The unity of the left-wing parties to the left of the PSOE will not happen. 

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

The day has begun with a protest by farmers, who as I speak to you are heading down towards Barcelona in columns from various points in the country with the idea of meeting at the capital at noon, specifically in Plaça Sant Jaume. It is not an isolated protest, but the continuation of the farmers' revolt, now justified by the rise in diesel prices, which is eating into their margins. But they are not only protesting about the price of fuel or phytosanitary products or fertilizers. They are complaining, as they have been for decades, about bureaucratic procedures, which can outlast different governments without anything changing. A farmer said this morning on TV3 that at the moment “profitability is zero, it is impossible to live off it”. At today's protest, a variation of “Either farming or death” was seen, which is “Either farming or fire”, in the sense that the country will burn due to fires if no one can stay to live off the land and look after the landscape. Certainly, if the farmers fall, everything falls. And then, the question: who has the capacity to satisfy their demands? If we would have enough with sovereignty, imagine with autonomy.

Two Catalans, Ada Colau and Gabriel Rufián, come to the rescue of the Spanish left. 

What is happening with Gabriel Rufián is what was bound to happen to Esquerra sooner or later. For years now, the speeches of Esquerra's leader in Madrid have sounded more like Podemos or Sumar than Esquerra. He often ignores the possibility of speaking in Catalan. He has ended up designating himself as the critical conscience of the Spanish left. His level of popularity in Spain among voters in this segment is enormous; Rufián knows how to polarize and, living up to his phrase “Less libraries and more TikTok,” his ability to gain audiences on social media is great. He has declared himself willing to head a plurinational list of all the parties to the left of the PSOE. And his party has told him no. At the time of writing this analysis, Rufián has still not decided to be the head of Esquerra's list under the conditions that the party wants.

Allow me to start the analysis by going off-script, but it is great news that yesterday 55,000 people attended the first farewell concert by Oques Grasses at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium. Filling an Olympic stadium is not within everyone's reach, and even less so doing it four days in a row. Do not miss the chronicle written by our musical specialist, Xavier Cervantes. Music sung in Catalan reaches people, it has an audience, an audience of all ages, including many young people, and when there is good news for our culture it must also be said.

It has rained a lot these days, and guess which service went down this morning: Rodalies. Obviously, when I say that Rodalies is not working, I mean that even what usually functions is not working. The rains caused a slope to collapse, and the train drivers' union refused to work today for safety reasons. And since the Government, Renfe, and Adif fail every day to inform passengers, this morning thousands of users found themselves without trains and, in many cases, without a reinforcement bus service. All the screens at Sants said was that there was no service "due to external causes" (which were the train drivers).

The Constitutional Court plans to approve today the ruling by which it will order the Supreme Court to apply the amnesty once and for all. After this ruling, it will be necessary to wait for the Supreme Court to archive the case and for Judge Llarena to annul the arrest warrant for Puigdemont, Puig, and Comín so that they can return to Catalonia without the risk of being arrested.

Surely you are aware: we will go to vote on November 29th. It was 9 in the morning when, after spending the whole weekend making political and legal consultations, and looking at polls, Pedro Sánchez appeared at Moncloa and announced the calling of snap elections: “After informing, as is appropriate, the Head of State, I have decided to convene an extraordinary Council of Ministers this very morning to dissolve the General Courts and call general elections that will be held on Sunday, November 29th, in accordance with the deadlines established by law.”

This morning began with a rumor that turned into a question: after Junts announced that it will not vote for the two housing decrees, will Pedro Sánchez announce the calling of elections? Because the scenario is favorable: the Maricarmen case has gone around the world (it has even reached the Pope), it has brought people out onto the streets; with the two decrees, the PSOE was siding with the people on the street, ergo if there has ever been a minimally favorable situation for the PSOE to call elections, it was this one. The Maricarmen case has erased Ceuta from the debate. With Ceuta you could not go to elections, but with Maricarmen you can. Now there is a clean cut: right and left.

Podem announced this morning that tomorrow it will vote in favor of the two housing decrees, in line with what the Tenants' Union had requested. With Podem's yes, it remains to be seen how Junts and the PNB will vote.

This morning, Junts per Catalunya decided to launch a rocket into the sky, a rocket that can be seen from afar and indicates to everyone, for when another electoral cycle comes, that it is Junts and not Aliança that is the only alternative to the PSC-Esquerra-Comuns investiture and budget bloc. And that is why the president of the Junts group, Mònica Sales, has announced an action that had never been seen before: she wants Parliament to vote on the censure of President Salvador Illa: “You, President, are the worst president modern Catalonia has had (...) That is why I announce to you that today the Junts parliamentary group will present a motion to censure you as president of the Generalitat”

At this exact moment that I am speaking to you, everything suggests that there will be no agreement between the Spanish government and its multiple and diverse partners. What is non-negotiable for Sumar and Podemos (with Esquerra and Bildu behind them), which is that all contracts must be extended, whoever the owner may be, is a red line for Junts, with the argument that the housing policy that has not been implemented should not be paid for by small owners.If this were to end like this, what would happen? Well, today the Spanish government would approve a decree in the council of ministers that is insufficient to get everyone's votes, and it will then have a few weeks to continue negotiating it, before taking it to a vote in the Congress of Deputies to validate it. But the housing problem has exploded definitively. And on a global scale. The law of the market, when vulture funds enter, is no longer the law of the market, but rather it transforms into the law of the jungle. And the whole society must protect itself. Even the Pope has spoken about it, during the course of his trip to France: “What is the problem with an elderly woman being evicted from her home?” How is it possible that an elderly woman with a disability is being evicted?, asked Leo XIV. That how is it possible? Well, as that person said: “It’s the market, my friend”. Demonstration yesterday evening in Barcelona, in front of the Congress Palace where Pedro Sánchez was speaking. The social fracture between those who live in properties they own and those who rent is getting bigger and bigger. And now, the people protesting are convinced that this is the moment to change things, because we cannot continue like this. 15 years ago, those of the 15-M movement were affected by mortgages. Now we have gone from those affected by mortgages to those affected by rent. In fifteen years, will it be those affected by homelessness? Because housing is a branch of a bigger problem: that of the working poor, that of households where, with two salaries, it is barely possible to make ends meet or have anything left in your pocket to save. That of wage devaluation. And all of it, aggravated by inflation. This morning we learned that, due to the rise in gasoline prices, this month of September the cost of living for families has climbed up to 4.9% more than the same month last year. Data from the National Statistics Institute (INE). The social crisis is a disaster, a state of unrest. The political derivative is Sánchez's inability to square the circle on the right and on the left. And the PP and Vox make people believe that the day they govern they will solve it.By the way, Maricarmen will return home. Urbagestión, the investment fund that owns Maricarmen Abascal's apartment, has reached an agreement with the neighbor's lawyers so that she can return home. She will have to pay around 30% of her pension, approximately 500 euros (similar to the amount she was paying until now), in a contract renewed for eight years."It is a historic milestone. It had never happened before," celebrated Maricarmen Abascal's lawyer and the Tenants' Union. Good morning.

You already know that today is a day we started at the very top, first thing in the morning with the tick-tock of a countdown so that tomorrow the housing decree-law can be approved. It is a tense countdown, with about 500 people camping in Madrid, in about eighty tents, in a repetition of what was the 15-M, which have appeared after the emotional impact of the eviction of the 87-year-old lady from Madrid, Maricarmen. The majority of the campers are young, and the protests in Barcelona have blocked some streets early in the morning, and will continue until the evening, when Pedro Sánchez will come to present some awards at the Palace of Congresses located at the top of the Diagonal and will be met with a citizen protest called by the Tenants' Union.That is why yesterday Pedro Sánchez wanted to calm the nerves with an announcement that aimed to be empathetic:Pedro Sánchez: “Maricarmen, I have a message for you. The government is working against the clock to bring the royal decree-law on housing on Tuesday. And I ask the parliamentary groups that we make one last effort so that it is validated in the national Parliament, for Maricarmen and for the millions of Spaniards who suffer from the housing crisis. Because it is not a question of ideology, it is a question of humanity”.The problem, President Sánchez, is that it is indeed a question of ideology. If it were only a matter of humanity, it would already be solved. The problem for Sánchez is that he needs the votes of parties like Podemos and Sumar, who see landlords as a whole, and he needs the votes of Junts and the PNV, who want protection for small landlords. Consider that, in Catalonia, approximately 90% of rental housing is in the hands of small holders. A small holder is considered to be any individual or company that owns fewer than 5 properties in stressed areas.Yesterday, a very direct source from Junts told me that they were not optimistic. “If it depended on the PSOE and us it would be easy, but with Sumar/Podem and their ideological entrenchment everything becomes complicated”. For Junts, the red line for not agreeing to the decree is that vulture funds and large real estate companies are lumped together with small property owners, and that the cost of suspending evictions is passed on to the small property owner. The idea is that “what the vulnerable tenant cannot pay the landlord, the State should pay”.Well, based on what has emerged this morning, among the measures that the Spanish government has confirmed to ARA are being negotiated are: protecting against evictions (the fine print remains to be seen), prohibiting speculative housing purchases by vulture funds (this measure could gather consensus from both the left and Junts and the PNB), stabilizing rental contracts (this is one of the main demands of the Tenants' Union, which wants indefinite contracts, but Junts and the PNB do not view this measure favorably), and tax bonuses for tenants (Junts requested this, but it remains to be seen if Sumar and Podemos, who were reluctant, will also accept it).In short, we have protests underway, including a 15-M style encampment and a decree law that is being negotiated with urgency, to stop the blow. But we have lost fifteen years. Because it is not that we are in the same place as the 15-M, but that we are worse off, because 15 years have passed and there is a lack of affordable housing. When it turns out that housing is personal and social stability and means birth rates, the failure is collective.I do not know if the decree will have the votes, it remains to be seen whether it will lean more to the right or to the left, and it must find a balance that will require everyone to compromise. But it will be a stopgap, a temporary solution. That is the tragedy. Now, it is clear that we are at a political and social turning point, because there are people of all ages who have no idea where they will live when their contract expires. Good morning.

It is deeply embarrassing that the eviction of this elderly lady in Madrid was necessary for everyone to suddenly rush to action. Firstly, because it is not serious, and secondly, for those who claim they have been warning us for a long time, because an anti-eviction decree will soften the blow, but it is not the solution to the housing problem.

Yesterday, an 87-year-old woman was evicted from her home because she could not afford the rent increase from 500 to 2,750 euros. Since this eviction happened in Madrid, where the loudspeaker resonates louder –also in Catalonia–, this image of this lady, whose name is Maricarmen, has become the symbol of the wreckage that the real estate market is causing in the lives of thousands of people.Between 7,000 and 8,000 evictions take place in Catalonia every year. The vast majority are due to non-payment of rent (approximately 75%). Everything is legal: there is a law, which the judge applies, with the protection of the police. It is legal, but it is neither ethical nor decent. And this is when all eyes turn towards politics, so that it may correct what we call the abuses of the market. But for decades now, the market has been winning over politics. Here and everywhere else. And there is no need for a dramatic eviction like yesterday's to verify its effects: how many young people cannot emancipate themselves from their parents' house because they cannot afford rent –with the consequent effect that this has on their future expectations, of living as a couple, of starting their own family, of having children–? How many families have had to leave their lifelong neighborhood or city because they cannot afford to live there?The remote and immediate causes of the housing crisis have been long debated. You hear from developers and they point out that there are few building plots, you hear from the real estate sector and it says there is a lack of supply, you hear everyone saying that public housing has not been built, you hear from small landlords and they say they do not want to be treated like large holders, like vulture funds and speculators, and having to carry out, out of their own pockets, the housing policies that governments have not implemented. The problem is that the real estate market is eating away at everyone's life. Do you remember the case of that teacher from Mallorca who worked in Ibiza and every day took a plane to go teach classes in Ibiza because it was more cost-effective to take a plane than to pay rent? Well, that's it.The effects on collective morale, the loss of trust in democracy, and the increase in lack of solidarity are enormous. Here and everywhere. If there is a globalized problem, it is housing. In this context, yesterday Pedro Sánchez took a photo with the mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, which he finished with the following phrase: “The powerful fear us”. It is the type of statement that should be made with actions rather than words, especially when the facts contradict you. A bad day to say “The powerful fear us”, because it is not true. The image of Maricarmen from yesterday is one of great social violence.Yes, politics has its codes, and international alliances are highly sought after, the photo with Mamdani is sought after, but the housing problem surpasses them all, even the political leaders with the greatest social conscience.Good morning

As we already told you yesterday, the Constitutional Court endorsed the amnesty law. Although the magistrates' deliberations are secret, it has been an open secret (as almost always happens in the Spanish judicial corridors): the progressive majority opposed the proposal of a conservative magistrate who was against it, and now the forecast is that in the week of October 5th, the TC will end up giving the green light to the amnesty. And it would be then that Judge Llarena would have to lift the arrest warrant for Puigdemont, Comín and Puig, and the Supreme Court would have to definitively archive all the cases related to the 'Procés' that it still keeps open. A very bitter medicine for an application of justice that is arrogant and proud.When would Puigdemont return?The ARA delegate in Madrid, Núria Orriols, specifies that the president in exile could choose between three moments to return: once the Constitutional Court has decided, after the withdrawal of Llarena's arrest warrant, or once the case has been definitively shelved. You can be sure that after spending 9 years in Belgium, it won't make a difference to Puigdemont if it takes a day or a month more, and that he will not return until it is clear that they will not arrest him. Another thing is that, once here, some random Peinado-style judge might find a traffic fine he didn't pay or revive the Aigües de Girona case. But beyond the criminal situation, there is the political one. And Puigdemont must decide what he wants to do: whether to go to Parliament to act as leader of the opposition, whether to run again or not, and in turn, Junts will have to see if it is capable of covering, from what was once Convergència, with its connection to big business, the entire independence movement beyond the size of its pocket.Meanwhile, yesterday the Mossos superintendent, Carles Hernández, head of the General Information Commissariat, the police branch on which that unfortunate infiltration of two agents into a teachers' assembly depended, appeared before the Parliament of Catalonia.

To no one's surprise, Begoña Gómez, the wife of the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been sent to trial for embezzlement and influence peddling.It is the news of the day and, at the same time, it was already taken for granted. You know what happens when the episodes of a series are coming to an end, when the writers drown the protagonists with an accumulation of problems? Well, here we are: the Spanish legislature has months left, and Aznar's watchword of “Whoever can do, let them do” is working at full speed. Note that the judge who is sending Sánchez's wife to trial, the judge Juan Carlos Peinado, is retiring next week. He is leaving through the front door, with a big game trophy. Because one thing is that Begoña Gómez has to answer to the law like everyone else, but not everyone is answering to the law in the same way. Carlos Mazón, with hundreds of deaths on his conscience, continues to collect a deputy's salary. It would be touching if it were not pathetic to hear yesterday on TVE a minister of Sánchez, Óscar López, acknowledging that at the beginning of the 'Procés', he did not understand what was happening, and that now he understands everything.

President Puigdemont has broken his silence to the media this weekend and has spoken about his return to Catalonia. It has been more than a year since he granted an interview to any Catalan media outlet and it remains the same, because he has granted the interview to the English newspaper The Sunday Times. The headline they have given it already explains that, for the international public, the Procés and its leaders seem so far away that it does not even put his name in the headline: “An exiled Catalan separatist has no regrets and considers returning to Spain”. And as a subtitle: “Carles Puigdemont has spent nine turbulent years away from home, during which he has suffered an arrest and lost his parents without having the opportunity to see them. Now he wants to «breathe reality» again”. The president in exile explained it this way, in this interview granted at his home, in Waterloo, a few kilometers from Brussels:Puigdemont: “The current Catalonia is not the same as it was when I left the country. During all this time I have tried to be in contact with my team and with the people, to understand exactly what is happening in Catalonia. But I know that it is not the same as smelling, touching, feeling, being among the people. This is my first intention when I arrive: to immerse myself in reality. To touch again. To feel, to smell the country”. When Puigdemont speaks publicly in this tone, it is clear that he now sees it closer than ever. And following the thread of his response, it is by feeling, touching, and smelling the country that he must decide if he wants to act as leader of the opposition to Illa and, above all, if he wants to run for the presidency again, or if Catalonia and the memory he has left behind have changed so much that he will not be able to turn the polls around.Meanwhile, this weekend Sánchez, Feijóo and Abascal have been through Catalonia. Sánchez to say that now everything is going much better thanks to Salvador Illa, Abascal to tell us that the problem is Islam and Feijóo to consider that we are material for a psychiatrist. Feijóo: “And I do not want a Catalonia trapped in a permanent loop, sitting on a psychiatrist's couch asking itself what it is. No, I do want to turn the page. I want you Catalans not to be the ones who pay the most taxes in Spain and the ones who receive the worst services. You cannot have a Rodalies that is sometimes scary and other times shameful. You cannot have the worst education in Spain, along with Ceuta and Melilla. You cannot have the highest crime rates. And you cannot accept that your industry is dismantled, whether it be called Seat, Ascó or Valdebeos. We will maintain the Catalan industry above all else”.Look, Mr. Feijóo, part of our financial problems come from the premeditated asphyxiation of which your party is one of the historic co-responsible parties. Asphyxiation that extends to the trains, for example: 34 years after the first AVE (Madrid-Seville), the Mediterranean corridor is still unfinished. And for you to suggest that we have a mental disorder that needs a psychiatrist is a very crude way of belittling the history of Catalonia and Spain. It’s a good thing you came to ask for our vote.Good morning.

Many things have happened this week, and the most important one (even if it seems so) is not that Florentino Pérez is going to Ceuta today to make a resounding profession of the Spanish identity of Madrid and Ceuta. A kind of “how could I not love you”, if I am Madrid.But today the news in Ceuta is that the thousands of people who were living in poor conditions on the beaches have finally been moved to the city's port, where a decent camp awaits them. It has taken a month and nineteen days for the president of Ceuta, the Spanish government, the judiciary, and the police unions to agree and stop preventing it. A shameful management. By the way, very far but very close to Ceuta, in New York, the governments of Morocco and Israel have signed the agreement by which Rabat and Tel Aviv elevate their diplomatic relations to the embassy level, and they will soon exchange ambassadors. Morocco is not only the neighbor that holds the key to African immigration to the EU, but it also reinforces its long-standing alliance with the United States, now with Trump.But, of course, in a week where the topic of debate has been whether AI could kill us all before 2030, any other news seems small. In reality, everything matters. If we talk about ourselves, it has begun, as you know, the trial of the four national police officers accused of torture and injuries resulting in the loss of an organ, when they fired the rubber bullet that left Roger Español blind in one eye on October 1st. The day before yesterday they said that the operation was “absolutely perfect”, and yesterday the police officers declared, very remorseful, as proof of the aggression with which they were received, that people were shouting “Españolazos” at them, that they were only defending themselves, that they gave warnings and that they were not going to cause harm but to deter. And they said this with Roger Español present there.Police: “The very aggressive manner in which the public gathered there was throwing objects, mm, stones, cobblestones, bottles, from... from the facades they were also throwing them, and their physical integrity was at serious risk. This is more than enough, more than enough, to be able to use the riot control equipment that the intervention units are legally equipped with, which are not harmful, mm, they are not... They are deterrent. They are not harmful, they are deterrent.”But the moment that sums it all up is this one. The judge calls a Catalan interpreter, who gets so nervous that she cannot interpret anything.