Lately, when I try to buy a bikini, I have to face the search and capture of an increasingly difficult piece to find: one that covers my entire buttocks. While the part that covers the breasts is not problematic, when we get to the bottom part, it seems that we only have at our disposal the minimum expression of what a panty should be. Among the available options, the thong is quite present, which mysteriously disappears between buttock and buttock, given the apparent comfort of the user, and front panels so minimal that I myself wonder how it is possible to fit the entire pubic area into such a narrow strip without it protruding from either side. Suddenly, wanting a panty that generously embraces the buttocks and lower abdomen has become almost an extravagance. It is paradoxical that this occurs in parallel with the clear retreat of the topless, caused by the increase in aesthetic pressure and rising conservative values but, above all, by the threat of camera phones, capable of forever archiving your breasts on social media without your consent. But why do these fears, which have caused the liberation of women's breasts to recede, not have the same effect on the buttocks?

Jordi Canal-Soler (Barcelona, 1977) looks at a map and sees things that other people cannot see. “All of this is the Polynesian triangle, which is very large. From New Zealand to Easter Island, Hawaii... These are giant distances. We see a very large sea, but the local peoples saw communication routes. As if they were highways on the sea,” he says. “I really like the entire era of explorations. When Captain James Cook sailed here to understand the world, he was one of the first Westerners to reach many of these islands. And he discovered that all of them, even though we're talking about the largest expanse of water on the planet, shared the same culture. The language and way of life are similar, as if they were the Romance languages of here. That is to say, the local peoples navigated these waters,” he explains.

The first photo I have on my phone's roll from the trip to Georgia is of a khachapuri. The second, of a khinkali. Two names that will quickly integrate into your vocabulary if you visit this corner of the Caucasus; there can't be many restaurants whose menus don't offer the two great emblems of this small country's gastronomy. Georgian cuisine, which used to be considered the best in the Soviet Union, is one of the country's heritages and a key element of its identity. Always with the permission of wine, the true reason for Georgians' pride, who claim to be its inventors. Georgia is a gastronomic and wine jewel; a treasure (still quite preserved and untamed) for lovers of nature and mountaineering; a must for fans of Soviet architecture and urbex. The "beautiful homeland of Stalin", as American journalist Robert D. Kaplan called it in The Revenge of Geography, enjoys (or suffers) a key strategic position, where Europe and Asia meet; "where Russia ends and the Middle East begins", as Kaplan summarizes in the book, which is a good resource for imagining what this turbulent area of the world was like during the post-Soviet chaos. Georgia has a colossal natural border to the north: the majestic peaks of the Greater Caucasus, with Russia on the other side. To the west, the Black Sea; to the south, Turkey and Armenia, and to the east, Azerbaijan.

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At first glance, Casa Boratuna does not attract attention or compete with the landscape. It is not its intention, and for that very reason, for this discretion, it calls out. In the Vall de Llémena, in Gironès, the dwelling designed by architect Victor Bouman has a domestic and recognizable form: a compact volume, a gabled roof, and earthy finishes; it could pass for just another house in the area. It is a conscious decision. The surprise comes when you enter: this house, which is contained from the outside, opens generously towards the valley on the inside.

There are many movies I haven't seen. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy, until the lockdown I hadn't seen Dirty dancing (what a marvel) nor Pretty woman. I have wanted to take advantage of this series of articles to efficiently fill some of my cinematic gaps. In an era of massive audiovisual supply and absolute channel atomization, I cure my FOMO retrospectively. And after seeing for the first timeBen-hur, Blade runner,E.T.,A very legal redhead,Terminator,Dancing with Wolves and Alien (and alsoThe Odyssey of Nolan, bonus track of current events), I close this series with a classic of the proportions of Smiles and tears, a fresh movie from 1965:

At the beginning of August, during the royal family's stay in Mallorca, Infanta Sofia caused some surprise among the media for an apparently unusual gesture in the protocol of royal houses. The reason? She was wearing a Desigual dress that Queen Letizia had already worn in 2023 and that Princess Leonor had reused in 2025, during the respective Marivent receptions. In fact, Queen Letizia has repeated dresses on more than one occasion, and each time the fact has become news. But what does it say about us, as a society, that it seems so exceptional to us for a queen to repeat a dress?The reuse of clothing has been an inherent practice in fashion throughout pre-industrial history, when clothes were scarce, expensive, and often had to be passed down from parents to children. It was a practice that affected all social strata, including European courts. Royal families had record-keeping systems to document existing garments, specifying their characteristics, measurements, and decorative elements, as well as the repairs and modifications they had undergone, with the aim of facilitating their reuse within the same family. Everything indicates that clothing was conceived less as strictly individual property than as dynastic heritage capable of circulating among different members of the lineage. And when clothes ceased to be used, they could become diplomatic gifts or be passed on to members of the service to ensure alliances and loyalties. Likewise, fabrics were dismantled and reused in new garments, ornaments, furniture, or liturgical objects, and only when they had exhausted any possibility of use were they destined for paper manufacturing. The wardrobe was thus understood as a true reserve of material resources and political strategies. Therefore, what has changed between the old European courts and the current royal family for something that was completely normalized in the past to have become an exception today?

When she returns to Sitges, her hometown, Sara Campanales misses many things. “Lifelong businesses have disappeared, we have fewer neighbors than before,” she explains while having coffee in Barcelona. “I miss the sense of community, we’ve lost it,” she adds. Where she lives now, she has found that community. “I live very far away. In a small town called Cristóbal Colón in the department of Esmeraldas, in Ecuador,” she explains. Almost 10 years ago, destiny brought her to this jungle region on the Ecuadorian coast. She arrived there without much planning, now she lives there and is the godmother of a little girl.

Searching for the life of a spy is like chasing the trail of a ghost. África de las Heras, codename Patria, was a friend, a nanny, a caregiver, but also a stranger, a murderer, a spy, and a heroine. “She was everything at once,” confesses Argentine writer and columnist Laura Ramos, who has reconstructed the spy's life in the book Mi niñera de la KGB. De las Heras, hidden under the name María Luisa, was a supposed Spanish dressmaker who became the most decorated Soviet spy of the KGB, involved in the communist resistance against dictator Francisco Franco, the fight against German troops in Ukraine, the attempted assassination of Che Guevara, and the murder of Lenin's successor, Lev Trotsky. “Her job was precisely to leave no trace. But, paradoxically, the most important discoveries came through the back door, through the memories of the children she had looked after,” assures the writer, pointing to a search for the intangible, archival, and practically mythical memory of María Luisa.

1958, Genoa. A young German, Frederick Schultze Bookslow, is at the port waiting for a cargo ship to go far away, to India. He is twenty years old, has read Herman Hesse, and is eager to live and discover a different world. His partner doesn't want him to go, says she loves him, but then the ship takes a long time to arrive, she gets tired and returns to Germany. Frederick, on the other hand, waits and leaves, determined, on a long journey to Bombay.

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There are many movies I haven't seen. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy, until confinement I hadn't seen Dirty dancing (what a marvel) nor Pretty woman. I wanted to take advantage of this series of articles to effectively fill some of my cinematic gaps. In an era of massive audiovisual supply and absolute atomization of channels, I cure my FOMO in deferment. This week I saw Alien for the first time and these are my notes:

Norbert Schultze died in 2002 at the age of ninety-one in a discreet Bavarian town. Following the trend of other Germans, he too had chosen Mallorca to spend the last ten years of his life. In Portals (Calvià) he enjoyed a comfortable pension thanks to the substantial profits he reaped from the twenty patriotic songs he had composed for Nazism, among them Lili Marleen, one of the most listened-to melodies in the history of the 20th century. In his golden Balearic retirement, he met Arpad Bondy, a musician and filmmaker who in 1993 decided to make him an interview-style documentary titled You kissed the devil's ass. The whole affair would be thoroughly documented in 2008 by Rosa Sala Rose in the book Lili Marleen: Song of love and death.

Sergi Unanue (Banyoles, 1993) couldn't complain about the life he had. He worked as a journalist at Betevé, had friends, lived in an apartment in Barcelona... but something wasn't quite right. "I had always wanted to tell stories and that's why I had studied journalism. As a young man, I wanted to do radio and I ended up in television. I had a good time. In the news section, every day is different. I was one step away from having job and financial stability, but I dreamed of taking a big trip. I had to decide whether to leave the stable life I was building and take the big leap. And I did it without a return ticket." It was the year 2018 and an adventure was beginning that would lead him to walk across the whole of Nepal.

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This is a story about birdwatching and it begins, as usual, before dawn. The objective is none other than to observe the resplendent quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno), one of the most beautiful birds on the planet and the most famous of the trogons, a family of birds that inhabits both the equatorial forests of the New World and those of the Old World. To find it, we have traveled to a small village surrounded by cloud forest and named San Gerardo de Dota, in the highlands of Costa Rica.

Terraced houses, the most traditional ones, the ones we find in most towns and old city neighborhoods, are usually positioned in the same way. They tend to have a narrow facade facing the street, a succession of rooms, and at the end, a patio or small garden. Casa 1902, designed by the Ofici: arquitectura studio, in Badalona, begins where others end. Here, before reaching the front door, a patio has been created that must be crossed.

This summer I wanted to fill my cinematic gaps (Ben Hur; E.T., the extraterrestrial; Terminator; Legally Blonde…) to cure my deferred FOMO. But recently I found myself obliged to go to a cinema to see a film with no interesting female characters in which a tortured man struggles to return home; that is to say, Nolan's latest. Because cinematic FOMO is best tackled when it's fresh and recent and not buried by thirty-four fresher and more recent FOMOs. Until now I had been strangely connected with ancient Greek people who knew nothing of the Odyssey and constantly heard about it.

The week ahead, with Jordi Garrigós

Some of the things we hope not to miss in the next seven days

I will listen to Charli XCX's new album. Music, fashion, film is the eighth album by the British pop star and a new, more rock-oriented turn in her prolific career. After dominating with the Brat summer, Charli Aitchison abandons green and embraces black and white to remain almost the only singer of her generation who plays with the mainstream while navigating the margins and experimentation. A singer who is living her particular artistic zenith, having more fun than anyone.

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«Kini» is no longer just the end of bikini: has become almost a suffix. Over the past few decades, it has been combined with all sorts of words to designate new ways of dressing – or undressing – the body on the beach. From the foundational bikini to monokini, the trikini, the tankini, the microkini, the burkini, the seekini or the most recent skirtkini. But if there was a turn that few of us saw coming it was the facekini: a piece that, instead of revealing more skin, completely covers our face to enter the sea. Before, however, that the brother-in-law reflex is activated and someone says that "the fashion world has once again invented another stupidity," it is worth giving it the benefit of the doubt. Because this disconcerting piece, in addition to the face, hides a story much less frivolous than it seems and, above all, offers an opportunity to question the way we look at clothes when they come from other cultures.

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