so different from garbage bags. But so cute, so shiny. Mass advertising makes us deposit all our longings for beauty and seduction into this unsustainable, ugly, and uncomfortable packaging. We attribute countless meanings to clothing, linked to personality, sexual attraction, and status (now masked with words like style, glamor either good taste), romantic and professional success, and above all, we believe that our individuality resides there, the unique expression of who we are. Except that, with a glance at the daily catwalk of any city street, it turns out we're all dressed the same: we're nothing more than obedient soldiers of the powerful army of the fashion system.

One of the hardest things to understand when we become feminists is the role of mothers in transmitting sexist values. Countless young women have told me this, explaining that to advance their liberation they not only had to confront the figure of their authoritarian father but also another woman—the one who gave them life. The question we've always asked ourselves is: why do they impose on us the same rules that harmed them? Why, having suffered the ravages of a lack of rights and freedoms, do they want to subject their own daughters to the same system? Perhaps mothers can't teach their daughters to be rebellious, they can't turn them into outcasts if the general context isn't conducive to change. That's why equality is only possible when it's collective. In the case of women of Muslim origin, this transformation is being interrupted and slowed down by various factors. One of those who will now finish burying us in the misery of Islamic patriarchy will be precisely the extreme right, which rails against practitioners of Muhammad's religion for their sexism but silences us and proposes racist measures that will especially affect women. I watch helplessly as Aliança Catalana rises and I feel more like a foreigner than ever in the country I consider my own and which I believed was equipped with more intelligent resources to combat fanaticism than another kind of fanaticism—in this case, identity-based, supremacist, and exclusionary. The redundancy is understandable.

The Trump administration has decided to deny entry visas to the country for economic or health reasons, specifically targeting people with obesity or diabetes. This is yet another way for the populist orange-haired leader to further exploit the scapegoat status of foreigners, now pointing the finger at one of the most stigmatized conditions of our time. Being or being overweight in developed societies is beginning to be considered a true heresy, an unacceptable state in a world based on constant movement, continuous productivity, and the mechanization of human beings into perfect cogs in the machine. Aren't there countless studies on diet and exercise that provide the tools to tame the body and stay within the limits set by BMI? So what prevents weight loss? Body fat is now associated with laziness and a lack of willpower and ambition. The perceived lack of control attributed to someone with a body mass exceeding what is stipulated by health and aesthetic standards is an affront to a world where technology grants almost absolute power over things and nature. Yes, perhaps a fat person is too materialistic, a kind of savage who, instead of embracing and practicing an aesthetic ethic of instinctual mastery, gives in to their cravings. And they enjoy it, and that is truly an intolerable offense. The enjoyment attributed to fat people in their eating habits is a provocation to those who maintain their figure through strict diets and the deprivation of foods considered sinful by the religion of dieting. Therefore, the most transgressive images that can be disseminated today are neither of nudity nor explicit sex. Today, what provokes waves of indignation and all kinds of insults and threats is a woman eating in public. Unless, of course, it's a sad salad or any dish considered light and healthy.