Ferran Vital, in our newspaper, offered us an automotive-linguistic news item. The Nissan brand, from Japan, has christened its new electric car as the Nissan Pixo. He himself, in the news, reminded us of all the car names that, in the languages available to us, are either scatological or sexual unintentionally. He mentioned the "Nissan Moco, Mazda Laputa, Opel Cascada, Opel Manta, Ford Corrida or Hyundai Kona". I confess that the latter, the Kona, I do not understand. And I add to the list, of course, the legendary Mitsubishi Pajero, which because of the word was renamed, in Spanish-speaking areas, as Montero. If we look at it from the perspective of Catalan, we must also include the Kia Picantó.

Trump withdrew access to the White House from a series of media outlets and now a federal judge has ordered him to let them back in because the ban was likely unconstitutional.

Far-right nationalist populist parties are leading the way everywhere, from Washington to Warsaw. Why, then, be so alarmed by the small electoral victories of one of these parties, Alternative for Germany (AfD)? “Because it’s Germany!” is the almost instinctive answer in many heads around the world.

We are entering a world that does not yet have a name. At the root of current changes appear five major interrelated factors: a new global geopolitics, international migrations in a context of demographic growth, digitalization and artificial intelligence, a climate change that seems irreversible, and various internal crises in liberal democracies. Let us focus on some elements of the first two factors.Geopolitics. It must be analyzed with a world map in front of you and with the history of the affected contexts. The world of the Cold War belongs to the past, but the “new world” is still taking shape. Some notable factors: emergence of China as one of the two hegemonic actors on an economic, political, and military scale (erosion of the previously incontestable position of the USA); consolidation of regional powers (India, Turkey, Brazil, Indonesia, etc.); relative decline of the European Union; growth of instability in the Middle East (Iran, Israel-Palestine, agreement between Saudi Arabia-Turkey-Pakistan); strategies for the control of maritime straits in terms of security, defense, and trade (Malacca, Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb/Suez, Gibraltar); future importance of new Arctic routes. A set of factors with an uncertain outcome. No one controls everything, but no one wants to be left on the sidelines or lose positions in the next quarter of a century.International migrations. They also require having a global map. It is a topic in which socioeconomic, political, ethical, national, and cultural variables intervene, before which it seems that no one manages to offer an optimization that is both effective and reasonable. Neither the right nor the left.Geopolitics is interrelated with migration. Ceuta as a case in point. At this moment, leaving aside the Spanish government's terrible management, it seems clear that the Ceuta conflict cannot be reduced to a mere migratory dispute between two border states. The context brings to light global international strategies: the use of migration as a political weapon, the influence of the US-Israel tandem in Muslim countries; Morocco as a key piece of this strategy. It seems that China also analyzes it in these terms: if the US strategy in this territory advances, Chinese strategic options are reduced (see the article by Nadia Helmy, “Why Chinese Analysts Are Linking Morocco’s Gaza Role to Spain’s Ceuta Crisis”, Modern Diplomacy, 11-8-2026). The European Union has once again shown that it lives with its back to the Mediterranean.

In the film Umberto D. (directed in 1952 by Vittorio de Sica, a director who dared to portray poverty, and starring Carlo Battisti) there is a very harsh scene. The protagonist of the film is a retired civil servant who cannot survive on the meager pension he has been left with and who finds himself pushed to beg on the street. Because he is ashamed, the man leaves a little dog with his hat, which begs for him. At first glance it is a tender image, but if one stops to think about it even for a moment, it is devastating. It portrays the poverty of so many people who never imagined they would find themselves driven to it and who do not know how to face the situation, because they cannot overcome the astonishment – and the shame, too – of finding themselves in it.The market, left to its own logic without any kind of correction, tirelessly expands the spaces of marginality or makes the poverty threshold higher and higher, so that an increasingly broad sector of the population falls into it. People who in principle should be in a position to afford a dignified life (wage earners or self-employed, or those who retire after contributing throughout a long working life) discover all of a sudden that this is not the case. Their incomes are below prices, and if they do not have an environment that supports them, they soon find themselves driven to poverty.This week, the cases of Maricarmen in Madrid (the 87-year-old woman, in poor health and with low income, who was evicted from her home while protesters were repressed in a new episode of police brutality) and Olga in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (a 54-year-old woman, mother of two daughters –one of them a minor–, who committed suicide because she could not bear to lose her home), have filled newspapers, television news and social networks, and have drawn everyone's attention to the so-called housing crisis, which in reality is nothing more than a result of an economic system based on two things: greed and aporophobia. Put another way: the pathological relationship with money that consists of considering it a superior good (in relation to the rights of citizens, and also in the abstract, as a kind of deity), and the hatred of the poor.People have, or we have, a fear of being poor for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that we know we will come to be hated. Not just belittled, ridiculed, humiliated, violated, or persecuted: but also hated. Above all else, hated. The image of the poor person acts as a reflection of what we never want to be: that is why, when we encounter them on the streets, we turn our heads or quicken our pace. No one will reproach us for it. The poor person is fearsome, dark, and repugnant, because they personify the negation of prosperity. The message for those who cannot pay the prices imposed by uncontrolled speculators is that, in addition to their home and their belongings, they have lost their dignity and the consideration of a human being. The poverty-stranglers have always existed; now, however, they boast of being the leaders of the new capitalism. They have many self-justifying theories, but a single fundamental principle: to hate the poor.

The Sense ficció this Tuesday on TV3 was a good comparative exercise of the economic models of Catalonia and Madrid. It did not claim anything more and the title did not deceive. A brave documentary because in prime time it dared to delve into an area that can be dense and cumbersome for the audience. On the other hand, it had the virtue of being clear and enjoyable despite the attention to the screen that it required. In an era where television increasingly trains the audience in infantilization and content based on short messages, Catalonia-Madrid: the truth of the two economic models raised the bar. There are still professionals who trust the viewers. However, the title had a pretentious veneer. Selling the thesis of "the truth" as the definitive achievement of an absolute fact is a bit bold. The Sense ficció was also ambitious, and the proof is that the following day the news programs recovered fragments of the broadcast. In a metaphorical sense, the documentary was a kind of Barça-Madrid transferred to the economic sphere. Taking into account the historical and political rivalry of the two communities, the economic models of Catalonia and Madrid presented an alluring narrative with narrative tension. The participation of the two presidents, Salvador Illa and Isabel Díaz Ayuso, accentuated this, especially considering that Ayuso's cynicism is always morbid to listen to. Even more so if she puts herself for the first time in front of TV3's microphones. Her condescension and moral superiority in the analysis showed her in her essence. The Illa-Ayuso confrontation also emphasized another dichotomy: that of left and right. The PSOE-PP axis built the mental framework of the bipartisanship that always limits reflection. On the other hand, the testimonies were well chosen and the selection of experts in economics added a more choral argument. The dossiers full of data that they shared on the table served to define the topics and the rigor.Another strong point of Sense ficció was the direction, editing, and post-production. It was what gave structure to the narrative, and it did so, furthermore, with an exquisite visual quality. An audiovisual production of reference thanks to the attention to detail and the treatment of the image, which was noted in symbiosis with the analysis. The image listened to the content. At a time when television operates by inertia and with the most conventional resources, this Sense ficció demonstrated much higher demands. The documentary had the virtue of developing a serene discourse, but one that did not confuse a good tone with equidistance. It posed concrete questions and offered arguments with very clear answers. Mind you, where they were most ambiguous was when it came to resolving whether the 'Procés' had harmed the economy of Catalonia. The comparison between Madrid and Catalonia has always generated a lot of noise and tension. But, for once, arguments and figures took precedence over demagoguery and cunyadisme.

It is no coincidence that the same party –Aliança Catalana– that congratulates the German AfD with the "Ja hem passat!" (We have passed!) that the Francoists chanted in 1939 when they entered Madrid has committed the "mistake" of voting in favor of the Vox deputy who insulted the memory of President Lluís Companys by labeling him a murderer. Because if you are Catalan and a democrat, you cannot be mistaken about Companys in any way.

On November 19, 1957, Albert Camus took up his pen to write to the man who had been his primary school teacher, Louis Germain. A few weeks earlier, the writer had been informed of the awarding of the Nobel Prize. Camus reveals to his teacher and friend: “When I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you”. Camus also reminds his teacher of the debt of gratitude he owes him: “Without you, without that affectionate hand you reached out to the poor boy that I was, without your teaching and your example, none of this would have happened”.The relationship with his teacher is captured by Camus in his autobiographical novel The First Man. The writer, coming from a family of Menorcan descent, was born in 1913 in Algeria, in a very humble context. Germain knew how to see in that child exceptional qualities and did everything in his power for him to obtain a scholarship to study at the lyceum. So much so that the teacher visited his mother and grandmother, with whom Albert lived –his father had died in the First World War–, to convince them to allow him to continue studying. His mother and grandmother counted on Albert starting to work, which was by no means trivial given the poverty in which they lived. Germain achieved both things: that Camus passed the tests and won the scholarship, and that the family accepted that he enter the lyceum, which he did when he was about to turn eleven years old.Camus, Mr. Germain, and The First Man came to mind while thinking about the serious –very serious– problem we have with education. This school year has started with a strike, and nothing indicates that the conflict will be resolved in the short term. Beyond the confrontation between teachers and professors and the Generalitat, however, and the possible agreements they may reach, the underlying problem, that of quality –in the global, integral sense–, will take a long time to be resolved, assuming it is ever achieved.We have all had teachers and professors for whom we feel enormous affection and gratitude. The quote by Camus that I wanted to include above explains, or comes close to explaining, why we remember them this way. The writer expresses to his teacher his gratitude for the learning he received from him and also for his "example". Teachers must teach, and they must teach well. But those who remain in our memory are those who, in addition, manage to connect and be admired, to move us beyond the subject matter they deal with. There are teaching professionals who have this extraordinary capacity, this gift, to reach their students.

Feminism is the challenge to male power established thanks to a structure of systematic and organized violence called patriarchy. The sapiens male woke up one day and, contradicting the evidence he could observe with his own eyes, decided he was superior to his female counterparts. The root of this outlandish idea is, I am sure, the fragility of the male ego. One only needs to look at the behavior of some gentlemen here and now. Not those from the caves, but those who consider themselves evolved and cultured and educated who, despite having enjoyed the numerous advantages given to them by the fraternity of those who carry dangling gonads, also feel hurt at the slightest thing, and the women who have the misfortune of living with them must walk on eggshells so as not to injure the most sensitive part of male anatomy: the ego, which is affected by any insignificant breeze that brushes against it. That is why the statistics on our sex life continue to yield surprising data in times of emancipation and freedom and blah-blah-blah: it turns out that seven out of ten women fake orgasms.

Elif Eralp and Zohran Mamdani have won the elections in two global cities, with indisputable historical and global reach, and with an agenda for intervention in the housing market. In the case of Berlin, everyone is talking about the expropriations that Eralp wants to carry out, which are the result of a deliberate process backed by a referendum. The citizens of Berlin were asked if they would approve the expropriation of the property of the 12 large landlords with more than 3,000 apartments in the city, with a potential impact on 243,000 rental apartments out of 1.5 million apartments in the city. The detractors of the measure argue that the expropriations will create legal uncertainty and that a harmful message is being sent to investors. They do not speak of the residents who live there, of the economic need to provide stability to city workers so that there is dynamism, and of the duty of the property to carry out proper maintenance of all these apartments. In a 2018 presentation by the Housing Agency of Catalonia, the case of a portfolio of 16,000 apartments that BBVA had sold to the investment fund Cerberus was analyzed: the portfolio consisted of 4,995 empty apartments, 2,351 occupied, 4,000 rented, 1,306 ceded, and about 3,306 without possession. These are mostly apartments accumulated through mortgage foreclosures (families who could not meet their mortgage payments). The concentration of property is a very recent phenomenon in cities, and it is a very important morphological change, because the development structure we have in mind (what we learned at architecture school) is no longer in style: there are no longer small commercial companies building simultaneously next to each other, with ten-year real estate cycles, like at the genesis of the Eixample. It has reached a point where the properties of a single holder are spread across different cities and countries and portfolios of thousands of apartments are traded in transactions where often the condition of the apartment and the building is deplorable. But they don't even visit them. Also in Madrid, as I read in Infobae, the data from the AVS deposits indicate that there is a concentration of property in the hands of a few operators: more than 80% of rental apartments are in the hands of some funds and companies that own 5 or more apartments.

Let me start the story at the end, which is where great stories begin. Later, if you have the patience, readers, we will go to the flash-back. It so happens that at the Congress of Deputies, three restrooms and a dining room had to be sealed off “after someone emptied a spray with a toxic substance in them”. Three floors of the building were evacuated, including the kitchen area. Cooks, waitresses, and a member of the Mauritanian delegation, who happened to be passing by, were intoxicated and had to receive medical assistance.

As of now, the application of the amnesty law still has more than 150 cases pending judicial resolution. According to data from Alerta Solidària, there have also been 104 explicit denials of amnesty (certainly not to the police officers who beat citizens in the streets: they were the first to benefit from it). The law came into force in June 2024, more than two years ago. The justice system has been far less diligent in amnestying Catalan independence supporters than in exonerating Ayuso's boyfriend or taking down a State Attorney General. A matter of priorities, we must assume.Finally, it has also been necessary to force the amnesty for the crime of embezzlement (non-existent, given that none of those convicted/persecuted by Marchena and Llarena profited or benefited from the expenses of the referendum). The Spanish courts, by the way, disregarded the crime of embezzlement (which they themselves had put forward as an accusation) in the glorious times when patriotic talk show hosts made jokes about the toponym Schleswig-Holstein and some journalist of their ilk called for bombing German breweries for having “humiliated Spain” by not having handed over Puigdemont at the behest of the flawed requirements of the aforementioned Llarena. These are things worth remembering to keep in mind that the road that has led us here over these nine years has been long and stormy, but not full of knowledge, like the road to Ithaca that Cavafy asked for, but full of sound and fury, of arbitrariness and abuses, of wrong decisions and an etcetera as endless as it is ignominious.On the Catalan side, the space that the pro-independence political parties left open while they were busy killing each other stupidly has been filled with jingoistic charlatans, each one more absurd and toxic than the others, to the point where the emerging “pro-independence” force, destined according to everyone to sweep the next elections, is a fascist party that sides with Vox to insult the memory of President Companys. On the Spanish side, the thirst for revenge has led to the collapse of the thin partitions of the separation of powers, in state institutions populated by ideological heirs of Francoism and far-rightists of new coinage and the latest batch. The State also amnesties itself (above all itself) from the judicial persecution perpetrated against the independence movement, which, on the other hand, and as was to be expected, has been extended to anyone who might be suspected of treason against Spain, even if it concerns the president of the Spanish government. Nine years later, the amnesty satisfies no one, and the darkest versions of patriotism, both Spanish and Catalan, have taken over the landscape. But the most sinister thing of all is that the judiciary has become accustomed to correcting, and exercising, the functions of the executive and the legislative branches.

I found at the back of the closet an egg-yolk colored t-shirt, with the four bars printed on the chest drawing a V and the words, in black, Ara és l’hora. I ask the AI what year it was from: 2014. Next to it, wrinkled but with the yellow still vivid, there is another t-shirt with the slogan SOS Quality Public Education. Beside it, two more black ones: one with the word Democracy and a face crossed out by a red prohibition mark and another with the phrase You don't have enough prisons for so much DIGNITY!, and the caricature of a girl breaking some chains.

On Monday evening TV3 premiered Gènesi, the six-episode series that, through a biopic of the chef Ferran Adrià, explains the gastronomic revolution that El Bulli represented. So far we have only seen two episodes, and what is most striking is the performance of actor Miquel Fernández stepping into the chef's shoes. He finds the optimal balance of the character without making it a parody or falling into a free reinterpretation that distances us from the protagonist. He imitates him so well that we don't understand him when he speaks, as has always happened with Adrià. But he also achieves a facial expression with which he does not need to open his mouth for us to recognize the genius of the kitchen. The performances of the rest of the cast are uneven, but the physical resemblance to the originals is commendable. The images in the final credits are a wonderful idea.The series is infected by Ferran Adrià's ambition. It forces the television production to live up to it. There is one aspect in which Gènesi could not fail: when it came to showing the food and the gastronomic creations. It is difficult for food to be appetizing on television, for boxes full of fish to seem like attractive treasures and for each dish to seem masterful. It requires an advertising meticulousness that the series achieves successfully. The viewer must want to taste what they see, they must feel tempted and seduced by the culinary proposals. All this also demands rigor in the documentation to be faithful to the history of El Bulli. The locations are in tune with this approach. Not only are the spaces recreated very well, but a visual elegance is achieved in the production. Beautiful places and settings with a desire to establish a poetics between the landscape, the product, and the mood. It is the materialization of the gastronomic experience that goes beyond the palate to produce sensations. Representing this through the image demonstrates the importance that the series wants to give to the act of thinking, which has a lot to do with the essence that is intended to be highlighted about Ferran Adrià. There is a moment when Juli Soler reproaches the protagonist for not talking much. And this is where, perhaps, this psychological ambition goes a bit overboard. The supreme intellectuality and the genius of the chef are boosted so much that at times the series errs on the side of being pretentious. The direction is very affected and affects the framing and the rhythm. The lyricism and the message between the lines are forced so much that you distance yourself from the story and remember that you are watching a recreation. The emotional intention of the music is so explicit and brazen that the soundtrack seems more manufactured than composed.The secondary plot of the Canabachs loses interest due to being imaginary and by simple contrast with the power of the desire for truth that attracts the viewer. The great appeal of the series is, at the same time, its main flaw: being based on real events (with a significant dose of sweetener). This has a very elementary problem: there is no plot conflict to resolve. That it is based on a true story awakens the audience's interest. If it were pure fiction, it would hardly hook us.

The other day I got hooked listening to an interview they were conducting with Dr. Joan Manuel del Pozo, president of the Education Council of Catalonia, who is to lead the debate on education.

Donald Trump, who is a gentleman of those who do not want to take medication, and has sudden attacks of impatience, anger and nerves, has banned certain press from the White House, after several media outlets did not behave well. As an act of protest, the main television networks that have not been banned have stopped covering his acts. Now this big gentleman, with the name and posture of a duck, who talks nonsense, is left without bootlickers and, therefore, has set up a YouTube channel where he will satisfy himself.

What do the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), the German Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Bulgarian Vazrazhdane, the French National Rally, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), and the Spanish National Democracy or the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE) have in common? Some are far-right and others are far-left, but they share certain unequivocal attitudes: they are openly pro-Russian, and some have been funded with little dissimulation by the Kremlin. Some defend Putin's traditional/conservative values regarding the family, while others consider him the best ally against the United States. Of course, all of them oppose NATO, which is to say, they are in favor of unilateral disarmament like the one preached by the last dinosaurs of the USSR.The so-called “hybrid war” that Russia exerts against its Polish or Romanian neighbors—minimalist attacks, controlled explosions without casualties, targeted sabotage—responds to a logic perfectly coherent with the Kremlin's strategic tradition. These are not military operations in the classic sense, but rather a form of psychological and political erosion intended to fracture European cohesion by means of, among other mechanisms, formations like those I mentioned before. The goal is clear and simple—division—but its realization proves tortuous: in a Europe that, sooner or later, will have to rearm itself to guarantee its own security, any ambiguous episode can fuel internal dissent and hinder, or even prevent, decision-making.The model is by no means new. From the final years of Tsarism, those of the Rasputin era, to the USSR or the current Russian Federation, Moscow has successfully cultivated a specialty: poisoning, both informational and literal (they say Rasputin ended up being immune to cyanide; Litvinenko was not so lucky). The disinformation of the Soviet era—those campaigns of rumor-mongering and blatant infiltration into leftist Western media—was a weapon of attrition that sought to sow doubt about the reliability of democratic institutions.

Definitely, the authoritarian delirium that threatens democracies has moved to Europe. Meanwhile, in the United States, Donald Trump, with polls clearly on the decline, is losing his cool, probably unable to understand that the continued display of his indecency has ended up discomforting some of his own. There are reasons to think that Trump—despite still having two years left in office—has entered a downward slope. We will have objective data soon, when the midterm elections arrive, which, if the polls are not wrong, augur a serious defeat for the Republicans.

The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, met a few days ago with his counterpart from New York, Zohran Mamdani, on the occasion of the U20 or Urban 20, a summit of mayors from 34 G-20 cities. From the very moment of the resounding electoral victory that brought him to the mayoralty of New York, Mamdani became a global progressive icon and a kind of anti-Trump counterpower (although that is more for show than anything else), and therefore photos with him are highly prized by European left-wing leaders. Collboni got his photo with Mamdani and something more: the endorsement of the New York mayor for Mayors for Housing, an international alliance of mayors committed to promoting policies against the housing crisis, which Barcelona has already led at a European level and which now seeks to expand internationally.It cannot be said that the U20 was not productive for Collboni nor that he arrived there empty-handed. Barcelona was the only city from the Spanish state to participate and was able to contribute the regulation of rental prices, the total ban on tourist rentals, or the expropriation of vacant homes, measures that have certainly been approved (but are not being applied, or not enough, in one of the preferred cities for vulture funds and large speculators, both banking and non-banking). The Mamdani administration has, for its part, approved the freezing of rent prices for rent-controlled apartments or the creation of public supermarkets to guarantee access for poor families to basic products; Collboni committed to opening the first of these supermarkets by the year 2027 in the Barcelona neighborhood of La Marina.All of this comes to be a kind of alliance of mayors against speculation and it is very good. But it is difficult to maintain the spirit that animates the assumption of these commitments while disregarding the protests this past Sunday against the airport expansion, a great mobilization that also took place in Palma and Ibiza, where it had the dimensions of a historic demonstration. The protests are based on a clear finding: the expansions of El Prat, as well as Son Sant Joan, as well as Es Codolar are being done to increase the touristification of Barcelona, Mallorca, and Ibiza. And the increase in the touristification of Barcelona, Mallorca, and Ibiza is directly linked to the lack of control over prices and housing speculation, which is, in fact, one of the direct consequences. The fabulous extractive machine that is Aena may hide behind the need to have infrastructure that is competitive with other large international airports, but this does not take away even a bit of the seriousness of a system failure—the housing crisis—that has also acquired an international dimension and that is especially suffocating in intensely touristified zones like Catalonia (especially Barcelona) or the Balearic Islands (especially Mallorca and Ibiza). Double standards do nothing at all to alleviate this failure.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU has obtained the worst result in its history in regional elections this weekend in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. A "disaster" admitted by the chancellery and a humiliation for a Merz who, upon coming to power, promised to reverse the strength of a far-right that has been tailing him for some time. The popularity of Alternative for Germany, for the moment, has no ceiling. In Saxony-Anhalt it was on the verge of governing, for the first time, in a German state, and on Sunday it won the elections in the land of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in eastern Germany, and came in third in Berlin. While Merz's political survival is increasingly threatened, the AfD continues to grow in the shadow of economic and industrial decline, which has slowed the German engine, and a feeling of insecurity that is fueled by the criminalization of rising immigration in the last decade. But, above all, the far-right has demonstrated a great capacity to exploit voters' disillusionment with the political establishment of the Grand Coalition.