Paid holidays were, less than a century ago, a gain for the working class, with France as the first country to generalize them in 1936: 15 days for everyone. Since then, and especially after the Second World War, with the consolidation of the European welfare state, much progress has been made in holiday welfare. Only in this way can it be understood that tourism has become a global industry, with Catalonia-Barcelona as a privileged destination. But it is an industry of little added value which, paradoxically, is leaving people not without holidays, but without the possibility of enjoying them at the level of years past. More and more Catalans cannot afford long stays away from home.

After the most complicated school year in Catalan classrooms, with a final month marked by an unprecedented series of strikes, when practically the entire educational community is already on vacation, a new bucket of cold water arrives. This time on one of the international evaluation pillars. The latest PISA tests taken in Catalonia were a fiasco. It is a real disaster: the selection of students who took them was done incorrectly. In the rest of Spain, it was done correctly.

Alongside fires and heatwaves, this is also proving to be the summer of transport construction incidents: in a short time, we've had two sinkholes and an explosion. If winter was marked by the tragic accidents in Gelida and Adamuz, now, fortunately so far without loss of human life, we are suffering surprising ground collapses in major public works. What is happening to us?

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, is running a marathon to dynamite all the international rules that have been built over the years and, with his direct action, or with his alliances, to work towards a world in which, effectively, only the law of the strongest or, also, the law of the richest prevails. This is the case of the agreement he has signed with Saudi Arabia to allow the great Gulf power to enrich uranium in its own territory for nuclear fuel. In principle, it would not have military purposes, but, unlike other previous agreements with third countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, it is not foreseen, according to what has transpired so far, that there will be strict security clauses or the requirement of full access for inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. It simply mentions "high standards of nuclear safety" and "nuclear non-proliferation." Although it is an agreement that has been negotiated for many years, it was initially linked to Saudi Arabia's commitment to recognize the State of Israel - which was cut short after Hamas's attacks on October 7 - and had more limits than are now foreseen to be imposed.

The Ministry of Industry presented this Tuesday a subsidy program to encourage energy efficiency in industrial sectors (600 million euros in aid) and promote electric cars (400 million euros in aid, via the Autoplus call). The objective is for reindustrialization to go hand in hand with energy transition. According to data from the last month, the sale of electrified vehicles in Spain accounted for 23% of the total. All subsidies, for both cars and companies, will be retroactive to January 1st. And to certify the aid for the decarbonization of industry, actions from the last three years can be taken into account. Measures like these are being carried out by all European states. No one wants to be left behind.

When the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the Koldo case, at the end of June, in which it sentenced former minister and former organization secretary of the PSOE José Luis Ábalos and his advisor Koldo García to heavy prison sentences but benefited the main beneficiary of the mask fraud, Víctor de Aldama, alarm bells already began to ring. The suspension of the four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for the corrupter, replaced by community service, was justified by the businessman's cooperation in uncovering the fraud, which, according to the court, had been crucial in proving the accusations. However, this reward for the corrupter in exchange for denouncing his partners was controversial, firstly because not everyone saw it as justified within the same legal framework, and secondly because it was interpreted as a green light for others to follow the same path. This is precisely what seems to be starting to happen.

It is inevitable to put your hands on your head or even laugh at some of the comments and occurrences of the President of the United States, Donald Trump. How can he say this or that? How can they vote for him? Why is there no reaction? The truth, however, is that between one outburst and another, his ultraconservative agenda is advancing everywhere, and no one, deep down, dares to contradict him. He has managed to impose his program beyond his country, where he clearly represents a considerable sector of American society, which not only laughs at his jokes but wholeheartedly shares his ideology and does everything it can to apply it, with the relentless help of the entire state apparatus.

Football, the king of sports and a global business, has the professional sporting aspect and the political identity aspect. It moves a lot of money, large masses of fans, and many illusions. The passion for a club has a strong component of emotional adhesion. Support for a national team also does, with the added political layer. Football awakens passions and sublimes wars: better a competition between young people on the field than a life-or-death clash between soldiers. Hopefully, Ukraine and Russia - or Israel and Palestine - would compete in stadiums with a ball instead of doing so from the trenches with deadly weapons.

Catalonia concentrates 17% of the State's population and contributes 19% of the Spanish GDP. It would make sense for these indicators to be valued when making state investments that facilitate the population's well-being, for justice, and the growth of its economy, for the benefit of the whole. On the other hand, year after year, and we've had many, too many, what is demonstrated is a chronic deficit of investments that in no way corresponds to the demographic and economic weight of the country. According to reports that the Treasury has sent to political parties and Congress, the central government spent only 8.6% of all the investment it executed during the year 2025 in the autonomous communities in Catalonia. 8.6%. Less than half of what would correspond.

The amnesty law for those charged in the independence process came into force in June 2024. More than two years have passed and the blockade continues. How much longer will it take to reach all those involved?

Two out of every three Catalan SMEs have had problems filling vacancies with the candidates they would have liked because these candidates withdrew when they saw they would have trouble finding an affordable place to live. In fact, half of the country's small and medium-sized enterprises admit that they have abandoned growth projects, either by expanding their workforce or by opening new centers, due to the same issue. Because of the residential strain that workers suffered or, even, because the company itself could not find a more suitable place to make the growth leap due to the increase in prices. The study presented this Wednesday by the SME Observatory of the Catalan employers' association of small and medium-sized enterprises, Pimec, is a new demonstration of the extent to which the housing crisis is harming not only citizens, especially young people and those with more precarious salaries, but it is also a general problem that clearly and worryingly hinders the entire country's economy and prevents it from advancing at the desired pace.

An investigation by the Guardia Civil, Europol and the French Gendarmerie has uncovered a network of illegal waste trafficking that, originating from France, was being dumped in various locations in Catalonia. For now, the pointed-out sites are Sant Esteve Sesrovires (Baix Llobregat), Pujalt (Anoia), Rubí (Vallès Occidental) and Riba-roja d'Ebre (Ribera d'Ebre).

No, it is not a minor issue. A former Spanish president like Mr. Mariano Rajoy cannot make a racist comment in good faith and then hide his head in the sand: "It's a minor issue," he let slip.. Absolutely not. A racist comment is not a minimizable issue. The very act of trying to ignore it shows a lack of sensitivity to the issue. In reality, Rajoy has given vent – consciously or unconsciously – to a banal racism that is still very present in Spanish society today. You only have to go to football stadiums to hear the insults many players receive.

We are on fire again. The wildfire summer has started very early, driven by extreme heatwaves that have added to an abundant forest mass, with great fire potential, due to the rainy spring and winter that preceded us. In Almeria, the fires have been tragic, with a very sad human cost. Social alarm is, therefore, entirely justified.

Science has not treated men and women equally. Often, with the excuse that women's hormonal cycle could distort results, clinical trials have been conducted only on men for convenience and to erroneously assume that the bodies' response was the same in both men and women. The result is that women are generally underdiagnosed and that on many occasions they receive treatment later – if they receive it –, have less access to care, and suffer more pain because their symptoms are not taken into account, because they do not fit with what men are said to feel. As Gemma Parramon, head of liaison psychiatry at Vall d'Hebron Hospital and author of the book Será por las hormonas,there are increasingly more studies that demonstrate, in different contexts, that women wait longer on public healthcare waiting lists or that there are more diagnostic delays even in diseases where it is fundamental to detect the condition in time.

When it comes to Donald Trump, it is very difficult to discern what is true and what is pure bluster in his words, but the reality is that it is becoming increasingly evident that Europe must go it alone in the field of security. The latest NATO summit, held in Ankara, has been the clearest example that these United States are not a reliable ally. Trump has once again staged his particular show, in which he has insulted political leaders like Giorgia Meloni, has threatened countries like Spain, has insisted that he wants to keep Greenland, and has made it clear that, if it were up to him, he would dismantle the Atlantic Alliance because he sees no use for it. His press conferences are a collection of absurdities that serve both to provide sensationalist headlines and to cause confusions that quickly go viral on social networks, such as referring to Iran as the Islamic Republic of Japan.

Step by step, whether forced by pacts with Vox or on its own initiative, the PP is adopting the postulates of the far-right in different areas, such as immigration, gender violence, or, now, the anti-abortion agenda. Alberto Núñez Feijóo announced this Monday that when he reaches Moncloa he will promote a law for the unborn so that women can receive aid from the very moment of conception, when they confirm their pregnancy. It is a supposed law that is presented as social and in defense of the family, but which in reality seeks to establish an ideological principle that conditions women's rights, which is that, as Isabel Díaz Ayuso herself said, "the unborn is a person from the first minute".

Sometimes a single image is capable of condensing the spirit of an era. In this case, the photograph by Cheney Orr, from the Reuters agency, showing a young black girl surrounded by white supremacists with their faces covered in a subway car, perfectly captures what it means to belong to a minority in the midst of Trumpism. Furthermore, the fact that the image was captured during the celebrations in Washington of the 250th anniversary of the United States' independence gives it even more value, because it shows that, a quarter of a millennium later, what was once the world's most advanced democratic experiment has still not resolved what has always been its pending subject: the real equality of all human beings, regardless of their race, gender, or religion.

We have barely started July and Catalonia has already experienced two intense heat episodes (the second will last until Wednesday), which has turned the forest mass into a powder keg. In this context, fires like the one in La Bisbal d'Empordà, which threatens the entire protected area of Les Gavarres and has forced several towns in Empordà to be confined, are, unfortunately, part of a new normal that must be faced. Whether the origin was work with an angle grinder or any other human activity is not the important thing, as accidents can always happen, but rather how we can manage the territory in times of climate change to prevent these new generation fires from ravaging natural landscapes and endangering human lives.

The shooting death of a 15-year-old minor in the Pegaso park in the Sant Andreu district of Barcelona has caused understandable social alarm for several reasons. The main one is the victim's age, practically a child, but the next is that the weapon used was a pistol. This is a particularly worrying fact because the Mossos have already detected an increase in the use of firearms related to organized or disorganized crime, and they consider it an absolute priority right now. Furthermore, the murder did not occur within the framework of a fight between groups of young people, nor was it an isolated incident, but rather the Mossos are working with the hypothesis that the homicide or homicides expressly went to look for the victim and shot them with a firearm with the intention of killing.