Coincidence (providence, some believe) has meant that Barcelona will host more than 2,000 executives on November 26, two days before the day of reflection and three before the day to vote in the general elections, at the congress organized by the CEDE Foundation. Management of uncertainty, digitalization, artificial intelligence (AI), geopolitics, and the experiences of high-level executives are matters that concern the 170,000 executives who are part of this organization, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary and is presided over by Isidre Fainé, president of the La Caixa Foundation and its investment arm, Criteria. Politics will not be the subject of the meeting, organized many months ago, but it will surely hover over the sessions, which have the motto "Creating value, building the future".

Robert Yale Shapiro is a doctor of political science and associate dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and specializes in American politics, public opinion, and political leadership. He speaks to ARA by phone from New York to assess the historic midterm elections that have given the majority of both chambers to the Democratic Party.

Trump's huge defeat in Tuesday's midterm elections has been described as a tsunami. And it certainly is, because the earthquake continues to send waves, and it is sending them all over the world.

Financial markets reacted this Wednesday with optimism to the defeat of the Republican Party in the United States legislative elections. Most stock exchanges around the world closed the day with gains, while the price of oil recorded significant drops, although it remains at levels close to 100 dollars per barrel in the case of Brent, the benchmark crude in Europe.

Finally, yesterday, at the end of a long four-hour appearance at the permanent deputation of Congress, the Spanish Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, presented his resignation.

The wind is blowing in favor of the Democrats, but the United States midterm elections will be very contested and will depend on the results in less than a dozen states. This is what polls suggest about an election in which President Donald Trump risks being able to continue deploying his political and economic agenda without the brake of Congress for the last two years of his term. The Democrats, however, aspire to turn the majorities around and snatch the control that the Republicans now have in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Agreement between the PSC and Comuns for the Senate candidacies. Both parties have reached a pact to present a united front in the upcoming elections to the Spanish upper house, and Ada Colau's party has committed to withdrawing its candidacies in Tarragona, Lleida, and Girona to concentrate the vote on the PSC. In return, the Catalan socialists will appoint a regional senator at the suggestion of the Comuns. The PSC spokesperson, Lluïsa Moret, who announced the understanding, justified it in a press conference as the "democratic responsibility of the progressive and Catalanist forces" to join forces and "block the path for the right and the far-right" in the Senate. In this sense, they state that they want to prevent the Spanish upper house from continuing to "block the initiatives" of the Spanish government and becoming an "instrument of democratic regression and control of State institutions."

Unlike what happened in Argentina with Juan Domingo Perón, Lulism will not become an ideology nor will it perpetuate itself as a political movement in Brazil, but rather it will disappear when Lula da Silva, who turns 81 this Tuesday, decides to step aside. For the moment, however, that has not been the case. The footprint of the social and income transfer policies established during his first two terms (2003-2010), which benefited 50 million Brazilians, 36 million of whom rose out of extreme poverty, has transformed the South American giant forever.

“We will win, and I can't wait,” said Jovana, an electrical engineering student at the University of Belgrade and part of the Serbian student movement, a few days ago. This Sunday, Serbia chose the composition of its Parliament in the most important elections since the nineties. Since before the polls opened at seven in the morning, thousands of people were queuing at the doors of the polling stations. The turnout was 69.1%, the highest in the decade.

Lula da Silva has added to his legend this Sunday with a resounding, improbable, and unprecedented electoral triumph, which will give him the possibility to exercise, at 80 years old, a fourth and final term as president of Brazil, with which he will close a long political career. There was no precedent in the New Republic –born from the 1988 Constitution, which the extreme right threatened to blow up– for the loser of the first round to be able to turn the situation around in the second round. And the "father of the poor", driven by the force of giant street mobilizations, has achieved it. The candidate of the Workers' Party (PT) has added 51.79% of the support (64,255,891 votes, the highest figure ever achieved by a candidate in Brazil), against 48.21% (59,825,984 votes) for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Party (PL).

“My first objective is for Sánchez to leave,” said Feijóo when Aimar Bretos (Cadena SER) asked him if he would make a pact with Vox. The end justifies the means: whitewashing the extreme right. We all know that if Sánchez does not lose, he will not govern, but it is a lack of respect for the citizenry and an unusual display of his limitations that Feijóo permanently deflects the ball and, instead of explaining what he wants to do and why he wants to do it, entrusts everything to the president's attrition.

The leader of Podem, Irene Montero, and the Republican Gabriel Rufián have kicked off the November 29th pre-campaign by lashing out at the rest of the left at a state level, and have set themselves up as the only possible alternative to the Spanish right and far-right. Making an implicit reference to the progressive coalition led by Ada Colau, Front Ampli, the former Minister of Equality reproached them, saying they “look a lot like the PSOE” and suggested that “they should run in the elections on the same ballots,” even though they only run together in some Senate constituencies. “These left-wing parties will not solve our problems,” said Montero. “Whatever you call yourself, we are the front,” added Rufián.

Of the many possibilities for analysis offered by the elections in Brazil on October 24th, there is one that, perhaps because it touches me closely, interests and horrifies me particularly: the anti-intellectualism of Flávio Bolsonaro's party.

Usually, on election night, little attention is paid to the results in the Senate. But this time it seems it will be different. Both the left and the right have understood that control of the upper house could be key in a legislature that, whoever wins, is expected to be of high political voltage. For this reason, the PSOE and the Broad Front have rushed to agree on joint candidacies and now the PP and Vox, who no longer hide the intention to govern together, as did happen in 2023, are exploring forms of collaboration.

Housing –the reason why the general elections in the State have been brought forward– is entering fully into the electoral pre-campaign of November 29th. This Monday it did so when the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced a sum of 45 million euros to expand the supply of university residence places throughout the State and promote affordable accommodation aimed at them. The goal is to try to give a breather to university students who have to do everything possible to, often unsuccessfully, find an apartment. Of this sum, 2.9 million euros will go to Catalonia, specifically for a project that the Lleida City Council is promoting, as detailed by the Ministry of Housing. In a first phase, still without a calendar, it is expected to mobilize 2,000 places.

Despite the PP's efforts to avoid any controversy before the November 29 elections, this Monday Alberto Núñez Feijóo once again took aim at the Catalan school language immersion system. Although his "Contract with Spain" only contains a generic commitment to "guarantee the teaching of Spanish throughout Spain" (as if that were not already guaranteed), in reality, what is being prepared, according to party sources, is the intervention of the Catalan system so that it more closely resembles the Galician one. And what is this Galician school system that Núñez Feijóo defends? Well, it is a system with 50% in each language and where the core subjects, such as mathematics, are taught exclusively in Spanish.

Without ideas, without direction, and increasingly distanced from the citizenry, the left to the left of the socialists present a miserable spectacle of impotence and an absence of goals and discourse, such that the only thing that surfaces are worn-out egos that no longer attract anyone, trapped in the mire of the eternal and pathetic psychopathology of small differences. There is no project, only infighting, and not even the emergency of the sustained growth of the far right serves to make people react and place the need to curb the authoritarian drift above the miserable dynamic of move over so I can take your place.

The leadership of Esquerra Republicana has already decided on the traveling companions that Gabriel Rufián will have in the next Spanish elections. The party's executive has shored up Mireia Ingla, Jordi Albert, and Laura Pelay as numbers two, three, and four in the Barcelona constituency, respectively, all three of whom have the utmost confidence of the party president, Oriol Junqueras. "Time proves us right: national candidacies, rooted in the territory, are the ones with the most strength to stop Spanish neo-fascism," asserted the ERC spokesperson, Isaac Albert, in a statement issued by the party this Wednesday.

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.