You might follow her on social media (@congafas_ on Instagram), where, with humor, illustrations and heartbreaking messages, Laura Camps de Agorreta (Barcelona, ​​1984) She defends the rights of the working class. She also addresses parenting, the physical and mental exhaustion of mothers, the lack of support, and the difficulty of work-life balance. This digital activist and communications consultant has now published an essay. We don't have enough time. (Bruguera 2025), where she reflects on the scourge of our times: the lack of time and the relationship between work and life.

Although he was not born in the neighborhood, Isaac Isi Palazón (1994) has become one of Vallecas' idols after five and a half seasons at Rayo Vallecano, Barça's next opponent this Sunday in La Liga (9:30 p.m., DAZN). "I consider myself from Cieza, El Bierzo, and Vallecas," the Murcia native stated last March in an interview on Cadena SER. Isinho, his Instagram handle, has won the hearts of all the fans of the Madrid-based team, a neighborhood club that is very special because of "the proximity the fans have to be with the players," as the player himself describes.

In Catalonia we have the lowest unemployment rate since 2008. And yet, something is jarring. How is it possible that 16.2% of working people live in poverty? How can one in four people be at risk of social exclusion? If having a job no longer guarantees a decent life, perhaps we should ask ourselves what value work has today.

The Spanish government, in need of gestures to disguise the growing blurring of social democracy, has opted for a reduction in the working day, rejected by employers and the right, who always see too many concessions to the working classes. Two and a half hours less per week doesn't cause any major scares. In fact, several sectors are already working below the 40-hour mark: education (34.5), public administration (35.9), and finance and insurance (37.2). Why not the others?

On Monday, April 28, the great blackout. On Tuesday, April 29, the inevitable aftermath of the serious incident. Thursday, May 1, a holiday. On Friday, May 2, many educational and non-educational institutions were on long weekends. The truth is that it's not very common for all this to happen so often. In any case, the circumstances invite us to think about how our perception of work and, consequently, that of leisure are changing. It's likely that if a Catalan in the 17th or 18th centuries had been asked "What are you?", the answer would have been associated with their status (military, ecclesiastical, noble, etc.) or with belonging to a particular guild, which until the end of theAncien Régime It was the main form of civil association between people. It's also reasonable to think that later, in the 19th century, the person being addressed would no longer have referred to the estate or guild, but would have placed themselves among the industrialists/owners, the artisans, or the workers. It's equally likely that, until just over a generation ago, the name of the company one worked for was added to the answer: "I work for Fecsa" (or La Caixa, or whatever). Today, when I speak to a former student and ask them what they do, whether they have a permanent, paid job or not, they often respond with a formula that implies a—let's say— desiderative identity"I want to do a second master's degree in London," "I'm trying to change departments within the company," "I'd like to learn French," etc. There is a conviction that work will no longer be an activity associated with one's personal identity, because one will have several throughout one's life. As Professor Carlos Obeso, with whom I collaborated on the European Values Survey a few years ago, emphasized, work is increasingly a simple remuneration mechanism, not a profound feature of our self, as it once was. The desiderative identity within the workplace points to the full acceptance of a changing world, which does not necessarily mean an unstable or even insecure one. The enormous labor mobility in the United States, for example, is associated, with all the necessary exceptions, with low unemployment rates compared to Europe.

Amador Fernández-Savater (Madrid, 1974) is a journalist, philosopher and author of Libidinal capitalism (NED Editions), a book in which he analyzes the relationship between capitalism and desire and addresses the malaise, precariousness, and acceleration of our times.

Labor costs—the cost to the company of each employee, including salary and other expenses such as social security contributions—closed 2024 at historic highs in both Catalonia and Spain, according to a survey published Monday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). Specifically, labor costs in Catalonia averaged €3,483 at the end of the fourth quarter, after increasing by 2.6% compared to the last quarter of the previous year, while in Spain as a whole they averaged €3,258 per month, a 3.6% increase.

I remember, a while back, hearing the writer Cristina Morales explain that if they wanted to send her a job offer, whether it was to invite her to a festival, a talk, or a dialogue, they should write the estimated amount in the subject line of the email. So, yes: along with the subject ("Poetry recital for festival X"), they should add how much money they were offering for the job. She said that, otherwise, she wouldn't bother opening it. At the time, it seemed exaggerated, a bit over the top, but in time I have to agree. We order the whole loaf of bread to get crumbs, you know, and now I'm happy if they tell me in the body of the email, without me having to ask, how much they'll pay me. However, normally you have to respond with, "Excuse me, what's your budget?" or "Do you plan on paying fees?" with fear, as if I were asking for the wrong thing.

The last meeting before the final proposal to regulate the work of delivery riders has ended without a formal agreement, but with the approval of all parties involved to turn them into salaried employees. "There is enough consensus to acknowledge the fact that they are employees," say sources from the Ministry of Labour. "The novelty is that the business organisations are agreeing to the fact that they are employees", the unions agree. This would seem to indicate that delivery riders will become salaried workers by law.