If Lent comes early, Palm Sunday will also come early. As soon as tomorrow. And if Palm Sunday comes so early, it means that, in fact, we are already in Holy Week. Well, now all this is hardly noticed. Yes, we still go to bless four laurel branches and someone still carries a long and straight palm branch, but, of the whole week, only Good Friday is a holiday. Saturday, which was previously called Glory and is now called Saint, is always a holiday, and Easter Monday, which people mistakenly call the “dia de la mona” (the day of the Easter cake), joins Friday and they make a festive long weekend that people take advantage of to travel, ski and, the most daring, undress and sunbathe on the beach. Before, when I was young, all of Holy Week was a holiday, more or less. Especially from Thursday onwards.

Tomorrow, March begins. This means that today is the last day of February, the shortest month of the year. March has a bad reputation, surely because of that famous saying that goes, "March, March, takes the old woman to the edge of the fire, and the young woman if she can." As Josep Pla said, these sayings are only true if they don't rhyme. And this saying does rhyme. Therefore, according to Pla's theory, the saying is false. And it's obvious, because it also takes the old man and the young woman. We'll see what this March, which begins tomorrow, will do. We don't know if it will take more old women than old men or more young women than young men. February has passed, from storm to storm, each one bearing its name, as it goes. They have caused floods, gales, and accidents in general. A turbulent disruption of "the sublime monotony of one day after another," as Carles Riba wrote. Roads cut off, schools closed, flights canceled… In my town, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, they suspended the carnival parade because it was raining. But the locals couldn't resign themselves to not celebrating Carnival, so they moved it to the following Friday, without considering that the following Friday was the first Friday of Lent, and that street parties and Lent were two incompatible things. But now, who even knows what Lent is? On the other hand, everyone knows what Ramadan is. Perhaps because poor Lamine Yamal has to run fasting and exhausted on whatever grass he can find. Oh well! That said, the mimosas are now in full bloom, sprinkling perfume into the air of late February, offering the golden blossoms of their soft leaves to the eyes of those of us who, hopeful, are preparing to cross March, March, without too many complications.

Yes, today is the last day of January. It seems like it only started yesterday. Like every year, I listened to the Vienna Philharmonic concert in that gilded hall, filled with flowers and Japanese tourists. It's a festive concert, waltzes, polkas, the kind of music that's part of the city's history. This year, the conductor was rather young and charming, and he conducted with a happy expression. I don't remember his name, please forgive me. I like to listen to the concert in a dressing gown and slippers with a good cup of hot coffee in my hand. I've been doing it for so many years that it's become a ritual, and I couldn't start the year without it. There are two must-hear pieces: On the beautiful blue Danube, by Johann Strauss Jr., and the Radetzky MarchFrom his father. In fact, the entire audience is waiting to clap along to his rhythm. It seems the lucky ones who attend are only there for that moment… Starting the year like this, by force, has to bring good luck. But a year is so long that many things can happen. While the concert of that orchestra that runs like clockwork—which, coincidentally, is sponsored by Rolex—lasts, I never think about how long the year is or anything that might happen.

Christmas has passed. Christmas and Boxing Day. These two holidays in our country carry a special weight of family, tenderness, and often a touch of the mundane. Now, the Christmas festivities have become commercialized, contaminated with foreign traditions. We have decorated fir trees, gifts under the tree, we have Santa Clauses and reindeer and sleighs, we have sweaters embroidered with all this colorful imagery. Our nougat is now joined by the ubiquitous panettone., Someone on the radio the other day was already looking for a Catalan translation. One person suggested panettone; another, even, panotReferring to the tiles that pave the sidewalks of Barcelona. I would leave it in Italian, so we're not mistaken about its origin. Our prickly holly—our forbidden holly—has also been replaced by Mexican poinsettias, or Christmas flowers, as they call them, cultivated in enormous greenhouses. And moss is protected too. You can no longer go to the forest to collect it. I bought some from a florist, and she told me it came from Soria. Without moss, how will we make the nativity scene? Perhaps I should say: how will they make it? Perhaps they won't make it anymore. Traditions develop little by little. And they end quickly. Or perhaps they are slowly lost. I don't know. The fact is that I still made a nativity scene this year, smaller than in other years, but with everything it should have.

Yes, November is finally over. I can't say it's my favorite season, quite the opposite. Darkness at all hours, wind, rain, humidity, mud on the paths, and rotting fallen leaves. If the rains have been timely and there haven't been any gales, we can count on the bounty of delicious mushrooms. For me, the southern ones, or "cepas" as they're called now in the cities (due to French influence), are the tastiest. porcinium of the Italians, unforgettable, made There is a ferryThat is, grilled or barbecued. And if they're eaten near the Pantheon, in a restaurant that's no longer there, Settimio, they're unforgettable. November, aside from all its misfortunes and a few pleasantries, like mushrooms and panellets, is the month of memories. It begins with All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, with all the thick mush of memory and the acrid smell of chrysanthemums in cemeteries. Memories that surface as something lost, and never to be recovered. Memories, even the happiest ones, if there are any, are always sad, because they are the past, what was lived, what will never be repeated. This November has been especially sad, lamentable. If I think about the politics of our neighboring country, which concerns us and therefore imposes its quirks and customs on us, we've had the whole murky Valencian history of the DANA storms and their lingering effects—and forgive the repetition—we've had the commemoration of the half-century mark of the Caudillo's death, that figure who invited the emeritus king, as they call him. As if that royal condemnation absolved all the ongoing corruption of the political parties of any responsibility. In Catalonia, to zoom in on a more recent example, we've had a bit of a laugh at Junts' break with the Spanish government. Junts no longer knows what to do to siphon votes from the Socialists. And, on the other hand, this November we witnessed the unstoppable rise of Aliança Catalana (yes, I know, all this talk of red lines, xenophobia, fascism, and the far right), which seems poised to increase its seats tenfold. But the establishment parties, the old guard, who don't want to lose power, remain perfectly content applying these adjectives to Ms. Orriols. A woman who, incidentally, is the best orator in our entire little Parliament. It's a pleasure to listen to her speeches. Well-articulated, with splendid colloquial Catalan from Ripollès, and quite right. November also brought us, after ten years of investigation, the so-called Pujol family trial. Lamentable, given the president's state of health. Don't the judges see that he's unfit to testify? Let them try one of the children, if they have evidence of any wrongdoing, but trying an entire family for criminal association only confirms the ongoing farce of the Spanish justice system. But historical hatred is more powerful than anything else, and in Spain there's a lot of accumulated historical hatred.

Fifty years ago, half a century!, Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered. It was All Saints' Day, like today, of course, and after having dinner with his beloved Ninetto Davoli and his wife in a trattoria PPP left Rome. Davoli's wife said to him, "Why don't you go with him?" But Davoli knew he couldn't. PPP went to Termini Station. There, a young man named Pelosi got into PPP's Giulietta. He invited the boy to dinner at a trattoria near the Tiber. He didn't eat anything; he had already had dinner. Then they went toward Ostia. The next morning, the poet's body was found in an open field. Everything that happened exactly is unknown to us. Pelosi was accused of murder, and he confessed. But not everyone believed him. It's a crime that has never been solved.

With the novel Scenarios Toni Sala completes his trilogy, which began with The boys and continued with Persecution. I sincerely believe that Scenarios It's the best. As I said in the title of that paper, I think it's a great novel. And it is so because of its content and the way it's written. The content is nothing less than a magnificent portrait of our country, of its current moment in which everything seems to have been in vain, in which people, starved, wander sleepwalking through their daily lives, as they say, aimless and without hope. Toni Sala achieves this portrait in a masterfully constructed way. Five main characters intertwined by thoughts and memories, by an imagination that jumps from one of their minds to another and weaves a story that can't be put down. Characters and landscapes, or if you will, intimately intertwined settings that make up an unforgettable text. There is a fabric that the language sustains, an exact language, with forays into the most degraded Catalan of today's youth, but rich when the speaker is an educated person or is the voice of a narrator who doesn't hesitate to infiltrate the voice of the characters without us realizing it. Reading'Scenarios It demands attention, of course. It's a great book that, when you delve into it, demands attention. Then the work unfolds and escapes, and it draws you in, provoking the mental pleasure of what it says and the literary pleasure of how it says it—if these two aren't one and the same. Reading it, it seemed to me that Toni Sala was using the old technique of the oratorio: a continuous musical fabric, made of language and scenery, which announces and introduces the characters' arias. These arias reflect and narrate. There's an entire chapter, titled "The Letter," which is the aria alone, perfect, linguistically indecisive, just as the character requests, emotive to the maximum, which the author's skill utilizes to define and expand on this character. The author uses these arias to construct a portrait of the country. An aria about theater, for example, in which the protagonist, who is an actor, explains, with all the ers and uts, his training, his history, and the very constitution of the theatrical act. There's another great aria about language, served as one of the monologues the actor recites. There's also an aria about the country's sexual reality, about the rejection of motherhood, about homosexuality, and dissatisfaction with one's own gender. A harsh perspective through the eyes of a nurse, a character obsessed with being a mother and not breaking the bloodline.

For days now, I've noticed the air is a little fresher at dusk. It's not yet autumn, but the light isn't the same. The colors are beginning to lose their summery violence and take on a kind of anticipated melancholy. I like this moment, although this year I can't help but feel a twinge of anguish. September has always been, for me, a month of beginnings and endings, a month in which life seems to take stock of what has happened and what might yet happen. But now, with the world as it is, every beginning seems threatened by a larger, more definitive end.

I'm afraid. I must confess that I'm afraid. On September 1st, it will be eighty-six years since the Second World War broke out. And now I'm afraid of the third. I'm already taking my last steps on the surface of this shattered world. But the truth is, I'm afraid. And the fact is that we're in the hands of a pair of psychotics playing to see who has the biggest chance, the Navy or whatever. Trump and Putin, both, could have an outburst at any moment and unravel the whole mess irreversibly. Trump deploys nuclear submarines to intimidate Putin, and Putin prepares his banned missiles. Ukraine will be the excuse. The truth is pride. And Gaza could be another excuse. It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Trump threatens the world with his tariffs, and Putin, with his drones. It doesn't matter. The truth is, I'm afraid.

It hasn't rained yet. It's only been a bit. I would have liked a good, long, persistent downpour that would have saved me from watering for a couple of days. After about half an hour, there was a glimpse of sunshine. Then, the sky became gray again. A strange stillness settled in the afternoon. It will soon be dark, and today it will be earlier because it's overcast. I turn on a light and try to write these things. What will happen, I think, is that it will cool down. The sticky heat of these past few nights may fade and be permeated by a bit of fresh air. We'll see. Josep Maria Joan, whom I knew as a child in Figueres, has died. He owned a dry cleaner's shop. He never wanted to be a dyer. He trained as a quantity surveyor. But what he did was accumulate toys. So many that he could have built a museum, which is now a landmark. More than once I wondered what toy he had that might interest him. But he didn't have one. I've never been much interested in toys. Then, over the years, I saw him a few times. Then never again. And now he's dead. He was about my age.

Next Thursday is Corpus Christi, one of the three Thursdays that shine more than the sun, as the Castilians say. Of the three Thursdays, none are holidays anymore. Holy Thursday has become queues of cars and packed roads for the start of Holy Week, which has been reduced to three days, or four, depending on the place. Holy Thursday, which is the feast of the Last Supper, of the institution of the Eucharist, of the piece of bread dipped in the lamb's sauce and which points out the traitor, etc., Holy Thursday has ceased to be a holiday precisely because it is a Thursday. And Corpus Christi, which was instituted because the incomprehensible wonder of the Eucharist, of the incredible Transubstantiation, was overshadowed by the prayer in the garden, by the arrest of Jesus, by the kiss of Judas and the severed ear—in other words, by the entire Passion. The joy of the Last Supper was left without a worthy and specific feast to celebrate it worthily. And the third Thursday, the Ascension, had never had much standing as a popular festival, because who celebrates a farewell, even with the promise of a return? In short, none of the three Thursdays are celebrated anywhere, except perhaps Corpus Christi, which in Berga has been turned into fire and smoke and dancing monsters, amid fire and firecrackers.

There is great history, the kind that appears in books, the kind that shapes common life. Now, these days, with the death of Pope Francis, the conclave, and the election of Leo XIV, we have experienced an important chapter. But it is not that history I want to talk about. Newspapers, radio stations, and television stations—what they call the media—have already spoken about it at length. No, I want to talk about a kind of history that, for me, is as interesting as, or more so than, any other. I like to call it small history, the kind that considerably enriches the larger history, the kind that tells us about the lives of people, more than about the facts. And if it tells us about the facts, it does so to add human nuances, to preserve places and customs, to bring us closer to everyday life.

April 11, 2025Today is the Friday before Holy Sunday. There are some Virgins of Sorrows who celebrate their saint's day. But the Vatican's changes have moved the feast to September 8th, and many celebrate it on that day. It seems to me, and has always seemed to me, that Our Lady of Sorrows has more to do with Holy Week than with the day on which all the Virgins found are celebrated. That of Núria, that of Tura, and before having their own feast day, that of Montserrat. Our Lady of Sorrows is linked to the Passion, and it was very appropriate to celebrate it just before Holy Week begins.

March ends, and April begins on Tuesday, the Tuesday of the Thousand Rains, as the Castilians say, although the rains have already fallen in March. April is a somewhat hectic month because it usually includes Holy Week, with all that this entails in terms of tradition and memory. And for Catalans, the days of Sant Jordi and the Moreneta, the patron saints. Sant Jordi, with its commercial and floral bustle, books and roses, and the Moreneta, which Father Cinto called the rose of April. This year, Holy Week comes late, so the patron saints of Catalonia arrive right away, once the liturgical celebrations of Christ's Passion and Resurrection have already passed. A group of days outside the current. Since the weather is as changeable as the entire world, we don't know whether it will rain or not on Sant Jordi, whether the uncertain Shakespearean glory will produce a sunny or rainy day. It already happened a few years ago, when a violent downpour flooded stalls, books, writers, and publishers. And I got soaked as a duck. We don't know anything. But it doesn't matter to him. The fact that Catalonia has a soaked Sant Jordi shouldn't in any way mar the celebration, because the celebration is within. Well, don't think I'm a fan of the day, and even less so in recent years, when it has been overly commercialized. Half a century ago, when I was thirty, it was a holiday that could have excited me, but not anymore. Literature has practically disappeared, and we've moved on to self-help books and inconsistent novels.

Yes, today begins the month that kills the old woman at the edge of the fire and the young woman if she can… It is the saying that everyone knows or perhaps knew. Because now everything is different. Words and sayings are lost as so many other things are lost. What is not lost is the merriment and, therefore, the Carnival is still very much alive. People dress up as what they are not or what they would like to be. Streets and floats are made in the image and likeness of other places and other countries. Above all, the Carnival of Rio de Janeiro is imitated and its translations are nostrades, Sitges, Vilanova… Now my town, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, is boiling with emotion and nerves. Since Christmas people have been rehearsing choreographies and the last kicks have been given to the costumes. And who says kicks, says brushstrokes of glue, because, who is there still sewing? The Carnival groups are almost ready. There are those who take a holiday because they have to drive a float, there are those who take it because they have to play music in their gang… The merrymaking, the drinking, the debauchery begins. It should not last long, because next Wednesday begins Holy Lent. It is Ash Wednesday and Christians will go to the parish to have the imprint of ashes made on their foreheads (pulvis eris et in pulverem reversed, you are dust and dust you will return to) and the forty days of penitence will begin that will last until Easter. The Thursday before this Ash Wednesday is or was Fat Thursday. One had to take advantage of the fact that one could still eat pork, and on the table appeared the sausage omelettes, the egg sausage and the fat cakes. Now who celebrates it? And if someone does, it is a mere residual celebration, cultural, traditional, let's say what we want, but without any sense. Because all year round we eat whatever we want! Be it Thursday or Friday.