When I returned from the United States and colleagues, future correspondents, came to ask me for advice for the day they could go to work there, I told them – and I tell them – that knowing American history or the political system of checks and balances is all well and good, but that the most important thing is that they be in shape. That they would experience a lot of heat and a lot of cold, that they would be subjected to extreme climatic conditions: scorching temperatures, monstrous snowfalls, and months with frozen sidewalks and without being able to have a coffee on a terrace, tornadoes, gales, that the electricity would go out, meaning the refrigerator and air conditioning. Or the heating… and that, in addition to suffering it, they would have to go and explain it on the front lines. And that if they didn't make themselves physically and mentally strong, it would be very hard for them.Well, this has already arrived here, in Catalonia. You only have to look at the records that are being broken these days:“Barcelona breaks its heat record in 113 years. The Fabra Observatory registers a temperature of 40.9 degrees”. In Vinebre, temperatures exceeded 44 degrees. And we have it for another week.It is not adventurous to think that the usual September downpours may be particularly dangerous this year, taking into account the amount of heat that the land and sea will have stored. All these extreme phenomena have a cost in health, physical and mental, in lifestyles, in leisure, but also, in the functioning of basic services and the maintenance of infrastructure. Increasingly, governments will have to drop everything they are doing to deal with emergencies and, in general, to adapt public spaces and services (streets, natural parks, schools, hospitals, residences) to the new climatic conditions. And us, too.

The news revolves around the fires and the heat, which we won't shake off in a few days. While the Generalitat Firefighters continue to give their all, there are still hundreds of people who have experienced and are experiencing hours of anguish. Don't miss this chronicle by Albert Dumenjó and Pere Virgili in La Pobla de Claramunt, where some neighbors told ARA that “the five firefighters slept on the floor of their house in case the fire reignited”. These are days of emergency and discomfort, physical and psychological, and we must face them with the best possible spirit.

This initial formula of courtesy is today rhetorical as rarely. How are we? Overwhelmed by the heat, worried about the fires, and fed up with the weather forecasts, which put us on maximum alert for the heatwaves that we will still have to endure in the coming days.The fire in Les Gavarres is not yet out, and more have broken out..In the Anoia region, we had at first thing in the morning the most extensive of those that remain active. The Generalitat Firefighters declared it stabilized this Tuesday morning. This development has allowed almost all confinement orders to be lifted. The firefighters had worked to prevent the fire from crossing the C-15 towards Montserrat. In contrast, the Sentmenat fire remains active, although the head of the Firefighters believes that we have entered a phase of a certain de-escalation.Reinforcements are needed, and the Generalitat has once again called upon the Spanish army unit. And as soon as it was daylight, the air assets returned. The deployment is enormous: 56 ground crews in Sentmenat and about fifty more in Anoia, with the human toll that all this implies, especially when thinking that it is only the beginning of July.The Anoia fire has forced 33,000 people into confinement. Simultaneous fires divide human and material resources, and if they are not stopped, they may even force fire chiefs to decide which fire to prioritize. As we explain on this page, we must consider that, if fires continue to multiply, not all of them can be extinguished.Likewise, the Generalitat Firefighters are very clear: it is impossible to protect all the houses within forests, in developments. And since the principle that human lives come first and then material goods works, what is being done is to evacuate the developments and take people to a safe place, but we will talk about the houses later: it will depend on what can be done based on priorities, wind direction, accessibility, and all other variables. And let's see how Europe is doing:Numerous fires are affecting the south of the continent. Yesterday the fires were mainly located in the Iberian Peninsula, France and Greece, and had already burned 19,000 hectares in total.Yesterday we were talking about solutions, about forest management, about ensuring that farmers do not have to leave their lands, about equipping ourselves with a mosaic landscape of diverse crops that prevents fires from jumping through a continuous mass of vegetation, etc. I hope the parties understand the emergency we live in and are capable of reaching consensus to mobilize budgetary allocations and eliminate bureaucracies. But while this does not happen, there is another reflection to be made, about our individual responsibility. Fires test us as a society, in respecting restrictions, in following recommendations, in studying self-protection measures, in exercising solidarity, and in accepting that our world has changed and selfishness and bad moods will make everything even more difficult. Encouragement to everyone.Good morning.

We start the week the same way we spent the weekend: pending the Gavarres fire. There are still people who cannot return home.

A 15-year-old boy died last night in the Sagrera neighborhood, in the Sant Andreu district of Barcelona, when he was shot with a firearm in Parc de la Pegaso. According to councilor Parlon, the first indications point to a gang revenge.We have a serious problem, which we did not have, with firearms. In Barcelona this year there have already been seven people killed by bullets. One a month. Drug trafficking gangs use cities as their distribution centers, there is a lot of money circulating, a lot of weapons circulating (remember that we have a war in Europe, in Ukraine, specifically), and their crimes take place in any neighborhood, from Balmes/Travessera to Parc de la Pegaso. They are no longer settled in Barcelona, but rather they live in Barcelona, and they kill there, whether it is the day the Pope comes or the day the Tour de France is presented. And they buy other businesses and have the capacity, if the police and justice do not confront them, to turn us into a narco-society.This week I mentioned here that around 300,000 people would have requested papers in Catalonia (given the Spanish total), and they ended up being a bit less, 257,000 applications, out of a total of one million seven hundred thousand in all of Spain. And this, when at first the Spanish government was talking about half a million in total. More than half have already been admitted for processing. In Madrid, the applications ended up being 200,000, and in the Valencian Community 167,000. On these two pages there is a detail of the ages of the new citizens, from which countries they come from, and which sectors they will work in. We will not review now the challenge that integrating all these people means in every sense. Immigration allows the economy not to stop, but services are needed. Will they pay taxes, and, at the same time, how will we pay for all this? And this is where the budgets that the Parliament approved yesterday come in. It is good news, which arrives in July (!), and thank goodness, because now we were going with the extended budgets of 2023. In fact, having budgets should be an obligation, because as we have said here many times it is not their money, it is our money. However, Catalonia will always fall short, with or without budgets, as long as it cannot dispose of its fiscal effort. This is why a new and much better financing system is needed. And speaking of all this: are you aware of the complaint about the dismissal of a worker from the company Aticco for speaking Catalan. The company says it didn't happen exactly like that, that the decision "responds exclusively to professional reasons", but the worker denies it. In fact, two of the dismissal reasons they gave her had to do with the use of Catalan. The Minister of Linguistic Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila, has ordered the Office for the Protection of Linguistic Rights to open an investigation and take appropriate measures.

José María Aznar gave Alberto Núñez Feijóo an order yesterday in front of everyone: to get rid of Sánchez, you must only count on Spaniards. And to govern, in the future, also, only Spaniards, not the PNB, nor Junts. He said it like this:

Yesterday, the extraordinary regularization process for immigrants opened by the Spanish socialist government ended, and all forecasts have been exceeded: one million two hundred thousand requests have been submitted. If we do a rule of three with the initial forecasts, around 300,000 applications from people who already live here without papers may have been submitted in Catalonia.For Pedro Sánchez, the overflow of the figure shows that the idea was good, because it was necessary. But the Supreme Court has opened the door to taking this regularization of immigrants to European justice so that it clarifies whether European law is respected, as the processing of more than one million applications could not comply with the European migratory pact. The Supreme Court has gotten involved because the Valencian and Aragonese governments, both from the PP, have asked it to. But, as I was saying, yesterday Sánchez puffed out his chest and at an event to present an integration plan he said that without immigrants Spain would lose 19% of its wealth creation in the next 25 years. The slogan of the plan caught my attention: “Where do they come from? They come from building the country”. A slogan that emphasizes the most economic aspect of immigration. Without immigration there are no caregivers, or bricklayers, or bus drivers… and they are essential because they are jobs that keep the country running every day. But building a country is something more. It has to do with rights and duties, and in our case, with integration into a culture and a language that do not have the maximum protection of the State (in fact, they rather have the maximum aggression from some parties and State bodies). And here is where the slogan of making country, so Pujol-like, is a mockery. I read in the chronicle of ARA: “Regarding Catalan, sources from the Sánchez government indicate that knowledge of the language will not have special value”. It is devastating. And at the same time, it is not new; it is coherent with the state in which we live, where only Spanish is mandatory. The lack of ambition of the Illa government on this issue, with the interested appeasement of business sectors, is regrettable. Much effort to fight the battle (or so they said) so that Catalan can be spoken in the European Parliament, but no step to do something as normal as requiring people who come to a country to know the language. It is a harm to the language and to coexistence. And without the Catalan language, immigrants cannot build a nation in Catalonia. Immigration is used to instill fear and win elections with messages of hate. Look at what is happening in South Africa, with demonstrations against immigrants, blaming them for unemployment, crime, and the deterioration of public services. Sánchez, in the role of going it alone against the world on immigration, gives speeches of the type “in the face of hate, humanity,” but with humanitarian appeals we already know that we will not stop the hate speeches of the far-right. And demonstrating political leadership in immigration in Catalonia means that Catalan should be for everyone, especially for the newest Catalans.Good morning.

Almost all the analysis space is occupied by the noise of Spanish politics, a noise that has two fundamental emitters. The first is corruption close to the PSOE and Pedro Sánchez (Ábalos, Koldo, Cerdán), which adds a new indicted person:

This weekend, the PP of Catalonia held its congress, and the party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, came and said: “Like most Catalans, we also want to turn the page”. The phrase has been interpreted as an offer to Junts so that one day it may be possible for the PP candidate for the presidency of the Spanish government to receive their votes. Junts must already know what they want to do, but it would seem that Feijóo is playing at an interested confusion: Junts voted with the PP and Vox that Sánchez had to resign, but has said in every way that he does not intend to invest Feijóo, meaning that for now Feijóo will have to wait.But it is interesting to delve into Feijóo's phrase to see what the popular candidate understands by wanting to turn the page.And the answer could not be more predictable: that Catalonia should return to the common regime autonomous path, that it should pay, that it should be silent, and if it has to do something exceptional, it should do so to offer new glories to Spain. And that's when Feijóo pulls the rabbit of the Sagrada Família out of his hat. Look at this tweet on social media:“The image of the Sagrada Família. The one the PP wants to represent”. It reminded me of what happened a few years ago, when TVE premiered Operación Triunfo and the PP said that the contest embodied their values of effort and meritocracy to achieve success. Does something work and is liked? They make it their own. Theirs, in their own way. Listen to this minute and a half of Feijóo, very revealing of the thinking he has about Catalonia:“I want to mention something that has surprised again, finally, and that we haven't seen in Catalonia for decades. It is a moment that moved millions of people, and it is none other than the extraordinary inauguration of the tower of Jesus of the Sagrada Familia with Pope Leo XIV. It was the symbol of a capable Catalonia, of a Catalonia that was thinking big again. Capable of doing extraordinary things and capable of building a collective ambition”. Look, Mr. Feijóo, I'm very glad you liked the blessing ceremony of the tallest tower of the Sagrada Família, but hire a speechwriter who doesn't mix apples and oranges. You say he's "surprised again, finally"? Finally what? "That we haven't seen Catalonia for decades"? Do you really think that Catalonia hasn't done anything good in 34 years, between the '92 Games and the inauguration the other day? Has representing 25% of Spanish exports and 20% of GDP happened on its own? Has the player that the followers of la roja pray to and who has half the world in love come up like a mushroom? Does it seem to you that wanting independence is not thinking big, that organizing a referendum to discuss it as the most democratic countries do is not characteristic of a country "capable of doing extraordinary things and capable of building a collective ambition?" Here, the one that is not capable of doing things is the State. And I'm not referring to doing extraordinary things, but ordinary ones, like getting trains to run. What is commendable, Mr. Feijóo, is that with the fiscal deficit – extraordinary, this one – that has been dragging on for decades, the Catalans, as your predecessor Rajoy used to say, do things. But please, continue. "That day we did not see one part of Catalonia impose itself on another; we did not see one part of Spain against the rest of Spain. No, what we saw was a part of Spain offering the best it has, and we want to see it again more".

PP, Vox and Junts yesterday demanded Sánchez's resignation or that he submit to a confidence vote through a vote that has no practical value because Sánchez will neither resign nor submit to a confidence vote. The vote has political value, of course, because 3 years ago Junts voted in favor of Sánchez's investiture and yesterday asked him to step down in a vote. And at the same time, it is no victory for the PP, because it does not have Junts's votes for a motion of censure which, that one sí, could bring down Sánchez. And despite everything, yesterday, at the moment of the results, both benches were shouting and applauding.

There are days when a new situation is foreseen, in which even a change of era is sensed. And, from our point of view, this is what happened yesterday in Madrid.  The debate in Congress on Sánchez's explanations went as one might imagine: Sánchez defending himself against the PP with the "you too!" (because, of course, the PP can write encyclopedias about corruption), accusing the justice system of bias and therefore, of lawfare, making a somewhat forced turn, presenting the PSOE as a victim of the corruption of Ábalos and Cerdán, and reducing the crimes to a specific handful of delinquents. And Feijóo saying all sorts of things to him. And Rufián asking for a government plan. And Junts made an unexpected proposal, this one, to tell Sánchez: “we will invest a new socialist president and we will hold elections when the time comes, next year” (a proposal that Sánchez got rid of by inviting Junts to vote for a motion of no confidence from Feijóo, which Junts will not do). This would be an account adjusted to the facts of what we heard yesterday.But there was more, much more. Because, you know what? Feijóo told Sánchez that he will be indicted very soon. And the PP spokesperson in Congress said that there will be people who will start singing, like the corrupter Aldama, who will not go to prison and has saved three million euros in commissions that he will not have to return. In other words, the PP knows what the judges are preparing and what reports the Police and the Civil Guard are preparing. And in the afternoon, Begoña Gómez, Sánchez's wife, had to personally go and hand over her passport to the judge, and Zapatero's entire agenda was leaked.

From the sentence of 24 years in prison for Ábalos and 19 years for his assistant Koldo, it stands out that the corrupter of both, Aldama, has been given 4, will not go to prison and will keep the money he received in commissions.

The school year has ended, tomorrow is the eve of Sant Joan and summer has begun in the midst of a heatwave, which reminds us that the prophecies about the consequences of climate change in Catalonia are unfortunately being fulfilled on time.And with all, today's news is not this, but that of judge Peinado, who this weekend has requested the passport from Begoña Gómez, the wife of the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez. The judge considers (hold my drink) that the police escort for the Sánchez family could collaborate in an escape from Spain. See how big a mess Judge Peinado has made that this morning the CGPJ has met again to see if they open a file on him.There is no doubt that Begoña Gómez has had her passport confiscated to humiliate her and her husband, to see if she finally abandons the presidency of the Spanish government. They are after her. They want her to resign. Even more, they want her in prison. Let's see, corruption within the PSOE has already led to three of Sánchez's collaborators being imprisoned, but this is not incompatible with Sánchez being the subject of political persecution by elements of the judiciary, obedient to the Aznar-era war cry “he who can, do,” who believe they have a corporate and patriotic duty to prevent the amnesty from correcting what the Supreme Court ruled. Especially since, thanks to the amnesty, Sánchez has managed to govern despite losing the elections. And he has been president for eight years now. And it's becoming eternal for them.

I suppose you are aware of the news that the European Court of Human Rights has dismissed the lawsuit by parents of the Canet de Mar school against the ruling that ordered 25% of classes to be taught in Spanish.

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.