In 1999, a young student named Pierre Poilievre wrote an essay in which he stated that "politics should not be a lifelong career, and elected officials should not be allowed to entrench themselves in the corridors of a nation's power". Today that same student is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and, at 47 years old, has accumulated 23 years in institutional positions. This phenomenon, the act of living exclusively from the exercise of public office, is known in political science as the professionalization of politics and can entail some risks.

The Labor Inspectorate has opened a file on the Generalitat's Department of Culture to determine whether over the last few years they have had more than 200 interns performing structural, non-formative tasks. For their part, sources from the Department of Culture explained to the ACN that they have filed allegations and appeals to the proceeding and that they disagree with the agency's conclusions.

Until recently she had a photo with her daughter on WhatsApp, but with the publication of the book she is corresponding with more people who do not know her –for interviews, promotion– and she decided to change it. It is 128 pages long titled Nadie merece nada (Quaderns Anagrama) where Jahel Queralt defends and dissects the concept of meritocracy. She, the daughter of parents who had her just after finishing high school, grew up –very happily– in a country house without electricity. Statistics indicate that, as an adult, she should be a low-income person. But she earned a law degree, a PhD in political theory, and is a professor at Pompeu Fabra. Far from believing in personal stories of overcoming adversity, she champions class consciousness and has specialized in distributive justice.

The event that Gabriel Rufián and Irene Montero will share this Saturday in Madrid will only be repeated once during the campaign: it will be on Saturday, November 21, at Podemos' central event in the Spanish capital. However, the two candidates will also share the stage in Barcelona the next day, Sunday, November 22, at ERC's central event, just as they did two weeks ago in Nou Barris. The alliance between ERC and Podemos, therefore, will finally result in a total of four events until November 29. The Republicans' campaign, led by Rufián, will travel through a large part of the Principality, and will also pass through Palma and Castellón, where the party is also asserting its presence ahead of the next general elections.

The investigation into the Koldo case at the National Court has a new offshoot that has erupted in the middle of the November 29th pre-election period. The Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard launched an operation this Thursday that resulted in six arrests—who were released hours later—within the framework of a new secret piece of the case led by judge Ismael Moreno. At the request of the instructor of the Koldo case, UCO agents searched the home of former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos in Valencia as well as other premises in Madrid, Seville, and Cordoba. The details of the new investigation have not been revealed, although it is known that it involves Adif. Sources from the railway infrastructure manager explained that UCO agents appeared at Adif offices with a request for information.

The Supreme Court has agreed this Thursday to apply the amnesty to Clara Ponsatí. In an interlocutory order, the high court has extinguished the criminal liability of the former Minister of Education for the crime of disobedience for her role in the 1-O and has definitively closed the case. The decision has been a long time coming. The Supreme Court made its move more than a year after the Constitutional Court dismissed the question of unconstitutionality that the criminal chamber had presented and that had halted the processing of all cases. At the end of July, the Supreme Court began to turn on the amnesty tap and amnestied fourteen people who were waiting, but the case of Clara Ponsatí remained in hibernation. And now it has had its final resolution. The Supreme Court's amnesty also comes twenty days after the Court of Auditors, dragging its feet and after postponing it for weeks, applied the amnesty law to Ponsatí and about thirty former government officials for the expenses of the Procés.

After the snub at the inaugural gala and the subsequent dinner offered by the Spanish royal house, Javier Milei did attend the second and final day of the Ibero-American Summit held in Madrid. He was, in fact, one of the main attractions for the media spotlight to see if he would remain faithful to his style, which in his last visit to Spain materialized in insults towards Pedro Sánchez: "Dictator, corrupt, authoritarian," Milei spat at him just two weeks ago. The Argentine president did not deviate from the script he had written, but he did make it clear that he is not a friend of Pedro Sánchez. A fleeting and cold handshake between the two marked the first image of them together –they did not share a word and only Sánchez looked at him–. "Insults are not part of my way of understanding and doing politics. Respect seems fundamental to me," replied Sánchez when the media asked him what he thought of the Argentine president's words.

On the same day that the Civil Guard launched an operation that left six people arrested in the framework of the Koldo García case, the former advisor to the former Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos has accused the PP of having offered him a million euros in exchange for information against Pedro Sánchez and his inner circle. According to what he himself claims in an audio sent to Cadena SER from prison, where he is serving a sentence of almost twenty years for corruption, it would have been the lawyer for the Popular Party, Alberto Durán, who proposed the transaction to him. Sources from the party led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo assure that it is "absolutely false" and question the credibility of Ábalos's former advisor. However, in a press conference from the Ibero-American Summit in Madrid, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, demanded "some explanation" from the popular leader in the face of such "serious accusations".

The reform of the administration has made headway in Catalonia. Or at least that is how it is viewed by the more than 200 entities and business associations that are part of the Forum of Entities for the Reform of the Administration (FERA), an organization established about two years ago to demand reforms in the public sector. The processing of the bill for professional managers in the public sector – a regulation that is part of this process, approved in July by the government of Salvador Illa – overcame the obstacle last Friday in the parliamentary committee, where ERC, Comuns, and the PP presented amendments to the entirety. Junts avoided proposing one, and in this way, the vote next month in Parliament will be reached with the possibility that the regulation will continue its path.

The PSOE resumes the electoral race for November 29th. Pre-campaign events will once again occupy Pedro Sánchez's agenda starting this Friday afternoon, with a rally in Valencia. Bewilderment took hold of them after the train accident in Urda (Toledo), but once the three days of official mourning passed – with Óscar Puente's resignation as Minister of Transport materialized and the XXX Ibero-American Summit, which is being held in Madrid this Wednesday and Thursday, on track –, Pedro Sánchez's team wants to recover the enthusiastic attitude they had before all this turmoil. Internally, but also among the party membership. That is why they will have to roll up their sleeves, because the tragic accident in Toledo, the second in less than a year on the high-speed rail, has left the railway in the State and its management damaged. Among the socialist ranks, however, they believe they will succeed. In addition to Valencia this Friday, Sánchez will hold events in Tarragona and Bilbao over the weekend.

A family photograph, with about thirty people, staged the election of the new executive committee of Aliança Catalana in Cubelles last October 26th. It was an image intended to project a sense of strength and unity that did not correspond with reality because most of those present were from other towns in the Garraf region. With two opposing candidacies, the assembly on that October 26th turned into a 'stick dance' – a traditional dance deeply rooted in this region – with a walkout by those who lost.

Anti-Catalan controversy in Northern Catalonia. The far-right municipal government of the symbolic city of Elne has decided to celebrate for the first time the partition of Catalonia resulting from the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 –a consequence of the Catalan defeat against Castile in the Reapers' War–, which meant that the Catalan regions of Roussillon, Capcir, Alta Cerdanya, Vallespir, and Conflent remained under the yoke of the Kingdom of France. It will do so in an event this Saturday organized by the local executive of the ultra Steve Fortel –who supported the collaborationist Marshal Henri Pétain and who ran with the local candidacy Elne à Cœur, which is positioned even further to the right than the National Rally– to exalt the dismemberment of Catalonia. The initiative has generated much controversy.

It is the fourth time that Spain has hosted an Ibero-American Summit. The meeting, which officially kicked off this Wednesday with an event at the Teatro Real and a subsequent gala dinner that the Spanish King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia offered to the attendees, could have been a breath of fresh air for Pedro Sánchez in the middle of the electoral pre-campaign, especially after the recent victory of Lula da Silva in Brazil. Ultimately, however, it has been marked by surprises, no-shows, and a rather lackluster presence of leaders, at least if one takes into account those who are considered to be Sánchez's allies.

At the gates of the November 29th general elections, the family of Guillem Agulló remains waiting for the Spanish government to move to "repair the damage" and to "honor the memory" of the young anti-fascist and pro-independence activist murdered 33 years ago at the hands of the extreme right. In April of this year, the activist's parents and sisters requested that the Ministry of the Interior recognize him as a victim of far-right terrorism. As of now, Fernando Grande-Marlaska's department has only requested two reports, from the Civil Guard and the Castelló Court, to evaluate it. "The first has already spoken out and denies us the right to the distinction," they denounce. At this point, Guillem Agulló's family has sent a letter to Grande-Marlaska and the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, to demand that they take the step "before it is too late".

Since he decided to call elections in the heat of the housing mobilizations, Pedro Sánchez has lost two of his most prized squires: the PSOE spokesperson, Montse Mínguez, due to her partner's real estate dealings, and now the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, his most effective media battering ram, due to the terrible Urda accident that has claimed 69 lives. On paper, no political leader can survive such a disastrous start to an electoral pre-campaign. However, within the catastrophe, Sánchez has found a way to turn Puente's resignation into a kind of lever to take flight again, or at least attempt to.

The surprise resignation this Tuesday of the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, a week after the Urda railway tragedy, has been the umpteenth jolt to the pre-campaign for the general elections in the State. The head of Transport announced his resignation this Tuesday evening after giving explanations in Congress for almost four hours, and this morning, the Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, has already appointed his replacement. It will be the current First Vice President and Minister of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo, who will take over the Transport portfolio. “I accept [Óscar Puente's decision] with gratitude and respect,” said the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, in a brief institutional statement from Moncloa this Wednesday morning, in which he explained that it will be Cuerpo who will assume the powers of the Ministry of Transport “on a transitional basis”.

Until September 26, 2023, the day of the failed investiture debate of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in Congress, Óscar Puente (Valladolid, 1968) was practically unknown to the general public. Pedro Sánchez's assignment to this rank-and-file PSOE deputy, former mayor of Valladolid, to give the reply to the PP leader catapulted him media-wise. Especially due to his provocative tone and the pungent content of his speech. That day, articles proliferated explaining who Puente was, the surprise of the day, who soon took on the labels of "scourge" and "battering ram" of the right, and became one of the socialists most hated by the populars. An animosity that has been increasing during the legislature following his appointment as Minister of Transport, a position he has combined with acting as a doberman for the head of the Spanish executive against the attacks of the opposition.

The Government continues to claim the "honesty" and "honorability" of Eduard Rivas, the man who until now was Salvador Illa's right-hand man. The Government spokesperson, Sílvia Paneque, explained that the President of the Generalitat described the former chief of staff to the President of the Generalitat in this way during this Tuesday's executive council meeting, after he submitted his resignation ten months after it came to light that he was being judicially investigated for alleged corruption during his time as mayor of Esparreguera. Thus, the Minister of Territory has assured that Rivas has not left the Catalan executive due to a "lack of confidence" from the PSC leader, but that it is a "personal decision".

The elections on the upcoming November 29 will again call nearly 75,000 people who will have to constitute or replace the more than 8,000 polling stations that will be in Catalonia. The draws were held between October 31 and November 4, and during the following three days, the town councils will communicate this to those selected by postal mail. If, by chance, you are one of those chosen, perhaps at this moment you are asking yourself the following questions: is there any way to avoid going and to appeal against the decision? What exceptions does the electoral law provide for? And what happens if, ultimately, I decide not to show up even though I have been called? Below we answer these questions.

The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, decided to call early elections for November 29th after the votes of Junts, the PP, and Vox in Congress defeated the housing decree laws approved by the Council of Ministers. Thus, citizens are called to the polls on the last Sunday of November. What can you do to find out where you have to go to vote in the general elections?