It has been months since Oriol Junqueras found in the population growth of Catalonia (from 6.2 million inhabitants in 2000 to 8.2 million currently, in just 25 years) an argument to debate what the demographic limits of our country should be so that public services, infrastructure, housing, natural resources, or the language are not irremediably overwhelmed. The debate is rational, even though in politics everything is emotional, and it is evident that the president of the Republicans has sought a way to establish a position of authority in the discourse on immigration that next year will change the face of the country's electoral map in favor of the far-right.

Pedro Sánchez announced in the morning that the king would go to Ceuta (but did not say when) and in the afternoon he met with Felipe VI. And the next day, the Spanish government also announced that its relations with the royal house are "good".

“Liberty and democracy are incompatible”. It was Peter Thiel, the superhero of Pay Pal and Palantir Technologies, who thus gave meaning to the offensive against democracy that has been circulating in the United States for some time and that Donald Trump is putting into practice with systematic abuse of power, permanently disregarding the legislative and judicial branches. The ball has been inflating. The ideologues of the government, with Vice President J.D. Vance in the front line, have joined in. And the anti-democratic flood has continued to prosper, in the USA, but also in Europe.

The situation in Ceuta is not the result of any “migratory crisis”, as the left maintains, nor of a “sovereignty crisis”, as the right affirms. These two readings — one focused on the humanitarian drama; the other, on border pressure — are ideological and convenient interpretations. They do not take into account demographic dysfunction: the structural fracture between two realities advancing at completely different paces. On one side of the border, the risible birth rates in Spain and other European countries, such as Italy; on the other, the fertility of some regions of the Maghreb (4.63 children per woman in Mauritania, for example). Ceuta is, in this sense, a tense point of contact between two demographic systems that can no longer balance themselves. Everyone knows how tectonic plates work (we've had a few examples this summer): there comes a point when, underground, friction and pressure eventually generate an earthquake.In Spain, the fertility rate has remained below replacement level for decades. There is an accelerated aging, with an age structure that tends towards contraction and requires migratory flows to sustain the labor market, the pension system, and even the most basic social vitality. In Morocco, on the other hand, despite the significant decline in recent years (even more pronounced in Tunisia), the birth rate remains high compared to European standards, and the demographic pyramid is expansive. The average fertility rate in the Maghreb is 2.86 children per woman; in Spain, it is 1.10, and with an average age of maternity of 32.6 years, one of the highest in the world. This asymmetry generates an inevitable pressure: a young, abundant population, often without solid economic prospects, looks towards a neighboring country that continues to be fantastically perceived as a space of opportunities.Due to its condition as a physical and symbolic border, Ceuta has become the showcase for this tension. When thousands of young people crossed the border a month ago, they were not experiencing a "migratory crisis" in the classic sense, nor an attack on Spanish sovereignty, nor an invasion. They were corroborating in an abrupt, but non-violent, way the relentless logic of the imbalance that has been developing for decades in that precise context (it doesn't have to be this way in others). Administrations can try to contain it with honeyed speeches or threatening fences, but the underlying vector is subterranean: the difference between societies that are growing in population but not in resources, and societies where the opposite is happening.

Celestí Alomar has died at the age of 76, leaving a great void, like an era. He did and was many more things, but he will be remembered as the counselor who implemented the ecotax in the Balearic Islands. He did this during his time as Minister of Tourism of the first government of the Pacte de Progrés, a government that had to endure the fiercest criticism during its existence—from adversaries, but also from those closest to him—and which now, twenty-five years later, many value and miss, and rightly so. The first Pacte de Progrés of the Balearic Islands governed from 1999 to 2003. In a short time, the deaths of President Francesc Antich and Vice-President Pere Sampol, and now Counselor Celestí Alomar, represent the premature disappearance of three key people in the recent political history of the country. I write "premature" because, although all three were around or over seventy years old, the death of those who truly work for the common good is always premature.The Pacte de Progrés was the first progressive government that the Balearic Islands had and it was a pioneer in many things, both there and in the Spanish state. The ecotax that Celestí Alomar promoted was ahead of its time in uniting tourism policies with serious environmental policies. Alomar understood this tax as a tool for self-government and social cohesion. It earned him a fatwa, a war with hoteliers, an economic sector with pretensions more of a caste than a lobby. In recent years I have had the pleasure of conversing a few times with Celestí Alomar and hearing him explain how one of those hoteliers chased him up the steps of the Consolat de Mar shouting at him: “Don't think you'll work in the Balearics again! Forget about it!” He told it laughing, because Celestí Alomar was a master of irony and good humor. A geographer by training, he had professionalized in tourism and did not renounce it, but he argued, in words and in writing, that tourism needs limits to prevent touristification, that is, massification and speculation. He pointed out that excessive dependence on an industry like tourism leads to an economic model crisis, which is where the Balearics and a large part of the Mediterranean are currently.A historic socialist, he was one of the founders of the PSI (later PSM, currently within the Més coalition) and then went on to join the PSIB-PSOE, from which he resigned in response to the approval of Article 155. He always thought and spoke freely, and at the same time remained loyal to a progressive mindset based on two inalienable ideas: common good and social justice. He did not want the creation of wealth to stop, what he wanted was for it to be distributed in favor of the community, of society. Good public services for citizens: this was his idea of country, of homeland. His legacy is that of reason over force, and that of strength (of will, of thought) in the service of reason. As the director of Ara Balears , Jaume Perelló, told me, it may sound like a cliché but there are no longer people like that in politics.

Iceland was the coveted accession for Brussels. A quick and easy negotiation (despite the fisheries chapter), a new net contributor to the community coffers, and a strengthening of the Nordic dimension of the European Union at a time of strategic reconfiguration of the Arctic. But it will not be. Icelanders have rejected, by a narrow margin, the Icelandic government's request to restart accession negotiations with the EU, frozen since 2013. The result: 52.8% voted against and 47.2% in favor, with voters in the capital in favor of integrating into the Union and those in rural areas against. Icelanders have preferred to remain committed neighbors aligned with Europe, but without full accession. A resounding and painful message for an EU obsessed with the immediate future of enlargement.

“It must be admitted that, today, governing is not easy at all. At least, not as easy as years ago”. I write the sentence in quotes because I hear it more and more often said in private by politicians from different parties, both from the Government and the opposition. They cite the impoverishment of workers, the lack of housing, media atomization and the impossibility of directing the narrative due to the multiplication of emitters, the hostile environment of social networks, the harm caused to people's pockets by political or economic decisions made thousands of kilometers away, the magnitude and frequency of natural disasters, etc. Some add bureaucracy, which slows down (when it doesn't drown) administrative processes, and the labor consequences that the deployment of AI may entail (Bill Gates has just stated that it is socially more dangerous than the technology industry admits).

We read in ARA that “Catalonia was warned seven times to correct the error in the PISA tests”. Apparently, the National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE) informed “Catalonia” that it “had made errors in the sample of students in the tests”. As everyone knows, “23% of the students in the sample were discarded, when the OECD marks that the maximum number of exempted students cannot exceed 5%”. The minister Esther Niubó finds “deficiencies in the communication of criteria to the centers, and has announced the replacement of the Secretary General of Education”.

The government of Salvador Illa has been in power for two years, and it is a good time to take a provisional assessment. The PSC won the elections mainly because it instilled the belief that the pro-independence governments of recent years had been incapable of properly managing the Generalitat, either due to incompetence or because they were occupied with other ventures. The PSC's good connections with the country's business, media, and trade union establishment helped it to be projected as an option of rigor and professionalism, in contrast to the adventurers and apprentices (sic) who had preceded it. The operation to construct the narrative was a complete success, to the point that it managed to make a part of the pro-independence movement feel insecure. In the ERC environment, for instance, there were those who accepted the PSC's narrative about the management incapacity of their own government.

Pedro Sánchez has also returned to work, and the mainstream right-wing media headlines are charging him the bill for his holidays in the form of apocalyptic polls (for the PSOE), in which the socialists are losing everything and the sum of PP and Vox —their own propagandists already consider the sum a done deal, which until recently the PP was still trying to hide— exceeds 200 deputies in Congress. Well. Perhaps so. We have already seen these same polls, in one medium or another, or in several (but always the same ones) at other times. In the general elections of 2023, in which Sánchez ended up renewing his position as president of a coalition government. Or in the Catalan elections of 2017, when they put a photo of Inés Arrimadas with headlines that said "Presidenta".Well, we'll see. The Spanish right knows a lot about making a fuss and stirring up trouble, as has been seen throughout this August due to the migratory/humanitarian/political crisis in Ceuta. The Spanish government has made it easy for them, with a slow and cumbersome management of the situation, and even offering the spectacle of ministers disagreeing in public, as has happened with Robles and Marlaska. The government's tactic seems to have been to maintain a tone of calm and normality so as not to echo catastrophic voices, and incidentally protect Sánchez from burning himself out with the crisis by putting ministers in the firing line, but it hasn't gone well. However, surely the worst for Sánchez and his government is that they feel their hands are tied by the Moroccan government and are forced to emphasize the idea —which any observer with the naked eye realizes is false— that the Alawite regime has nothing to do with the mess. Quite the contrary, it is obvious that it is the direct cause, although it then makes gestures to make it seem like it is also part of the solution. But the call for massive entry was organized by someone, and someone also gave orders for there to be hardly any surveillance by the Moroccan police on the day of said massive entry. Not to mention the evidence that a move like this aligns perfectly with the anti-Europeanism of Trumpism and Israel, and also with that of Russia. What Mohamed VI (personally) gets out of it we don't know, but it is not out of place to suspect that he gets something out of it. And the same goes for his heir, Mulai Hassan.In his interview this Monday on SER, Sánchez underlined the “civic behaviour” and the “social and coexistence commitment” of the citizens of Ceuta. He is right here, because the majority is indeed like that. Those who go to burn immigrant camps and take to the streets or infest the networks with messages of hate are the minority, no matter how much they inflate polls. They are a minority and they are losers, including those who join in from Catalonia, and from the Balearic Islands. When we talk about welcoming, they come out with a question: “How many immigrants do you have at home?” It is a phrase as obtuse as “What does your ID card say?” or “Boys have penises and girls have vulvas.” This is their level and we must not allow them to drag us down to it.

I am about to return to the school corridors, to meet again with my colleagues, to think systematically (if possible, together) about how to organize a new school year. Having temporarily set aside some of the tensions from the past year, we will need to remind each other that we are professionals in the service of a right: to make it possible for all children and adolescents to access the same educational opportunities. We cannot forget that we are not simply hired hands to do a job; we are teachers in a public service — the school — that guarantees childhoods.

Meta has agreed to pay nearly $17 billion to settle lawsuits filed by dozens of U.S. states accusing it of designing Facebook and Instagram to foster addiction among minors.Some time ago, it caught attention to know that some executives of large technology companies strictly limited their children's access to social networks. Perhaps no one knew better than them the power those algorithms had to retain attention.The 17,000 million accepted represent the implicit recognition that something went wrong. What we can no longer recover is the lost time or the consequences that all this business may have left on an entire generation of young people and adolescents.If a company pollutes a river, the money from the fine can be used to clean it up. If an accident is compensated, the victims can be compensated. But how is adolescence repaired? How is the deterioration of self-esteem, the permanent comparison with unreal lives, the lost hours of family coexistence, or the anxiety problems that many psychologists associate with the intensive use of social networks compensated?I'm clear: there are damages that can no longer be repaired.And this is the most important thing. The problem is not just Meta. The problem is that the legislator and the judiciary continue to arrive late when it comes to technology. It happened with the internet. It has happened with social networks. And it will happen again with artificial intelligence.It is not about stopping innovation. The Internet and social networks have brought extraordinary things. AI will also bring them. The issue is something else. If we know that a technology can modify behaviors, generate dependence, or affect delicate processes such as learning, mental health, or the development of minors, does it make sense to wait ten years to start regulating it?Bill Gates has just written on his personal blog that governments must pace the advancement of AI with the capacity of economies to absorb the labor and professional retraining that it will entail.Technology will continue to advance much faster than laws. And needless to say, also much faster than social and economic policies. Precisely for this reason, the big debate should no longer focus on what sanctions we impose when damage has already been done. It should focus on what limits we want to establish before damages appear that no compensation can repair.It is something that I find incomprehensible. How is it possible that we take so long to adopt measures and establish limitations to protect health, employment, and job stability?And this is said by a liberal.

I am reading these days, a little astonished, formal declarations and positions from the left, including from political leaders of the current direction of ERC, regarding the issue of immigration present in our country and the presumed risks and problems that arise from it. Let me say, from the outset, that I do not share the attitude that can be discerned nor the concreteness of the argumentation that is clearly presented.

“Operation Economic Outcast” is the catchy title that Trump and his administration have chosen to call their plan of economic strangulation against Iran, which was announced last week and which the world has received with a global raising of eyebrows. Many call it “Operation Economic Fury,” in ironic allusion to the pompous “Operation Epic Fury” that according to Trump was supposed to bring hell down upon the ayatollahs' regime. It is true that in the first offensive, the US and Israel managed to assassinate the supreme leader Ali Khamenei in a bombing. But then the regime managed to withstand the blow and Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the deceased, has turned out to be a supreme leader with a fanatical determination as tough as his father's (we recently read in the New Yorker that his government hires foreign assassins to liquidate critics of the regime scattered around the world). It has been fifteen days this Monday since the sixty days that the US and Iran had given themselves in June to “end the war” ended, according to a so-called memorandum of understanding of fourteen points, of which not a single one has been fulfilled. Trump's Gulf War has been a failure, and the attempt to tighten the noose on Iran through economic blockade sounds like a tantrum and a gesture of desperation. More so, when the so-called "Economic Pariah Operation" —which includes a block of sanctions against countries that have commercial relations with Iran— depends almost entirely on China's stance, a buyer of 90% of Iranian oil, and Beijing has already made it clear that its response could be harsh if the US "representatively extends" its threats against Chinese companies trading with Iran. Awaiting a new meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping, the possibility that the American president's intemperance will open a new confrontation with the other great world economy is viewed negatively by everyone. Also by the American electorate, tired of having fuel and the cost of living through the roof as a direct consequence of Trump's foreign policy, as belligerent and expansive as it is erratic and, ultimately, counterproductive.A year ago Trump boasted about having ended seven or eight wars (depending on the day) and went on an endless rant asking to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He didn't get it, but he did manage to have his mistress in Venezuela, María Corina Machado, bring it to him as a gift. As of today, the orange pachyderm's arrogance has subsided a bit, and he faces — now, in November — midterm elections that could cost him control of Congress. Such a blow could have interesting repercussions for Trumpists worldwide: including the Spanish enthusiasts of Trump, PP, and Vox, who face the last year of their term as a kind of springboard to propel them to an electoral victory that, in their opinion, was snatched from them in 2023. But an electoral setback for Trump could also have a revulsive effect in Europe and Latin America.

Despite being a tourist powerhouse, Catalonia has never been home to many of the sector's major groups, although there are exceptions. With a proportion of 12% of all wealth generated in the country in a year, reflected in the gross domestic product (GDP), tourism is one of the essential sectors for the Catalan economy. Recently subjected to debates about its contribution to productivity and protests due to the rise of businesses such as tourist apartments and for overcrowding and gentrification, it has been, in any case, a dynamic activity, especially in recent years, as shown by data from the Institute of Statistics of Catalonia (Idescat). And it is highly focused, on the one hand, on the rental of flats and apartments and, on the other hand, on services for companies in the sector.

Scenes of marriage. Mercè Rodoreda used to say that “love, the further away the more beautiful”. A writer and a street name in towns in Catalonia by the cartload. There are many little birds that choose small towns to build their warm-blooded nest. They don't come from far away. They are couples who take flight from nearby cities (15, 20, 30 thousand inhabitants) and land here, parading their close passion that comes out of their mouths in Spanish.

The Pope came, Spain won the World Cup, and the eclipse arrived exactly at the scheduled time, celebrated with confetti rain by the Government (and with the no less timely failure of Rodalies in its peerless role of spoilsport), but the joy by decree ended in Ceuta. And it still stirs. And wait for it.I was able to verify the psychological impact of the news while being thousands of kilometers from home, because the images of tens of thousands of poor people disorderly entering another country produce the same primary shiver down all spines: they are invading us.It is clear that, to our horror, what still causes the most horribilis of the Spanish government, null in detection and anticipation, incredibly slow and clumsy in management, with Sánchez on vacation, the Minister of Defense and the Minister of the Interior contradicting each other, the European Union alarmed and with Aznar going there to give the speech of a thousand men, as if teaching the king how to react when the homeland is in danger. If Morocco wanted to cause another deep crisis in the Spanish government, it has succeeded again. If it has done so in coordination with Trump's agenda ("Spain is a horrible ally", "Spain is a lost cause"), it has seemed so. Even for a professional resistor like Sánchez, Ceuta may have meant the end of the escape.Meanwhile, thousands of people are struggling to survive in Ceuta, used by Morocco and rejected by Spain. Any human response must take into account that in this world of verbal and legal cruelty that presidents like the one in the United States are imposing, whatever they do to the assailants of Ceuta, they will find a way to do it to us the day they decide we are a nuisance.

The generalization of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has been unstoppable since the arrival of ChatGPT on social media in November 2022. In a very short time, much less than the expansion of the internet, for example, it has become part of citizens' daily lives through the major tech companies that have incorporated it into their products, such as search engines (Google), email and communication systems (Gmail and WhatsApp), or social networks (X). It has not only become a productivity improvement tool for economic sectors, but people also use it for all sorts of tasks, some even dangerous or questionable.

Is the president of the PP, Alejandro Fernández, as Catalan as the president of Junts, Carles Puigdemont? What about the Catalan identity of Juana Dolores? Is it more or less authentic than Empar Moliner's? In a memorable definition, Jordi Pujol said: a Catalan is someone who lives and works in Catalonia, and wants to be. It is an inclusive definition, certainly, but today it does not withstand even a superficial analysis: is an eighth-generation Catalan who, for whatever reason, does not feel it, still Catalan? Is a Senegalese person, also of the eighth generation, who has been living in Tarragona for ten years and feels more Catalan than Pau Casals... really Catalan? Has one of my daughters, who has been living and working in Seattle for a few years, stopped being Catalan? Are the other two, who are still here, perhaps a little more so? Of them, which one is more Catalan, the one who works or the one who doesn't?Who can tell me what it means to be Catalan?In a ranking of Catalan identity, who would win? The teenage son of a couple from Lleida born and raised in Amsterdam, because both parents work in the Netherlands, but who speaks perfect Catalan with his parents, or the boy born and raised in Mataró, son of a Moroccan-Guinean couple, who only speaks Spanish with his mother? Is the deputy Najat, born in Morocco, Muslim, mother of three children, who covers her head with a veil and is a training technician at the Masnou Town Hall, less Catalan than Sílvia, Catholic, who goes through life with her head uncovered, born in Vic, mother of five children and a library science graduate?Did those immigrants who, last century, came from Extremadura, Andalusia, Aragon, or Galicia, arrive here to disrupt the country, to make it worse? And the Catalans who, in the second half of the 19th century, left by the thousands for abroad? Did they abandon their homeland as cowards do? Are the Catalans from inland, farmers and ranchers, who, driven by hunger and necessity, left their roots to make their fortune in the city, guilty of forgetting the traditions and customs that built the identity of our people?Let's go a little further: who is a better Catalan, Fanny, who came five years ago from Honduras and earns a living for herself and her two daughters by cleaning houses and building entrances, without a contract or social security contributions, charging twelve euros per hour, or Manel, who owns a pig farm in Pla de l'Estany managed by some dark-skinned men [sic] whom he hasn't registered or regularized because they don't have papers?What is an authentic Catalan? Who decides what it means to be Catalan? Is there anyone more qualified than the rest to separate the good Catalans from those who are not so good?

You had a primary school teacher who, to encourage you and your classmates, told you that anything you had done was wonderful, and congratulated you for working so hard. You and your classmates scribbled and doodled, and he applauded and displayed them.