The United Nations was created by the San Francisco Charter in 1945 with the goal that the international community would have a forum to discuss global security issues without having to resort to armed conflict. The idea was not to repeat the mistakes of the interwar League of Nations and to have a truly representative body where all countries, however small, could have a voice and a vote to preserve the most precious good, peace. Surely, the creation of the Security Council with five permanent members, and therefore with veto power, already perverted the initial objective and has turned the UN into an inoperative entity, but what had never been seen before is the spectacle offered on Tuesday by Donald Trump threatening Iran with annihilation from the speakers' rostrum. This Wednesday, the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, appeared to show defiance and warn that "they have tested the strength and firmness of Iran, and they have learned that they cannot make Iran surrender".

Some day the history of how the Spanish judiciary conspired to prevent the application of a law democratically approved by the Congress of Deputies, as was the amnesty for those convicted and accused for the 'Procés', will have to be reconstructed, but luckily more than three years after its entry into force, light is beginning to be seen at the end of the tunnel. This Tuesday, September 22, the majority in the Constitutional Court has materialized to remove the last obstacle placed by the Supreme Court, which is to consider that the crime of embezzlement is not eligible for amnesty. The plenary session of the TC has rejected the proposal of the conservative magistrate José María Macías where this thesis was maintained and Jordi Turull's appeal against the decision not to apply the amnesty to him was dismissed. Now Macías will have to draft another proposal in the opposite direction.

Angela Merkel held the German chancellery between 2005 and 2021, 16 years during which she exercised undisputed leadership in her country that also extended to Europe. Her formula combined economic austerity with gestures of great moral stature, such as the opening of borders to Syrian refugees during the 2015 crisis. Managing her legacy, however, is proving especially complicated for Germany, with a stagnant economy and a rise of the extreme right that was unthinkable just a few years ago.

Americans are feeling the price of Donald Trump's war in Iran in their pockets. Last Friday, the average price of diesel in the United States was near its all-time high of $6.43 per gallon, according to GasBuddy, and the president's own voters are fearlessly expressing their discontent on social media. It is a situation that worries Republicans because it adds to the crisis also caused by the trade war. Their economic situation, however, is not nearly as serious as that of other countries, from Guatemala to Indonesia, where there have been demonstrations and protests over the rise and shortage of fuel due to the Gulf crisis. In Spain, of course, were it not for state aid, the unrest would also be deeper, and even so, a hot autumn is already expected, because farmers and transporters are demanding more aid, as what they have is not enough to maintain their activity.

If you have plastic food containers, do not put them in the microwave and, in general, try to prevent them from heating up. Some, the majority, are endocrine disruptors. That is to say, despite being petroleum-derived products, they simulate hormonal functioning that alters health in very diverse ways. Also endocrine disruptors are the price labels placed on trays of fresh or cooked supermarket products. Experts advise that we do not touch them and that we quickly avoid their contact with food. The plastic that wraps these trays can also be toxic. And shampoo, sunscreen, or synthetic clothing that repels water. Scientists have identified a thousand toxic elements that can function as endocrine disruptors, and which in some cases penetrate the human body and can stay there for even years. It is not something immediate. There is no clear cause-effect relationship, and other factors contribute to it, but it is becoming clearer, after hundreds of scientific studies, that constant exposure to this cocktail of toxins ends up having consequences. It has been linked, for example, to early puberty, obesity, diabetes, and infertility problems. And there are starting to be indications that link them to some types of hormonal cancer, such as prostate or breast cancer. They are especially dangerous for pregnant women, children, and adolescents.

Is it possible to put an end to homelessness? It was possible a few decades ago, in pre-Olympic Barcelona. Those were years of plenty and civic optimism. It was successfully reduced to its absolute minimum. But things have changed a lot. Now, without a doubt, we are in a different moment.

Hopefully, the history books of the future will record the date of this Thursday, September 17, 2026, as the day the foundation stone was laid for the alliance between the European Union and Canada. The excellent reception of the speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney before the European Parliament invites optimism, as does the angry reaction of Donald Trump, who has once again threatened trade reprisals. The fact is that Trump's expansionist policy, which has stated that he wants to incorporate Canada and Greenland into the United States, mixed with his neighborhood bully style and catastrophic decisions for the global economy like the war in Iran, is pushing all of Washington's former partners to seek alternative alliances.

Usually, toughening the Penal Code is an easy and demagogic solution to combat crime, but sometimes reality forces adjustments that are absolutely necessary if one wants to ensure safety in public spaces. This is the case with the proposal that, as learned by ARA, the Generalitat has submitted to the Spanish government, specifically to the Moncloa and also to the Ministry of Justice, to double and in some cases even triple the penalties for carrying prohibited weapons or weapons without a permit (currently the penalties range from one to three years in prison). It is also proposed to create a new criminal offense to punish the mere display of these weapons in public spaces – which is currently not punished – which has clearly intimidating effects.

Fatalism is a terrible recipe that blocks action. Without falling into naive optimism, there is only one way to face the future: rolling up one's sleeves. Confronting the complicated moment we are living in head-on, using the rearview mirror to learn from the mistakes of the past, but with a long-term view, looking forward. What kind of Catalonia do we want to leave to the next generations? What country do we imagine for 2050? The honest answer to this question is what, despite all the setbacks, continues to mobilize individual and collective energies with surprising strength and creativity. There are many who are doing good work. Giving them a voice and visibility is what we do at ARA on this National Day.

The disastrous results of the PISA tests in the Spanish state, which are perfectly extrapolable to Catalonia despite not having representative data due to the blunder of student exclusions, have set off all the alarms and place us at a turning point. Basically, because in reality they were perfectly expected and for some time there have been symptoms that the current educational system is failing and not responding to the complexities of today's society. Given this situation, what is needed is to demand from the administrations, the parties, the educational community, and society in general an authentic national pact that serves to reach a consensus on a shared strategy that goes beyond electoral cycles. Education must stop being a political weapon.

Russia is increasing pressure on Eastern European countries with a mix of hybrid warfare and airspace violations as part of its military strategy to weaken aid from NATO and EU partners to Ukraine. The reality is that, almost five years after the invasion, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, knows that his only chance of winning the war is to cut off this aid. How? By deepening European divisions, intimidating the population of border countries, and, above all, placing his far-right pawns at the head of as many European countries as possible. To achieve all these objectives, he is deploying a whole series of actions of which we have had quite a few examples in recent days.

All activities in life are subject to norms or rules. It is one of the characteristics of civilized societies. It is evident that advances, as happened back in the day with the internet, begin by breaking some ways of doing or working, but over time they become normalized, although there are always those who find a way to go down the path of illegality or know how to take advantage of the lack of rules. We must be careful to reduce this aspect as much as possible.

Catalan prisons are one step away from reaching their maximum capacity. According to data from the Department of Justice, as of August 31st there were 9,597 prisoners for a total of 10,016 places, meaning prisons are at 95% of their capacity. This is the case because in the last five years there has been a notable increase in inmates: 1,800 more. Beware, however, of making simplistic interpretations and relating this increase to immigration, because the peak of inmates in Catalan prisons was reached in 2009, with 10,525, and until 2013 it remained above 10,000.

The Moroccan regime sells itself as a success story, a country that has become a regional power, with a privileged dialogue with the EU, the United States, and Israel, and capable of organizing major sporting events such as the 2030 World Cup, together with Spain, for which it is building what will be the largest stadium in the world, with 115,000 seats. Seen from the outside, in recent years Morocco has made a great leap in infrastructure, with the high-speed train between Tangier and Casablanca as its spearhead, and has experienced strong economic growth thanks to foreign investment in strategic sectors such as green hydrogen or fertilizers (thanks to the phosphates of the Western Sahara). But this prosperity is not reaching the population. Salaries are low and jobs are precarious, and in no way is the country capable of absorbing the workforce represented by the youth, as World Bank reports state. This is even affecting the fertility rate, which has dropped to 1.97 children per woman (in the 60s it was 7.2, and in the 90s 3.3), which, even so, is practically double that of Spain (1.1).

The 2026 Diada leaves two elements on the table. The first is that, contrary to forecasts, there has been an upturn in participation in the independence movement's mobilizations, which is good news for a movement that has been living in a state of collective depression for years. The second is that all the actors of Catalanism, with a special mention for Òmnium and its current president, Xavier Antich, focused their messages in the same direction: the necessary fight against the far-right represented by Aliança Catalana.

The declassification and publication of reports from intelligence services and security forces regarding the Ceuta crisis has not improved the position of the Spanish government, quite the contrary. The documents show that the CNI issued warnings, both to Moroccan and Spanish authorities, that a massive call was taking place on social media to enter Ceuta, taking advantage of the Throne Day holiday. Specifically, the CNI alerted that there were "especially active" profiles on WhatsApp and Facebook calling for a massive entry, with a potential reach of 180,000 people.

The National Court judge María Tardón has opened a criminal case to investigate the massive entry of immigrants into Ceuta on July 30 as a "serious attack on the territorial integrity of Spain". Among the crimes that the judge wants to investigate are those that "compromise the peace or independence of the State", which are those from 589 to 597. "It is deduced that the crime has the intent of attacking the State", adds the judge, who recalls that Pedro Sánchez presented the events as a "violation of the territorial integrity of Spain". And she also recalls that a "massive migratory flow" is "one of the characteristic methods of hybrid warfare". Thus, since this Monday there has been a Spanish court –and not just any court– investigating whether Morocco launched a hybrid warfare operation against Spain last July 30.

The polls were already warning about it, and yesterday the results confirmed it resoundingly. The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has swept the elections in Saxony-Anhalt and could end up governing if it finally achieves an absolute majority in seats – at the last minute it was at 44.6% with 95% of the vote counted – or if its potential partner, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party, which for the moment exceeds the 5% threshold of votes that allows for representation in the regional Parliament, supports it or abstains in the vote. Be that as it may, what is clear is that it was voted for by an overwhelming majority of citizens of this federal state, one of the 16 into which Germany is divided and which has a population that just barely exceeds two million people. In fact, the first thing that has been surprising today is the spectacular increase in turnout, which exceeds 70%, more than ten points higher than that which occurred in the previous elections of 2021.

Politics is the art of the possible, and we must demand that our public representatives be capable both of maximizing political conjunctures and of making a realistic reading of the correlation of forces. In this sense, it can be debated whether the new financing system that the PSOE has put on the table, and which would mean an injection of 4.7 billion extra for the coffers of the Generalitat, is sufficient or not. But taking into account historical experience (it has been 17 years since any new model was proposed), and making a realistic reading of the political moment, with the PP and Vox at the gates of the Moncloa, there is no choice but to conclude that it would be a great irresponsibility to renounce this money.

The relationship with Morocco has always been strategic for any Spanish government and, despite occasional incidents such as the dispute over the islet of Perejil in 2002, governments of different political stripes have tried to maintain good neighborly relations. In recent years, however, a series of phenomena have taken place that have increased Morocco's power and influence over Spain and also over the EU. Its role as a guardian of the southern European border, and the exponential increase in migratory flows, gives it great bargaining (and extortion) power, and its recent rapprochement with the United States and Israel has made it an increasingly fearsome actor. This is the context of the Ceuta migration crisis and also what explains what happened this Thursday in the Congress of Deputies, where Pedro Sánchez has been left alone defending that Rabat had no role in the massive entry of immigrants.