The ad appears from time to time for those who don't have Spotify Premium and the editorial's kind press officer makes me aware of it. These days on a book tour, we've heard it in various cars, many times. It's a paradoxical ad. It tells you that if you had Spotify Premium you wouldn't hear this ad.

Today we will have meatballs with potatoes, which with the basics I have in the freezer are quick to make and ideal for days, like today, when we have a lot to do before lunch.Will the girls give you a hand?

We always make literature: when we order a coffee, we recount our ailments to a doctor, we write an email, we insult (by the way: the low quality of insults nowadays is striking), we make the shopping list, we offer condolences, we declare our eternal or circumstantial love, we scold our child or argue with our partner.Those who wrote electoral messages on the walls in Pompeii ("Vote X") were making literature; those who hastily and eagerly wrote crude poems ("We have peed in bed; truly / we are a disaster. / Do you want the reasons, innkeeper? There was no / chamber pot!"); the romantics ("How I would like to hold your dear arms around my neck and kiss your lips") and the pragmatic merchants of their own bodies ("Hope, yes to everything, nine aces"). Those who confessed their existential concerns ("Once dead, we are nothing") and the composers of meta-graffiti ("It surprises me, oh wall, that you have not yet collapsed under the weight of the foolishness of so many writers").We find literature on the walls of Bilbao ("Violent gays seek revenge. Gay Intifada") or Cordoba ("Hating is for weaklings") or on the Roman wall of Lugo ("Romani ite domum", that is to say, "Romans go home").These graffiti or, if you prefer, these murals are a literary exercise (although not very civic), because they aim to shape an idea to give it the form of an aphorism.It seems that the first graphic representation of Jesus Christ was a graffiti from 200 AD found in the Pedagogium of the Palatine Hill in Rome. With the intention of ridiculing Christianity, it shows Jesus with a huge donkey's head and nailed to the cross. One inscription says: “Alexamenos worships God”. Not far away, in the same building, another inscription says: "Alexamenos is faithful". Perhaps this person is literarily claiming their faith in front of those who have mocked them?When we meet a friend and they ask us how we are doing, we immediately set about artistically modeling our memory to give it the shape of a narrative. In speaking – forgive the expression – we literary. Don't we perhaps spend the day explaining (supposedly) interesting things about ourselves? And isn't a biography the result of our insistence on imposing narratives on the chaos of our existence?Then, and here is where I wanted to get, the understanding we have of ourselves cannot be more accurate than the rigor of the words we use to understand ourselves. Beyond words, there is only darkness and, perhaps, sentimental jam. In the case – highly improbable – that there were a genuine self, a true self, without words it would be mute.

Kris Charlier, 76, born in Belgium and living in Catalonia since 2015, has taken two Civil Guard officers to court, accusing them of harassing him at El Prat airport, allegedly for speaking to them in Catalan: "If I had spoken in Spanish, I suppose the Barcelona Provincial Court would have said everything." Charlier, represented by Plataforma per la Llengua (Platform for the Language), is seeking a six-year and two-month prison sentence for hate crimes, coercion, and falsification of official documents. He has also asked the court to disqualify the two officers from public office for almost seven years, fine them €4,800, and award him €3,122 in damages. The prosecution, however, sees no crime in the officers' actions, who are represented by the State Attorney's Office. Charlier stated during the trial that the officers' actions made him feel "humiliated, offended, and wounded" in his dignity as a citizen.

In the real Catalonia, repetitive, recidivist, bounced back… Rrrrrr. The van arrived and said we didn't exist. I reread: "Oops! Your shipment could not be delivered due to an incorrect address.". All my life living in a wrong place. A: we check. We reiterate: correct address. The same as always. Nothing to say? Neither reread the paper. Nor trace the streets. Nor look with your eyes. No scratching. Rationality 0 - Irrationality 10. If the GPS says that it is not here: it is not here: it is not here. The important thing is the trip. Rrrrrr.

I read in the ARA the news about the birth of the actors' son Úrsula Corberó and Chino DarínThese are the kinds of news we always love. The baby's father explained why the birth took place in Barcelona: "The child is born where the mother wants, and I think it's good that it's that way. That she feels comfortable, that she feels she's in her homeland, and that her mother tongue is spoken, which I think is important."

It is well known and evident that the Catalan's health is not at its best. However, among so many discouraging surveys on language useEspecially among younger generations, positive initiatives that inspire optimism and hope are also making a name for themselves. One such project is that of Irene Carreras, a 27-year-old from Girona who, through her social media accounts—where she has amassed over 75,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram—charmingly teaches simple expressions and words to capture the attention of new speakers. Carreras, who was a singer in the second-to-last generation of the family band Macedonia, often appears in her videos with her grandmother Dolors, who revives obsolete vocabulary, expressions, and idioms. And, thanks to her online presence, she has already begun offering online courses. More than 500 students at the basic and intermediate levels.

Joana Pares, of French origin, was expelled from Terrassa because she was convicted of witchAt the trial, which took place in 1602, he declared an inventory of his possessions. He was "destitute." He owned only a used box with several pieces of linen and wool cloth, a pepper-colored garment (a dark green garment), a used bodysuit, and several small pots of concoctions and sauces. In 1562, Guillem Parllebí was sentenced to the galleys (there is a rather explicit drawing) for sodomy with a cow. The accused, according to the sentence, had his underpants soaked. He defended himself by saying that he was embracing the cow to masturbate her. In 1618, there was a trial against Guillem Pujol, of French origin, Joana Casteta, a widow and exile, and Joana Teixidora. The two women were accused of conspiring and paying Pujol to kill Teixidora's husband. As in most trials, the women came out looking bad. Casteta was accused of being a widow, a woman of ill repute, and of living dishonestly. The truth is that Teixidora's husband abused her.

Menorca is the Balearic island where Catalan is most widely spoken in the streets and where the most families choose it as the primary language of instruction in schools, but it is also where it is now most threatened by the administration. The PP's strategic alliance with representatives expelled from Vox and the appointment of the former director of Sa Fundació, the organization that denies the unity of the language, as Minister of Culture have provoked a gradual struggle against standard Catalan. This is a decision that no one in Menorca had ever questioned, not even the PP.

The government filed an appeal on Friday to try to get the Supreme Court to overturn the annulment of the linguistic regime decree to protect Catalan as the language of instruction in schools and prevent the implementation of language quotas, according to information obtained by ARA. Last July, prompted by an appeal from the Assembly for a Bilingual School (AEB), the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) struck down more than a dozen articles of this regulation, including those establishing Catalan and Aranese as the languages of instruction in schools and also requiring that the language of instruction be Catalan.

At this point, the debate about language and immigration is outdated, because anyone who denies the evidence is deceiving themselves and others: That Catalonia had 4 million inhabitants in 1960 and now has 8 million is an irrefutable fact. That this doubling is due to immigration is a certainty. What is debatable is whether the predominance of Spanish is due to the linguistic zeal of the newcomers, or whether what we are experiencing is a logical consequence of the sociopolitical context.

A new edition of SAGA, an event promoted by Plataforma per la Llengua and supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya, has begun. After exceeding 8,000 attendees... last yearThe event returns to La Farga in L'Hospitalet, but expands its reach to occupy the entire 8,000 square meters of the exhibition space, aiming to offer a wider variety of activities and accommodate a larger audience. During the three days of SAGA, there will be nearly seventy exhibitors, including studios, training centers, associations, and clubs. New activities have been added, and some exhibitors have increased their space compared to previous editions. SAGA 2025 returned today, Friday, with tickets sold out. It is geared towards a more professional audience and, above all, students, as the event also expands its educational offerings and features informative talks about video games. Over the weekend, the fair kicks off with official competitions and also opens its doors to a more family-oriented audience, with a diverse program full of recreational and educational activities. In short, the event aims to establish itself "as a benchmark for Catalan-speaking communities connected to video games," according to the organizers.

We have an important figure regarding financing, which hasn't been published anywhere, that we'll discuss shortly. But first, President Pujol continues to recover well from the pneumonia for which he was hospitalized and could be discharged relatively soon. This would allow him to appear remotely before the judge of the National Court next Monday, with Pujol in Barcelona and the judge in Madrid. This appearance is clearly designed to target Pujol, because it will allow the judge to decide whether the former president is fit to testify at his trial or not, when it turns out that forensic doctors have prepared a report for the judge confirming what we already told you yesterday in our analysis: that Pujol is not fit to testify or defend himself. And so, the question is: if the doctors appointed by the court to evaluate Pujol's condition... You've already been told that he's not in a condition to testify.Why are you summoning him to appear? Should a judge medically evaluate a person? It's just wishful thinking.

What do we do? That's the question on the minds of parents who still have brain cells when they feel their child doesn't speak Catalan, even when their child from other families who also speak Catalan speak it. children They repeat like a machine gun (we're at war and they've been given weapons): "Catalan isn't fashionable." Catalan must be the only language on this planet and in the galaxy that isn't fashionable. Is Icelandic in vogue? Malay? Portuguese? Huh?

The European Network for Linguistic Equality (ELEN) has declared a state of "emergency" due to the "decline" in the social use of Catalan. In a final resolution published this Saturday after its general assembly in Barcelona, ​​ELEN called for "coordinated action between public institutions, civil society organizations, and the media to reverse the decline in social use and ensure the future vitality of the language." Furthermore, it demands that governments "guarantee active policies for the revitalization of minority languages ​​and for the legal recognition of their rights." In this regard, the eighty organizations that make up ELEN insist on the official status of Catalan, Galician, and Basque as official languages ​​of the EU and advocate for "updating" the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights.

In the final stretch of his eight-year termQuim Salvi, the parish priest of the University of Girona (UdG), receives ARA in the beautiful Les Àligues building—a former military barracks in the Barri Vell (Old Quarter) that exemplifies the university's transformation of the historic center—eager to take stock but also with a long-term vision. Currently, the UdG has four campuses in the city: the Barri Vell campus, the city center campus, the Montilivi campus, and the Research and Innovation Park in La Creueta. And unlike other universities, it is finding that more and more students are choosing it as their first option: a direct consequence of the cost of living in Barcelona and the difficulties students face in finding affordable housing. The next parish priest's challenge will be the creation of the new Health Campus on the border between Girona and Salt, where the new Trueta stadium is to be built. The elections will be held on November 27, and the new parish priest is expected to take up his post around Christmas time.

The creature writing this must confess that she is left-wing and arrhythmic. An atypical variant of those of us who use our left hand like an existential mouse. We have no sense of rhythm. And this makes it difficult for us to dance, to follow feet, fingers, and even neurons. It's okay: it's not contagious. I can listen to music, although it doesn't make me get up from my chair. Right now I'm listening to Rosalía's latest album and I've sent her a WhatsApp To God.

Making Catalan a reality when we enter the doctor's office shouldn't be a wish or a pipe dream, but a guaranteed right of all patients who must communicate with healthcare professionals in highly private (sometimes, very serious) situations. However, we have often heard and published in the ARA (Spanish National Archives) complaints from citizens who have seen this right violated, only to find that their interlocutors not only didn't speak Catalan, but were also unable to understand it, forcing them to address the patient in Spanish. Given this, the mobilization of patients themselves—through complaints to the center in question, for example—is important, but it's also important that something moves on the other side, that is, among healthcare professionals.

At a few minutes before noon, about twenty people gather in the gardens of Can Mantega, in the Sants neighborhood. The group jokes (in Catalan) to break the ice. The fact that such a large group uses Catalan on the streets of Barcelona is, unfortunately, becoming a situation that is almost endangered. However, the truth is that there are people eager to learn it, speak it, or improve their Catalan, as demonstrated by the Catalan conversation groups organized for years by the Coordinator of Associations for the Catalan Language (CAL) in various locations throughout the region.

"This was and was not, have a good trip, goldfinch..." The velvety tone of the language spreads soundlessly throughout the classroom. The children's ears open, ready to receive the melody. They are the teacher-grandmothers who revive stories, a project by Rosa Sensat promoted by retired teachers, who travel throughout Catalonia explaining stories, myths, and legends in schools. A magnificent group, made up of dales, speakers of ancestral voices who defend the bare bones of orality. They don't use those modern-day rampoines called that: supports. They don't use text or illustrations, and needless to say, screens. Just voice and gesture. The narration, then, becomes fluid and full of cadences. The power of the language alone is felt, filled with couplets and tongue twisters. The oral transmission of myths and stories connects children to our tradition and brings them into contact with an exceptionally beautiful Catalan language, which these teacher-grandmothers know inside and out.