In the end, there were no riots or incidents in Barcelona on Saturday afternoon. But that doesn't mean nothing happened. The deployment of the Mossos and the Guàrdia Urbana was very visible, and it had been announced so far in advance that it surely deterred potential rioters. The identification of young people was constant and numerous. Most shops in the Gran Via - Passeig de Gràcia area were either closed or had their windows protected with wooden panels, and all of them without exception had security guards at the door. It was a strange afternoon, with people dressed for Halloween oblivious to everything, people in Barça shirts going to the Camp Nou, tourists, and many fewer people than a typical Saturday afternoon.

At the time of the morning that I am speaking to you, Minister Óscar Puente has not yet appeared, who has called a press conference in Urda. The still-minister Puente, we should say, because he should have already resigned. To demand his resignation, the three fatal accidents this year, with a total toll of 116 deaths, would be enough. But today it is even more evident what we perceived on the first day, at Puente's first press conference: the desire to shirk any blame and point the finger at the control center operator. It was not enough for him to point it out on the first day, but yesterday he leaked the audio of the conversations between the control center and the drivers of the trains that collided, in an attempt to reinforce the idea that it was all due to human error. If a single person can cause a tragedy like this, it is because everything is poorly set up. If Puente's railway management was superb, the informative management of the accident has been indecent. Sánchez must know what he is doing, but this third tragedy (Adamuz, Gelida, Urda), if they insist on saying that it is a worker's fault, will sweep them away electorally.

After 9 years of exile, deputy Lluís Puig was able to return yesterday to sit in his seat at the Parliament. His emotion contrasted with the coldness with which he was received by the socialist group, at the head of which President Illa was not present, perhaps because it is one thing to have converted to the faith of the amnesty when his friend Pedro Sánchez has needed Junts to be invested as president and another to appear alongside someone who has not been to prison and who for nine years has been characterized as a “fugitive” (in reality, not a fugitive at all, because the exiles have always been, from the first day, at the disposal of the Belgian justice system (or German or Italian in the case of Puigdemont).

The other day Feijóo announced that he would build a million apartments thanks to the fact that, with a government of his, there would be “less bureaucracy”, but instead of less bureaucracy, he said “less democracy”. He often does not know how to interpret what he is reading. The other day he said that he would only address the hardworking people and not the freeloaders, and when saying “freeloaders” (“scammers”) he did this. These slips make him meme fodder, and deepen the evidence that the personality of the favorite candidate in the polls to preside over Spain does not measure up, but not because he is often wrong, but because he is a politician from a past era.

Today marks 86 years since President Lluís Companys was executed by the Spanish army at Montjuïc Castle, in Barcelona.