Coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan, after the hasty withdrawal of international forces after twenty years, ARA journalist Mònica Bernabé has returned to a country she knows very well to explain firsthand and from within what the situation is like. The result is a series of reports that offer a snapshot of the Afghan reality, from the current construction boom – with funding from the Gulf and China – to the discrimination suffered by women and the general climate of repression that prevails there.

This Friday will see the peak of the umpteenth heatwave of the summer, with suffocating temperatures that unfortunately we will have to get used to, as they are on their way to becoming a new normal. Tropical nights – above 25 degrees –, which were once exceptional, are now common in many Mediterranean cities, and are beginning to be felt strongly in Northern Europe, where until now they were unimaginable. In this context, the data contained in the Atlas of heat vulnerability are particularly interesting, a study that calculates the needs of the main Spanish cities in a scenario of rising temperatures. The study identifies variables such as the quality of the housing stock, per capita income, or urban planning and vegetation to mark the difference between cities that are better prepared to cope with heatwaves and others that are more exposed to their risks.

These days, much has been remembered about the total solar eclipse that could be seen in Catalonia in 1905 and which already generated great social expectation; the one in 1706, coinciding with the first Bourbon siege of Barcelona, and even the one in 1448, which was immortalized in the note of an anonymous scribe in the Generalitat's registry with a drawing that is today the corporate image of the "Dietaris". For this reason, although it may seem a worn-out phrase, the historical appellation fits perfectly with the total eclipse that could be seen this August 12, 2026, in southern Catalonia, northern Valencian Country, the Balearic Islands, Aragon, and the northwest of the Peninsula. And, indeed, seeing it live, one can perfectly understand the fascination it provoked in our ancestors.

The magnitude 7.4 earthquake that has devastated western Colombia is not only a humanitarian catastrophe, but also arrives in the worst possible political context: with a new government that has just taken office after a very close election that has left the country deeply divided, and where not even a peaceful transfer of power has been possible. Indeed, the new Colombian president, the right-wing populist Abelardo de la Espriella, suspended contact with the outgoing administration of the leftist Gustavo Petro, and now finds that, just three days after taking office, the vast majority of administration officials are still from the previous government.

The joint letter signed by the Prime Ministers of Italy and Denmark, Giorgia Meloni and Mette Frederiksen, in favor of creating deportation centers for immigrants in third countries is the latest episode of how European division and internal interests are eroding the European Union and turning migration policy into a political battleground between different European governments. Aside from the fact that it is deeply striking that the social democrat Frederiksen adopts the entire discourse of the extreme right on migration, from linking it to crime and sexual assault to the need to protect Christian culture, it is evident that this is a skillful move by Meloni in her confrontation with the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, following the Ceuta crisis and the decision by Rome – and later Madrid – to impose border controls on their respective citizens.

The temperature of the sea water keeps rising. Today we are giving record data for ocean surface temperature this July. The air is also heating up. And the drought is wreaking havoc in Europe, with the great rivers – Rhine, Danube, Seine, Po – at minimum flow, meadows the color of straw, and dry land and forests. We are living through an exceptionally hot and dry summer. The large fires, like the one in Bordeaux and those in the Iberian Peninsula, are the result of this set of factors that have come to stay. In the metropolises, where most of us live, life is becoming increasingly unbreathable and distressing.

What is happening in Ceuta is, right now, a humanitarian drama. What is happening in Europe, following Ceuta, is an ideological battle between those who see immigration as "an invading danger" and those who want to manage it without naive good intentions, but taking into account the basic human values that, at least on paper, form the European ideal, and the economic reality, with relevant sectors demanding labor (by the way, what has happened to origin-based recruitment?).

Catalan society is engaged in a battle of uncertain outcome against the housing shortage. Access to decent housing is one of the most acute social pain points. Owning property or not is, today, the element that most marks the difference in social status. And in life's peace of mind.

The leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, has proposed a major political, social, and technical pact for a team of experts to lead the Department of Education for a decade, thus setting aside the partisan struggle and the professional bad blood in which the system has become mired. In the middle of August, the proposal has all the makings of passing without a ripple. The school year will probably start again in September with strikes. And the results of the botched PISA test will be made public. In other words, we will remain stuck in educational defeatism, which is the sure path to failure as a country. Does anyone else have any ideas to break the vicious cycle and enter a virtuous one?

First, the data: 8,233,788. These are the inhabitants of Catalonia as of this Thursday. Up to 72,150 more people than a year ago and 32,000 more than six months ago. We continue to grow due to the arrival of people from abroad. If it were for the birth rate of the natives, we would lose population. Right now there are 2.15 million citizens born outside the State, 26.2% of the total. That is, one in four inhabitants.

It is not the first time we have warned about the critical situation in Catalonia with drugs. The danger signs persist. And they are diverse. Is the population sufficiently aware? Are the administrations sufficiently aware?

The war in Ukraine will reach four and a half years this August since its beginning, with the Russian invasion of February 2022. There are no signs of de-escalation or negotiation between Kyiv and Moscow. Both armies are increasingly targeting civilian objectives. At this point, it has become a war of attrition both at the front and in the rear: military, psychological, political, and economic attrition. Neither side has enough strength to defeat the enemy. One side and the other are seeking a position of advantage, not for victory, but to sit at the future negotiation table from a position of strength.

In the new European migratory crisis due to the serious and dramatic events in Ceuta, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has finally come to the rescue of Pedro Sánchez, who, under the leadership of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, the far-right and right-wing Europe has sought to position as a danger to the common border-closing migratory policy and, therefore, to the security of the Schengen area. The images and figures of arrivals on the first day impacted public opinion and continental chanceries, and gave rise to positioning the Spanish government in a supposed position of tolerance with illegal immigration, adding to the critical package the recent regularization, to which a supposed "pull effect" was quickly attributed. This Monday, the Spanish PP was still insisting on it.

The 241 million followers he has on his X network have seen Elon Musk compare the massive influx of immigrants, mostly Moroccans, into Ceuta with the zombies from World War Z. Italy has announced border migration controls that will almost certainly affect Moroccans above all, including those born in Europe or those with papers, which will deepen the stigma against a population that has always suffered institutional racism in all EU countries. And most importantly: the death toll attempting to cross the border, many of them minors, climbs every day, and it is assumed that it will far exceed a hundred people, making it the most serious tragedy of its kind in recent times. Some young people have preferred to try everything and risk dying rather than stay in their country. What does this say about Morocco?

More and more people say they avoid the news, and the result is a less informed society and, therefore, a weaker democracy. In countries where journalism is declining, authoritarian populism is gaining ground. But why is the number of citizens choosing to live outside journalistic current affairs growing, who choose not to know, not to ask questions or seek answers, with all that this entails? Many justify it this way: because they believe they are already informed through social networks. Because bad news distresses them. Because it is increasingly difficult for them to distinguish between what is true and what is false. Because they feel overwhelmed: too much impact and too little reliability.

The European far-right, including the Spanish one, is being very quick and forceful in taking advantage of the propagandistic and dramatic gesture of Moroccan migratory pressure on Spain in Ceuta to distance itself from Pedro Sánchez's government, the government of regularization. It doesn't matter that what Meloni, Abascal, and co. call an "invasion" will ultimately have been a one-day episode: the massive arrival has been followed by a massive return. And it doesn't matter that more than fifty young people have died at sea: the far-right leaders have not spoken of this humanitarian drama. What Italy and Finland are concerned with is reinforcing the idea of the need to fortify Europe, an idea that does not fit with the demand for labor and which follows the xenophobic discourse of America first that the United States under Trump has also embraced.

A week has passed since Pedro Sánchez traveled to Algeria to try to make peace and re-establish political and economic relations that would ensure, above all, gas purchases. Relations had broken down after Spain accepted Morocco's plan for the Sahara, which disregarded the claim for self-determination and settled for simple autonomy. And this Spanish capitulation, unforgivable to the Algerians, came a few years after, in 2021, Spain's reception of Brahim Ghali, head of the Polisario Front, caused a crisis with Morocco that ended with the also illegal entry of 8,000 Moroccans through the Ceuta border. It is these antecedents that make us suspect that behind what is happening these days in Ceuta there is something more than the will of some young people to force their entry into Europe. Although it is difficult to believe that this could happen without, at least, the passivity of the Moroccan side, officially relations between Spain and Morocco are currently good and cooperation is maintained.

Football is the king of sports: the one that moves the most masses –digital and in-person– and the most passions. Sporting and national passions. The one that generates the most business, with fabulous television rights. The one that involves the most politics. We saw this in this World Cup, with the obscene interference of the American president Donald Trump, who has counted on the undisguised complicity of Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, a position he has held for a decade and in which he wishes to perpetuate himself.

Cronyism and nepotism, digital partisanship (appointments by decree by the political party apparatus once they access government) or the nineteenth-century "vuelva usted mañana", which made journalist Mariano José de Larra famous, along with the scourges of corruption and opacity, are commonplaces entrenched in the Spanish and Catalan administrations and in popular culture. How is it possible that, after fifty years of democracy, we still have not managed to have an efficient and meritocratic administration, at the service of citizens and not of the political whims of rulers?

Tourists are fleeing Bordeaux and its inhabitants have been breathing in the smoke from fires burning just 15 kilometers from their urban conurbation for days. For now, it has already been declared the largest that France has suffered in the last fifty years and yesterday the news was that a senior fire official stated on television that it could take "weeks or months" to be declared extinguished. More than 200,000 people have had to be evacuated from various towns in Gironde, but for now there are no plans to evacuate Bordeaux. However, those who can are leaving.