There are dates that call into question. May Day is one, by definition. It is not a complacent anniversary or an empty ritual: it is an uncomfortable mirror that forces us to ask ourselves if work allows us to live with dignity or if, on the contrary, it is becoming normalized that millions of working people do not make ends meet. This year, this challenge is harder than ever. The slogan we have agreed upon with the unions –“Rights, not trenches. Wages, housing, and democracy”– is not a rhetorical catchphrase: it is a line of defense against those who seek to substitute rights for confrontation, cohesion for division, and social dialogue for imposition.All this occurs, moreover, in an adverse international context, marked by geopolitical instability, open conflicts, and the dispute over the control of energy and supply chains. The aggression against Ukraine, the escalation in the Middle East – with attacks against Iran outside international law – and trade tensions between powers directly impact daily life: more inflation in essential goods, volatile energy prices, and declining real wages. And this adjustment often ends up falling on labor.Catalonia is not foreign to this context. On the contrary: it embodies it with special intensity. It is one of the most dynamic economies in the State, with average wages above the average –around 34,700 euros per year–, but also with deep internal divides and growing pressure on the living conditions of working people. Because the question is not only how much is growing, but how this growth is distributed. And here collective bargaining is an essential tool.The distributive conflict is today at the center of the debate. While business profits have shown remarkable resilience even in this uncertain environment, wages have lost purchasing power. And when work does not guarantee a dignified life, social cohesion cracks. Therefore, wage improvement is not a conjunctural claim, but structural: it is the basic condition for sustaining the social contract, for strengthening domestic demand, and for preventing economic recovery from being built on fragile foundations. Collective bargaining must continue to be the instrument that orders this distribution, that closes gaps – including the gender gap – and that prevents growth from concentrating in the hands of a few.

The Congress has rejected the validation of the so-called housing decree-law approved two months ago by the council of ministers. The rule provided, among other urgent measures, for the extension of rental contracts expiring before December 31, 2027, a cap of 2% on renewals to contain abusive increases, and protection mechanisms for vulnerable people facing evictions. These measures originate from Sumar's initiatives included in a broader anti-crisis decree from the Spanish government, which also included aid such as tax reductions on energy and fuel. With the opposing votes of Junts per Catalunya, the People's Party, and Vox, these measures have lapsed. The rejection is not a minor episode and, given the comments in the media and social networks, it has clear reputational effects for Junts, as it reinforces the ambivalence of its ideological positioning. With its fall, concrete instruments are lost that, despite being limited, offered a certain immediate relief to thousands of people. They did not solve the housing problem, but they contained its harshest effects.Junts has justified its contrary vote arguing that the decree was insufficient and did not address the structural causes of the crisis. Furthermore, as on previous occasions, its spokesperson in Madrid, Míriam Nogueras, has argued that they cannot continue to endorse isolated initiatives without a broader and sustained negotiation that seriously considers the fulfillment of the investiture pacts and Junts' demands. This position may be understandable from a strategic party and country perspective, but for the most critical sectors it proves problematic when it ends up blocking protection measures in a context of housing emergency.

When Gabriel Rufián takes out a 50 “bucks” bill and reads the names of the seven Junts deputies from the podium of Congress, is he thinking about himself and the thousands of likes he will get on social media, or is he thinking about tenants and Esquerra voters? Because it is as evident that he felt satisfied as it is that this superb performance is the underlining used by those who believe that voters don't realize much and need someone to draw them a picture with fluorescent markers and many arrows, because today nobody listens to arguments anymore and people no longer read newspapers. Does he think they don't know that Junts voted against the rent extension and that, just in case, a public shaming was necessary?

What a joy it is to be loved. We read in ARA that the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, has informed us that “Rodalies users will pay again to use the train starting next Saturday, May 9. Thus, the last day to use the railway network for free will be Friday, May 8”.

As if we didn't have enough with the forecast of concerts for three years from now or the premiere of new seasons of series we've already forgotten, now another phenomenon appears for which we must be prepared and rehearsed: the solar eclipse of August 12. A spectacle that will not be repeated in our country until the year 2180 when, predictably, those of us who are now alive will all be dead or, in the worst case, reincarnated as holograms of ourselves, stressed about whether we'll have the chance to see a new eclipse. Of course, no one is obliged to see anything, however unrepeatable it may be, but with the current obsession to prove that you are everywhere and that you don't miss a thing, you not only have to be there at the right time but much earlier, to ensure you'll be in the exact spot when the day that turns into night arrives. This time there's no promoter releasing tickets at a specific time to crash the internet, but there are clouds that play tricks and prevent you from enjoying the prelude to a spectacle that can also include meteorological unforeseen events. And the advantage of all this is that theuniverse has the absolute exclusive, and the changes in the atmosphere, the upper hand regarding the success of the event. Human error is not contemplated here. Which is always a relief. The other advantage is that, if you haven't rehearsed, you also have the right to enjoy the spectacle, if you can get to the place that day, because right now I don't want to imagine the comings and goings of August 12. What has traditionally been a bad day to celebrate your birthday, because in August there's never anyone, can change radically this year. It will be the most crowded birthday you've ever had, especially if you're from the south and invite people to your home. Because, by the way, the poetic justice is that this phenomenon will be best seen in the south of the country. And the further south, the better. Which is a phrase that cannot be said often because the south is used to receiving, yes, but not astronomical phenomena of the magnitude of this eclipse. That is to say, that the privilege falling to the south is a fact almost as unusual as the Moon interposing itself between the Earth and the Sun and us being able to see it.

President Pujol wanted to testify in the trial that is taking place at the National Court. I am convinced that he wanted to do so for two reasons: because of his character, always a fighter; and because he considers himself innocent of the accusations that have been made against him for many years. He has enough lucidity to know that he wants to defend himself, but according to repeated medical opinions, he does not have enough mental agility to do so with full guarantees. Despite numerous pieces of evidence in this regard, they made him go to Madrid, in an act of hurtful insensitivity and pathetic dehumanization of justice.

Attempts to associate public schools with conflict and unsafe spaces for students have become frequent. The right-wing PP and Vox are trying this in the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Country, presenting primary and secondary schools as stages for linguistic conflict, where teachers, according to them, want to “ad“indoctrinate” students in learning the Catalan language. The message is to go to private and subsidized schools, where neither students nor parents will have to face any kind of dilemma: in case of doubt, always go with the strongest.In Catalonia, it is a government that calls itself progressive, from the PSC, that is proposing to place plainclothes police in schools and institutes. Not inside classrooms, they specify. Not to teach, they specify. Thank goodness. They are police officers trained in mediation, they clarify, who will only have to act when necessary (¿when exactly is that?). It is understood that they will not be armed and that their function will not be punitive. The more nuances they add, the worse it sounds.I will not explain it better than David Fernàndez has already explained it, but I would like to emphasize that the mere idea of introducing police forces into public schools is an aberration. The police should only make an appearance in educational centers in very specific cases, but they have no role and should have no role within the educational community, and even less so in the day-to-day of schools and institutes. The message conveyed is again that public school is an unreliable place. So dangerous, in fact, that it requires police surveillance. The message is again the same: parents, keep your children away from these unsafe places. Meanwhile, there is a major educational strike underway with a long list of demands (some as old as ratios), none of which remotely resembles having plainclothes police in schools and institutes.A good teacher, or professor, exercises, within the classroom, a very special form of authority, which has nothing to do with that of a police officer. Good public school teachers and professors, who are the majority, teach to question, and at the same time to respect, authority (their own and, by extension, all forms of authority). It is a delicate, difficult, very fine balance. The social function of the teacher and that of the police officer are not complementary. They do not add up. Of course, the police play a necessary role in society, but their presence in schools only serves to distort, misrepresent, and degrade the educational ecosystem with a serious shadow of suspicion.Perhaps if all governments of all colors had not fallen into the temptation of superimposing educational laws over the years, we would not have reached this point. In any case, the function of a democratic government –especially if it calls itself progressive– is to ensure, above all, public services, so that there is healthcare and schooling for all and of quality. This is done by listening to professionals and multiplying resources. Not by sending them the police.

The “progressive” judge –or at least proposed by Podem– José Ricardo de Prada summoned President Jordi Pujol to the National Court in Madrid first thing Monday morning. More than making him testify, the intention was to subject him to another forensic examination to exhibit him as a wounded trophy, if not defeated. And this, to then be able to treat him as disabled and remove him from the case and keep open forever the suspicion of hypothetical guilt, something he himself wanted to defend himself against until the end. Perhaps therein lay the risk!

If we define intelligence as the capacity of human beings to weave links between what they know and what they feel, transforming the understanding of the world into empathy, creativity, and beauty, it is evident that we would like our rulers to have a good dose of it. But we can make it more prosaic and, although etymologically intelligence" means "to read within" or "to choose between", I would ask for no more than a somewhat objective understanding of the world, even if it were without empathy; and if beauty cannot be, I would like it to be replaced at least by rigor and by the will not to cause unnecessary suffering.

Killing children is not easy; one must know how. In abstract terms, extermination proclamations of an entire people can be made, as Netanyahu or other genocidal leaders do, but the truth is that this job –annihilating creatures– cannot be done by just anyone. Who will go door to door, when the extermination of an entire race is decreed, to finish off all the children living there? Who will be able to pull the trigger or drop a bomb, who will aim with a squinted eye directly at the head of a child who barely stands a few feet tall? Who will plunge a knife into tender flesh and endure the sharp, horrifying screams? Very few people, in fact, could carry out the worst of acts, the most fatal and terrible: ending the life of a defenseless sprout. That is why soldiers must be trained to dehumanize the other in a process that is two-way. Because it is impossible to see “the enemy” in a creature if one has not suffered a significant erosion of one’s own humanity.

Beyond petty politics and party strategies (in Junts they must be very sure of where they are going, voting what they vote), any debate about housing should start from this principle: people's right to decent housing is superior and must prevail over other rights, such as private property and its monetary exploitation. We can make it even broader: as a general principle, where individual rights collide with the common good, it is the individual right that must recede. Never the common good or society's interest. In a housing emergency, an individual —be it an individual, a real estate company, or an investment fund— does not have the "right" to speculate on rental and sale prices of homes. In a climate crisis, no one has the "right" to destroy the environment in the name of economic productivity, nor to question scientific evidence without valid arguments. In an epidemic, or pandemic, no one has the "right" not to get vaccinated, unless they assume that their decision endangers the health and lives of those around them (and they are indifferent to it). These are just a few examples.Some will call the previous paragraph communist, but it is not: it is simple social democracy and the welfare state, as we understood them not so long ago. The principle is simple: for societies to advance, they must do so collectively. If only a few benefit and many are harmed, there is no progress: there is regression. Illiberal, or turbo-capitalist, discourses are not an evolution of classical liberalism, but its degradation. The market, by itself, does not put everyone in their place, especially when the market is doped, inflated, and falsified in favor of very specific and describable interests. The retraction of democracy reveals another project, a new order conceived and commanded by global oligarchs with local servants in each country, imposing on rulers and populations a kind of natural selection based on money. This is nothing new in human history, but if for some decades we have prided ourselves on the West being the most advanced zone on the planet, it was precisely because we had worked in the opposite direction to all this.Trying to anchor this ideology in the figure of the good Catalan (or the good Mallorcan) who has worked his whole life like a beast and now has the right to do whatever he wants with the houses and apartments he has inherited from his grandparents, or that he has bought by speculating, is, to say the least, an indecent falsehood. Catalonia, precisely, has been a pioneer for having been a country built on the firm idea (and this one, indeed, liberal) of wealth distribution and collective improvement. In Mallorca, this idea has never existed, and that is why it is drowning in mass tourism with no alternatives in sight (and selling the grandparents' houses and apartments to the highest bidder, which curiously are vulture funds). The right to decent housing, let's repeat it, must prevail over the right to property.

In 1999, the share of global production consumed by the West reached its highest point ever recorded: one-sixth of the planet's population consumed four-fifths of all the planet's goods and services, which is outrageous. Just a decade after reaching the historic peak, the global financial crisis of 2008 erupted and this spectacular consumption percentage was reduced by a quarter: from devouring 80% of the world's gross product, Westerners went down to 60%. Naturally, this dizzying decline has led us to delve into our ideas about the tragic cycles of history. And it turns out that these narratives have a pattern extremely influenced by the fall of the Roman Empire as narrated by Edward Gibbons in the legendary History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, an interpretation that has taken hold so much in the collective imagination that it returns again and again, from Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West, through Samuel Huntington's theory of the Clash of Civilizations, to the rhetoric of Make America great again. With the war in Iran, which many commentators see as the umpteenth example of the West shooting itself in the foot and fostering the inexorable rise of China, the wheels of the decline narrative are turning again.Broadly speaking, the history of the fall of the West has two fundamental premises: that we have corrupted the moral and cultural essences that led us to rise, and that this corruption implodes with the invasion of barbarian peoples. It is a strange mixture of "it is all our fault" and "it is all the fault of others", which works very well to simultaneously obtain the benefits of criticizing the establishment and criticizing foreigners, and which always ends with the same antidote against decline: controlling the borders and tightening our belts in order to recover the martial purity that led us to the original golden age.

I read that the group Fetus, formed by Adrià Cortadellas, Telm Terradas and Adrià Jiménez, with Carles Belda and Joan Colomo (as producer), are releasing a – to put it in the manner of DJs – “new work”. At l’ARA, where we read that they dedicate their minstrelsy art to issues like the PSC, Aliança Catalana and Rodalies, they say this: "On this album they have called us chroniclers and we agree. In the end, it is all an exercise in understanding the ballad as a predecessor of the press and wanting to claim and reinterpret it as a genre that often has a certain objectivity, but the mere fact of singing it is already a political act in itself".

It's not that anyone's breakfast was getting stuck this morning, but unemployment and inflation have shown their faces, and if the war in Iran continues, they will end up showing their whole face. The rising cost of living is a fact and prospects are for the worse, with prophecies of energy shock and disruption of international trade, including food.

I admit that when I first heard the rumor that someone wanted to introduce plainclothes police officers into classrooms, I immediately thought it was some bizarre far-right proposal. One of those that offer easy remedies to complicated problems and that inevitably become false solutions. Those so tempting and noisy ones, which last as long as a lollipop in the playground, but which in reality are gaining ground and making a national priority. I suppose that's what I wanted – what I needed – to believe. But no. With a lump in my throat, it turns out to be a governmental proposal with official backing that supposedly started Monday in thirteen educational centers. Plainclothes police officers inside our schools with a supposed preventive character: that's where we are. The unease is preventively infinite – like a solemn failure, like an undeniable defeat, like a complete renunciation–. The mere imagined image of a plainclothes officer rummaging through students' lives completely unsettles, destroys the foundations of democratic schooling, and recreates a degrading imaginary of an education subjected to police criteria of safety, surveillance, and control. Looked at from any angle, a sacrilegious absurdity. These are not times for naivety, but one believed, after a resounding general strike by teachers, as democratic as it was historical, that the response would be different, in line with the accumulated demands of the sector and following the broad social support shown in the streets by teachers from all over the country. Fewer class sizes; more pedagogical resources; better conditions; more counselors and more professionals in all areas – from integration assistants to intercultural mediators, from support staff to psychopedagogues, from speech therapists to psychologists–. Nowhere was any police presence requested – and if you pass by any public school you will see a thousand protest banners of all colors, but not a single one demanding police presence–. What is still demanded is more time dedicated to each student in training, to each life under construction, through greater community, social, and neighborhood involvement, and socially addressing the enormous difficulties in centers of high complexity. Resolving in a completely opposite direction and choosing to put police first to explain to young people how adult life works out there is, simultaneously, infantilizing adults and adulterating children. And it is discrediting the teacher, to whom we entrust the education of our daughters and sons, by exchanging moral authority for disciplinary authority. And it is also stigmatizing, center by center, social inequalities where poverty and social segregation hit hardest. And it is banishing inwards, when the war rumbles so loudly outside, the indispensable promotion of a culture of peace, disregarding the immense efforts and enormous accumulated experience in mediation, management, and transformative resolution of all conflict.At this impossible crossroads is when we must ask ourselves how on earth we have arrived here –and why and why now– and try to find out if it is all a weather balloon, a smokescreen, or a ceremony of confusion. And we don't know –it still escapes us–. It is known –form and substance– how it has been promoted: with opaque stealth and without any debate with the educational community. And we also know how we have known it: through journalistic information. Two more reasons to immediately suspend –radical defect in form– the application of the pilot plan. Unfortunately, this way of doing things fits too well with how the wet paper agreement has been signed with two majority unions that in education have been left in absolute minority and have received, in a democratic consultation, the unanimous rejection of general amendment from those they claim to represent.

After a long time pursuing it, I managed a couple of weeks ago to get the original 19th-century edition of Las Papillotos, by Jasmin, in four very well-edited volumes published in 1842, 1843, 1853, and 1863. They arrived on Sant Jordi's Day, and at the end of the article I will explain why it seems like a not very good premonition to me – rather, a bad omen. Jacques – or Jacme – Boé, known literarily as Jasmin or Jansemin (Agen, 1798-1864), was a Gascon barber-poet who turned the old popular speech of Agen, a dialect of Occitan, into a literary instrument of unusual strength in the 19th century. Son of a humble family, self-taught, a great orator, he worked his whole life as a hairdresser while writing and reciting poetry in a dialectal variety that is now dying. His fame as a poet arose mainly from the recitals that took him to many theaters and salons in France. His musical diction and the vivid use of the langue d'oc captivated an audience that was discovering – and here one must choose words carefully to avoid creating illusions or anachronisms – a striking but politically harmless cultural anecdote.He published several volumes under the general title of Las Papillotos, which brought together long verse narratives combining white humor, pathos, and a gentle portrayal of popular life. Sentimental and vehement, Jasmin dignifies humble characters and turns everyday life into poetic material. In the mid-19th century, he was celebrated by Parisian critics and writers, and some consider him a precursor to the Occitan literary renaissance. The passage of time, however, worked against him: the Occitan dialect he wrote in ceased to be transmitted. This linguistic disappearance has led Jasmin to be read both as a creator and as a mere witness to a lost and irrecoverable world. He died in Agen, respected and popular, with a striking bronze statue and all, leaving behind a work that today is perhaps more archaeological than literary. He turned Las Papillotos into one of the most unique literary monuments of the Occitan language with narrative poems such as L’Abuglo de Castel-Cuillé, Françouneto, Maltro l’innoucento, Lous dus frays Bessous, etc. They are extensive tales, full of dramatic and truculent twists, good-naturedness and tenderness, which portray the lives of ordinary people with an emotional intensity that the urban public of 19th-century Paris found, ambiguously, exotic and familiar at the same time. Jasmin's strength lies in an uninhibited, elastic, sentimental language, closely linked to the spirit of Romanticism and, above all, to rural France. His characters are sensible peasants, virtuous maids, artisans, abandoned children. He treats them with dignity, often eliciting a tear from the respectable public. Although it may seem strange, the reception of this work was extraordinary: in the mid-19th century, Jasmin was an editorial phenomenon, as well as a celebrated rhapsode. The 20th century, however, relegated him to oblivion, a victim both of institutional contempt for the "patois" – as some called and still call Occitan – and of discomfort with a popular romanticism that no longer fit modern canons. This weekend, I happened to read a dozen of these poems. It's like hearing a voice that still sparks, but that comes from a landscape that has faded, ghostly and a little depressing.

Trump in his element: “Only the truly relevant leaders, those who have the most impact, are targeted.” Trump knows that violence feeds on itself and seeks to capitalize on attacks like the one at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. A criminal act by a poor man, Cole Thomas Allen, who has forged his delusions in a country with maximum tolerance for gun use.

Donald Trump's enormous, and sadly proven, destructive capacity does not deprive him of an undeniable comic flair. It works, however, in reverse: when Trump thinks he's funny, he's not funny at all, because all his supposed humor is based on denigrating people or institutions that generally cannot defend themselves, and also on that deceptive resource of the coarsest people which consists of wanting to be politically incorrect (according to them, “you can’t say anything anymore”, but, on the other hand, we hear and read them every single day). Instead, when he doesn't try to be funny, his own grotesque nature makes Trump capable of making us laugh.This is what happened again during the White House Correspondents' Dinner and the attempted attack that the current president of the USA supposedly suffered again, events that, instead of the gravity of a drama, had the ingredients of a comic opera. Journalist Antonia Hitchens, from the New Yorker, for example, tells it with the relaxed tone of someone who has witnessed a farce and not a moment of grave crisis for democratic institutions. The same correspondents' dinner, in fact, is a custom that, over the years, has acquired a certain ceremonial air, but which above all is based on good humor: it is precisely for this reason that Trump had avoided it until now, because his spoiled child attitude cannot tolerate jokes or criticism. He can insult, threaten, or ridicule, but if someone upsets him or makes fun of him, his reaction is to get angry and make a scene. This is what happened the day after the incident, when journalist Norah O'Donnell, from CBS, read Trump a fragment of the manifesto that the supposed terrorist, a certain Cole Thomas Allen, had made public before attempting to shoot him and in which he accused the Republican leader of being a rapist, a pedophile, and a traitor. Trump's reaction was to explode in anger at the journalist and insult her gravely in front of the same camera (when, until that moment, he had been playing the part of the understanding, and even compassionate, leader who, when attacked, worries about people's well-being). The effect, in this case, was one of unintentional comedy, in the style of Airplane!.However, whether true or part of a setup to try to boost Trump's very low popularity, the shooter's words were very presumably true: Trump has already been convicted of diverting campaign funds to pay for the sexual services of a pornographic actress, and the indications that he may be a rapist and pedophile are numerous and consistent. Almost all analyses of Trump's role in conflicts such as Gaza, Venezuela, or Iran include the current US president's need to distract public opinion from the scandals that weigh on him, starting with the Epstein case. As for the accusation of treason, there is no need to doubt it: he is merely a parasite of the homeland, like so many others who boast of patriotism. In the USA and everywhere else.

“I am not willing to allow a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to stain my hands with his crimes”, wrote the man arrested on Saturday night when he was allegedly going to attack Donald Trump at a press dinner. 24 hours later, journalist Norah O'Donnell reads these words to the President of the United States in an interview on CBS's iconic 60 Minutes.

Leonor, the king's daughter, will finish her studies at the military academy in June and will now study political science. However, as if that might not be enough, she will also have to take a reinforcement course in Constitution.