It is José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero entering the National CourtIt is José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero entering the National Court to testify in the investigative phase, accused of half a dozen crimes. One of the mysteries to be resolved is where the famous jewels came from. The PSOE is holding its breath, but Zapatero has the absolute support of Sánchez, who trusts in his innocence. Some of the damage is already done, because no matter how much justice looks to the right, not everything can be invented, and influence peddling, favors, and gifts go against everything the left preaches. Almost at the same time that Zapatero was making history, Pedro Sánchez entered Congress without a tie (it's hot) at the control session of the Spanish government. Feijóo has told him everything:Feijóo: “Tomorrow we will not have the right to vote here for the continuation of the legislature, because you are a coward. You are afraid of democracy. That's all we needed, Mr. Sánchez. It's not just that you don't want us to vote in a ballot box, but, moreover, you don't want us to vote in Congress. You have no right to muzzle Parliament. You are not a democrat. Mr. Sánchez, if I were a bad person, I would only tell you one thing. Cheer up, Pedro. Thank you very much, madam/sir”.Feijóo complains because the PP, Junts and Vox agreed to submit a request to Congress to debate who wants and who does not want early elections. And the Congress board vetoed the debate, arguing that the dissolution of the Courts is the president's responsibility, and the president has already said he does not intend to advance them. Well, we already knew that it is the president's responsibility. But it should be possible to debate a question like this, even if it were a debate that brought us nothing new, because here we are in a stalemate of impotence: Pedro Sánchez, who cannot approve budgets, and Feijóo, who cannot win a vote of no confidence. And everything seems to indicate that we will be like this until July next year. Listen, if not, to the answer that Sánchez gave him:Sánchez: “The elections will be held, sir. They will be held! But that is not the question. The question is what country will present itself in 2027 compared to 2018. If it is a better country or a worse country. And undoubtedly, Mr. Feijóo, it is a better country in terms of growth, employment, and inequality”.Meanwhile, in Catalan politics, yesterday we had a significant episode of government miscoordination. The Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, said on Catalunya Ràdio that the plan to place police officers in high schools was “in a state of paralysis”.Well, around midday, the spokesperson counselor, Sílvia Paneque, corrected Parlon and said that “the program continues as planned”. It is clear that the Government does not want to rectify, that it wants police officers in the institutes, but that right now the main problem of the institutes is the teachers' strike, not the presence of police, and the executive has other work to do.  Good morning.

Spanish political life has a quite explicit calendar this week: yesterday Begoña Gómez, President Sánchez's wife, declared before the judge; today the director general of the Civil Guard declares in the Senate about her contacts with Leire Díez, and tomorrow Zapatero has to declare for influence peddling and money laundering for having acted as an intermediary in the rescue of the airline company Plus Ultra, even though the former Spanish president has asked the judge for more days to defend himself regarding the origin of the jewels, which now turn out to have a value exceeding one million euros. It is a hellish moment for the PSOE.The judge must decide whether to withdraw Begoña Gómez's passport, because he does not want her to leave Spain as he believes there is a risk of flight, while from the Civil Guard's investigation into the PSOE's sewers it appears that Santos Cerdán ordered all of Leire Díez's trips to be approved without any verification and that “nobody knows what was happening in Cerdán’s office”. Contacts in Madrid tell me that most ministers are devastated, and that Sánchez is holding on because he is risking his life or, at least, his freedom. You already know the Catalan drift of this panorama: Salvador Illa is a close friend of Sánchez and, right now, he is the only socialist leader with weight in Spain.And in the meantime, what is Illa doing? Yesterday the president signed a new pact of these that he likes so much, this time with employers and unions, to relaunch industry, so that in three and a half years, by 2030, industry represents 25% of Catalonia's GDP. It does not currently reach 20% in an economy, like ours, heavily tilted towards the service sector.Catalonia is still an industrial country, and it began to be so more than a century ago. I mean that there are realities that are not improvised, and now Illa returns to a very Pujolista narrative of Catalonia as an engine through industrial growth. On Friday I heard the president in La Seu d'Urgell, at the Business Meeting in the Pyrenees. He spoke to them about that association of the Four Motors for Europe from Pujol's era, created in 1988: Catalonia (Barcelona), Baden-Württemberg (Stuttgart), Lombardy (Milan), and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (Lyon). Illa spoke to the businessmen about confidence, about the value of a public health system like Catalonia's, and even about Christian humanism. It was a speech of institutional and constitutional normality, without political adventures, very focused on reviving the country's economic potential through innovation, external openness, and exports, in a tone reminiscent of Pujol's, with the difference that 23 years have passed since Pujol stepped down as president. Illa speaks of the country's economic future like a convergent, perhaps because he aspires to win re-election from convergent centrality, now that the rose on the fist is withered and threatened and that the heirs of Convergence are trapped with the leader still in exile.Good morning.

The week begins under the sign of good news, apparently, which is the peace agreement between the United States and Iran. I say "apparently" because it is an announced but not signed agreement, and on top of that it is threatened by a friend of Trump, Netanyahu, who says he will not withdraw from southern Lebanon. Of all the times it seemed the war was coming to an end, this is the most plausible, but what do you want me to tell you, at this point, about the reliability of Trump and an Israeli prime minister who is running forward to save his skin by killing thousands of people in Gaza and Lebanon?

The blessing ceremony of the tallest tower of the Sagrada Família is one of those events we will never forget.

Despite the undisputed prominence of Pope Leo XIV, the figure of the day is Antoni Gaudí. His exuberant imagination, the firmness of his judgment, his extraordinary aesthetic sense, his mastery of calculation and the use of materials, have given him a place at the forefront of the history of contemporary architecture. Joan Maragall said that Gaudí was the poet of stone.

Today at half past twelve Pope Leo XIV lands at El Prat airport and begins a stay of 36 hours in our country, packed with events: the crowd at Lluís Companys stadium this afternoon, the symbolism of the climb to Montserrat, the message of meeting with prisoners at Can Brians, and the highlight, tomorrow around 9 pm, of the blessing of the Jesus tower of the Sagrada Família, which for a few weeks has crowned the basilica at 172.5 meters above the city of Barcelona. And on Thursday morning, Leo XIV will depart for the Canary Islands.

This morning, one of the most politically charged events of the Pope's trip to Spain took place. For the first time in history, a Pope has addressed the Spanish Congress and Senate in a joint session. in the Pope's trip to Spain. For the first time in history, a Pope has addressed the Spanish Congress and Senate in a joint session.If I start from the end, I will tell you that his speech was met with nearly seven minutes of applause. And this, considering that Leo XIV today delivered the most doctrinal speech of those pronounced so far. For example, when he lamented to the legislators about the abortion and euthanasia laws:

Teachers and professors rejected the agreement between the unions and the Department of Education and the strikes will continue. In fact, this morning, a group of teachers occupied the building of the territorial services of the department in the Zona Franca of Barcelona, in the first of the mobilizations that will continue from here until the end of the school year. All of this is very bad news because everything that interrupts the daily life of the school ends up harming the students' education. And with a child poverty rate (under 18 years old) of more than 30%, if school fails, almost everything fails. Consider that there are thousands of Catalan children who, besides learning, go to school to eat a hot meal.A 65% of teachers who participated in the consultation (which was 60% of the total staff) voted against the agreement reached by the majority unions and the Government. Therefore, the responsibilities for the situation are widely distributed, between the Government and the unions.To begin with, the Government made a complete mistake the day it signed an agreement with UGT and Comissions, which are not the majority unions, as if to suggest that the teachers' protests had already ended or no longer had any reason to continue. That was an almost reckless error, because it angered the teachers even more. And USTEC, which later signed an improved and expanded agreement, has now been disavowed by its own people. In other words, as Murphy's Law states, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, and today we are in an unknown situation, and in a conflict whose end is not in sight.And for that very reason, it would now be very important not to make any more mistakes so that we don't all get hurt any further. Because look, we have problems in this country (as in all countries in the world), but that of education is the most serious problem that Catalonia has. The most serious. Because it affects the present and the future of the country, it affects millions of people, in their training, their critical thinking, their possibilities for personal development, their professional future…Not being wrong means the direct involvement of the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa. It means that the opposition should be very selective in its wear and tear on the Government and that we should all try to reach agreements for the country. Because the person responsible for the current situation is the current government, with Councillor Niubó at the helm. But that schools in Catalonia are not doing well is not new. There are responsibilities of all the parties that have governed in the deterioration. We are facing the deep malaise of an education system in emergency and I fear, I notice, how would I put it... that we are facing it with old negotiation categories from the government as an employer and the unions, but that no one with authority is bringing wills together to define the problem, much less the solutions.

Today I was talking to an important businessman, very well politically connected, who these days has attended the Cercle d’Economia conference and who the day before yesterday heard Feijóo and yesterday heard Sánchez and he told me that both interventions had seemed to him like something to cry about.Feijóo's by weak, by mediated by Aznar and Ayuso, without his own thought, without knowing how to oppose Sánchez nor, much less, generate enthusiasm.And regarding Sánchez, it was said that, although he knows how to navigate better and speaks to a Catalan audience in terms that are understood here and are even accepted much better than Feijóo's, he is a politician who now only lives for his political survival. Is it because he is hooked on power? Not only that: because he knows that the day he ceases to be president, he has a high chance of ending up prosecuted and in prison. And so, as an exercise in survival, we must understand the incredible announcement that he will present budgets for 2027. Has he not been able to approve this year's budget, and before the elections, will he have the votes to push through the accounts? Sánchez is the first to know that it doesn't sound credible at all. Now, he has a great ability to turn things around. You already know that he, who before an election promised that he would bring Puigdemont arrested, approved pardons after the elections. And yesterday he said that amnesty was good... for the PP!Pedro Sánchez: “Although it may seem unbelievable, there is explicit recognition from the head of the opposition and the People's Party to a political actor, in this case Junts per Catalunya, whom they did not recognize until very recently. I think this is good news. Truly, I don't say this as a provocation. Because, effectively, the pardons, the measures of grace, and also this amnesty law, aim to recover something that one of the main analysts of La Vanguardia said at the time, after the amnesty: “We are all here now”. Well, I think this is a very important point to make our democracy a much stronger system and, why not?, in a future where the Spanish right can once again find common ground, in terms of political understanding, with the Catalan right and also with the Basque right”.As a theory it has its logic. In the real world, it doesn't work. The PP knows that an understanding with Junts would boost Vox's vote. Apart from the fact that the PP lives and has lived by going against the amnesty.But the most amazing thing, this businessman told me, is that all this, Sánchez was saying it just when it became known that the Civil Guard had concluded that Santos Cerdán and Leire Díez wanted to protect Sánchez's interests and they set up a plot to influence legal cases that had been opened against the PSOE. In other words, Cerdán would be the leader of a plot to save Sánchez, which has led Feijóo to say that the PSOE will end up convicted of criminal organization.This is all a disaster. It has splashed the PSC, and that is why yesterday President Illa said in the control session of the Parliament that his party is the PSC (not the PSOE).Look, all this mess holds up because Spain's big economic figures hold up, the level of tax collection is historic (that's why we can afford to have the price of gasoline subsidized) but never let the economy falter, this will be a social disaster (there is already a lot of poverty). And so here we are, hoping the Pope comes, for the World Cup and holidays to start. Speaking of the Pope, I am aware that from the conversations among those who can do something about it, it is understood that the blessing of the Jesus Christ tower will be in Catalan and Spanish. And that tomorrow a welcome text to Leo XIV will be published in two Italian newspapers and two Spanish newspapers, signed by five presidents of the Generalitat and five presidents of the Parliament. And by Barça, among other personalities and institutions. A text without controversy, positive, which will explain to the Pope that he will come to a country called Catalonia.

Perhaps one day Feijóo will be president of the Spanish government, but for now, it doesn't seem like he's going to get there. He continues to be a gray, sad opposition leader, incapable of generating enthusiasm or hitting the right strategy, dependent on Vox's crutch. He had asked for Junts' support for a motion of no confidence, Turull brushed him off by telling him that if he wanted to talk about it, he should go to Waterloo to meet with the party's president and, of course, Feijóo had no choice but to dismiss the offer. The PP would never let him speak with Puigdemont, so, as Rajoy would say, "end of quote." But, apart from his frustrated move, Feijóo spoke at the Cercle d'Economia and said the following: "Catalonia should not continue aspiring to achieve things either by coercion or by collision, but by conviction." What a beautiful sentence, if it weren't for its great hypocrisy. I can imagine that when he talks about "collision" he is referring to the Procés and October 1st. But I wonder what Mr. Feijóo calls "coercion." Is negotiating when people's votes have given you the power to be influential "coercion?" And what conviction can be displayed when nothing that Catalonia proposes is acceptable in principle? We only need to see the rejection by the autonomies governed by the PP to accept the financing model proposed by Esquerra that benefits them all because the Spanish government will put billions of euros more into it.

The PP has found itself trapped in its own logic: if the situation in Spain is so dire, what was the point of patiently waiting for the miracle that Sánchez would call early elections, a miracle they knew wouldn't happen? And they have decided to go on the offensive: Feijóo, who is in Barcelona today at an event organized by the Cercle d'Economia, has offered Junts and PNB a government without Vox to go to the polls. In other words, he is asking the PNB and Junts to vote for him to be president, and immediately, Feijóo calls elections as president of a government in which there would be no Vox minister. The PNB is not interested in the operation. Basque nationalist left-wing parties hinder him, and he cannot openly align with the PP, at least not so explicitly.

Today, June 1, marks eight years since Sánchez has been president of the Spanish government thanks to the motion of no confidence he won against Rajoy. It was the first time a candidate reached the presidency through such a vote.Eight years later we have had the pardons, the amnesty still not completed because the Supreme Court is granting extensions, the demobilized independence movement, Commuter Rail by bus, Illa as President of the Generalitat, an unevenly distributed economic growth, the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of finding a flat, and very strained public services.Without going any further, Catalan doctors are called upon not to do any more overtime, under the eloquent slogan Not one more minute, because they don't finish the work they have and the on-call shifts have already turned days into three eight-hour shifts. Doctors want a response from the administration, like the one teachers have already received, who reached an agreement with the Department of Education this past weekend. This agreement will be submitted for a vote by teachers until Thursday. At the risk of being wrong, I believe that teachers have achieved a good part of what they were asking for, the strike has pushed teachers' pockets to the limit and families' patience, and therefore, the most logical thing would be for teachers to vote yes to an agreement reached by unions that did not settle for the first agreement signed by UGT and CCOO. The minister Niubó said this morning that a "no" would lead to the chaos of the education system. With this reality in the streets, political power continues in its own world.Sánchez, who will still take three weeks to explain himself in Congress, is betting everything on the Pope's visit, which will arrive this Saturday in Madrid, the "unity" effect of the Football World Cup, the August holidays and reaching autumn and having 2027 within reach. He himself says it: “The tricksters with their maneuvers, and we to govern until 2027 and beyond, whatever the Spanish want” “Until 2027 and beyond” sounds like it’s from the astronaut of lawfare, will not be new to them. In this analysis, we already told them weeks ago that the Spanish government not only wants to hold on until 2027, but they are also considering re-investing Sánchez.And the one who has already tied his destiny to that of Sánchez is Illa. At an event yesterday in Tarragona, he said, in Spanish so that the Spanish TV channels could broadcast it without subtitles and Sánchez would not be alone, that Sánchez was a “moral benchmark”.

This morning there is again a meeting between the Department of Education and the teaching unions at the headquarters of the ministry. The unions will not have to walk far to get there, because they have spent the night locked in the ministry.

Sánchez is this morning at the lowest point of his presidency. Lower means that every day is worse than the last. It reminds me a lot of 1996, during the last months of Felipe González and Aznar's first victory, when cases and revelations rained down every day. Yesterday, the Civil Guard entered the PSOE headquarters and was taking information for 12 hours. We don't know what they seized, but we know what the judge's report says, and it broadens the focus: the PSOE allegedly maneuvered to obstruct justice. Or as the judicial report says, it allegedly orchestrated a “trama to destabilize judicial proceedings against the PSOE or the Spanish government.” The judge is investigating whether the PSOE paid people to pay police officers or prosecutors to hinder investigations against the PSOE, against Sánchez or his circle. Who would be part of this group and what were they doing? On this page you have it: Who's who in the alleged plot to “obstruct” judicial cases. From the details that have emerged, the PSOE allegedly paid former militant Leire Díez about 4,000 a month, with false invoices. That is, the PSOE allegedly put its party structure at the service of illegal activities. This would be very serious, and even more so if we consider that it is unlikely the party would do anything without Sánchez.

The Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard entered the PSOE headquarters this morning to request information. They are looking for an alleged illegal financing network of the party. Let's see, a police entry reinforces the feeling of guilt of the investigated person, which, in the era of narrative over facts, is ideal for those who wish harm to the suspect. But if anywhere we know what effect the interested administration of the judicial instruction and police investigation has with a specific intention, it is in Catalonia.

Amidst the world's misfortunes and Spanish politics, this image of presidential happiness appears.Salvador Illa, happy as a clam, taking a selfie with Bad Bunny inside the main nave of the Sagrada Família. Illa looks like he's about to sing: “If you want to have fun with charm and finesse, you just have to live a summer in Catalonia with warmth”.Bad Bunny is the best thing that will happen to Illa in the coming days, because the hurricane of the Zapatero case threatens the stability of Sánchez's government and, by extension, that of the Generalitat government, which is so closely linked to it.In the last few hours we have learned that the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit of the National Police, the UDEF, has found in Zapatero's office: jewelry, folders and mobile phones. In short, there are three lines here: Zapatero is a victim of lawfare because let him do to Sánchez what he can do, Zapatero has crossed the fine line between lobbyist and influence peddler, and Zapatero is corrupt. Probably, what we have here is that the evidence gathered by the judge (the photos of the jewelry are police propaganda) could indicate that Zapatero has gone further, recklessly, than prudence advised. And until he testifies and the investigation is clarified, we will live in this debate. Now, that the suspicion of lawfare is plausible, everyone knows and it is a prophecy.There is no doubt that the blow to Sanchez is tremendous. If yesterday we were talking about the PNB saying there should be elections this year, today we have Felipe Gonzalez (who else?) saying the same thing.Journalist: “Do you think there will be elections? Do you think there will not be elections?”Felipe González: “I think there should be. It is the first time I say it. I think there should be. I think there should be. That is to say, there should be this year. We should also have respect for the infantry. I would tell it to García Páez. Look, the leadership I value is non-mercenary leadership. That which is not exercised for one's own benefit, but is exercised for the benefit of others”. With friends like González who needs enemies, Sánchez must think. Because, moreover, he is amused by it.Felipe González: “I don’t see him, let’s say, with the capacity to set up a financial engineering as I am seeing. I say, listen, that this means nothing more than that. That Zapatero has reached, in his life trajectory, to know what an offshore company is, well, I don’t see it”.Tomorrow we will know what Sánchez's answer is when asked if he will advance the elections (which until today the answer was no, by no means). And they will ask him in Rome, where Sánchez will be received in audience by Pope Leo XIV, as a prelude to the trip to Madrid, Barcelona and the Canary Islands in fifteen days. Such is life, Sánchez standing up to the Holy Father, just as the Pope, one year after his election, has begun to raise his voice against liars like Trump and, yesterday, against the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Today we will have new revelations about the judicial investigation into the lobbying activity of former Spanish president Zapatero, because the judge will deliver to the parties everything that is in the initiated summary. And, of course, with new revelations the pressure on Sánchez's government to step down will increase. On this front there is a significant novelty: the PNB, through its president, Aitor Esteban, said yesterday that it would be “irresponsible” for Sanchez to want to exhaust the legislature in 2027, that is to say, that in view of everything that has emerged (the Zapatero case, but also the Cerdán and Ábalos cases) it would be imprudent to want to go beyond this year.What Esteban is telling Sánchez is that he should not abuse his patience and the deadlock in which the parties that voted for the socialist president's investiture find themselves: it is unlikely that the PNB, Junts, and not to mention the so-called "plurinational lefts" will vote for Feijóo as president of the government with Vox in a motion of censure, but if corruption continues to tarnish Sánchez, it is the Spanish president who should be obliged to call early elections. After all, Sánchez came to power with a motion of censure after corruption drowned Rajoy and the PP government.As always happens in these cases, now there are voices demanding that the law better define the limits between lobbying and falling into the crime of influence peddling. And the convenience of rescuing the airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic is also reviewed in hindsight, because it was not essential for air traffic between Spain and Latin America. If it wasn't, why did they rescue it? The PSOE is crossing its fingers so that the judge hasn't found anything else and can recover the discourse of "lawfare" (a possibility that, given what we have seen in the Spanish justice system, would not be so dismissible), but everyone you talk to tells you that, at the very least, Zapatero acted very much on the edge.While the socialists are crossing their fingers that nothing else comes up, in our country, tomorrow there will be another meeting between the Government and the education unions. The teachers' strikes are more than a stone in the government's shoe, they are a boulder in the road that doesn't let it continue to move with confidence and optimism after having been able to present a budget that will be approved. We are at the end of the sports seasons, and Catalonia has lost a team in the First Football Division, Girona. After having reached the Champions League, it drops to the Second Division: the team could not withstand the departure of key players who had made a name for themselves. Not all news is bad. Two Catalans succeeding in the world: the Barça women's football team, which tonight was received in Barcelona by 10,000 people after having won the Champions League, the fourth in the Club's history, in a perfect season that includes all three Spanish titles. And wait, because Alexia Putellas, after Saturday's Champions League, could very well win the Ballon d'Or again. For the visibility of professional women's sport, the service Barça is providing is extraordinary. And Pep Guardiola, who yesterday was bid farewell at City's stadium after 10 years as its manager. The mark Guardiola has left on football can only be defined by "a before and an after"; this can be said of very few managers in history. By the way, both celebrations, that of the Barça players and that of the Santpedor coach, were united by the estelada:

Images from this morning, when the Government met in extraordinary executive council to approve the budgetsMeanwhile, the teachers' strike continues, as we explain. The teachers' unions are not letting up. The negotiation between the Government and the union representatives will continue today: they remain stuck on improving salaries and, despite the wear and tear that maintaining the stoppages means, the unions are determined to continue them.

Today we will start with good news: congratulations to actress Aina Clotet, who has been awarded the Revelation Prize of the Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival. I find the will and capacity of this 44-year-old artist to be constantly working remarkable, now as the director of Viva, the story of a woman who throws herself into living intensely after overcoming cancer. Congratulations to Clotet.

This afternoon, the Government and education unions are meeting, to see if they can reach an agreement to call off the mobilizations that continue to be scheduled for the coming weeks and until the end of the school year. The Government has proposed advancing by one year the salary increase agreed with UGT and CCOO, more money for tutoring allowances, and a reinforcement of staff for inclusive schools. Positions are far apart. The conflict seems far from being resolved. However, the Government breathes more calmly after securing the 'yes' from Esquerra to the budgets.But the political news continues to be strongly conditioned by Zapatero's indictment, which has fallen like a bomb on Sánchez's government. Because Zapatero was, as Feijóo told Sánchez this morning, "his moral compass." In the control session of the Spanish government in the Congress of Deputies, a defensive Sánchez was seen. Listening to him, whether he was answering Feijóo or Rufián, it seems clear that Zapatero's indictment is already hitting the government's core, that there are not many more arguments left in Moncloa to defend themselves, and that it is now all about repeating that the elections will be next year and will not be brought forward.Where does this impression come from? Well, from the fact that instead of convincingly denying any possibility of corruption, Sánchez recalled Zapatero's merits: that he ended ETA, that he took Spain out of the Iraq war, that he got same-sex marriage approved… Even, Sánchez has brought out the worn-out card of Feijóo's photos on a narco's boat, in Galicia, years ago. And Feijóo has felt brave enough to twist Aznar's call to action (“he who can, let him do it”) and has transformed it into “he who can, let him steal”.Then it was Rufián's turn to ask, who with a desolate tone, as if someone in his family had died, almost implored Sánchez to give “some answer”. To Zapatero, the man who defeated the PP against all odds that very tough weekend in March 2004, the populars really want him. But today, in Congress, the feeling has been that the imputation of justice has decimated the reserves of conviction, which were already meager, that remained in the Spanish left.Good morning.