Firefighters found two children, aged 2 and 4, dead this Monday from cardiovascular arrest inside the family car. The cause of death is still uncertain, but the prosecutor for the Vaucluse department, in the southeast of the country, points to the intense heat. The mother has been attended by medical services, but the police have not yet taken her statement.

The start of summer 2026 arrives accompanied by unprecedented climatic severity in a large part of Western Europe. The seasonal change has coincided with a sudden escalation of temperatures that has forced the French meteorological service to decree the maximum alert level in the metropolitan region of Paris, where the thermometer today reached 38º and threatens to surpass historical records this week, more typical of desert latitudes.

When the Moroccan national team achieved a brilliant and deserved draw against Brazil in their World Cup debut, many people reacted with a grimace. For the first time, a team played in the final phase of a World Cup where none of the footballers had been born in their country. The initial squad had only one player born in Morocco, Ounahi. But with substitutions, 11 players born abroad coincided, two of whom were from Catalonia, Ismael Saibari and Ayoube Amaimouni. All with roots in Morocco, in this case. But born abroad, children of the Moroccan diaspora. Morocco opened an office in Spain years ago where a group of people work to identify players throughout Europe who are sons or grandsons of Moroccans, in order to recruit them, as they tried to do with Lamine Yamal without success.

More than 6,000 people participated on Sunday in a silent march in Florence, a municipality of just over 6,000 inhabitants located near Toulouse (Occitania). It is the town where Lyhanna, an 11-year-old girl, lived with her parents and brother. The police found her dead last Thursday, allegedly murdered by the father of one of her best friends, a 41-year-old man. The family had reported her missing three days earlier.

Brussels banned the Russian news agency Sputnik and the television station Russia Today, considered instruments of Kremlin disinformation, throughout European territory shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine more than four years ago. But in France, Russian propaganda did not die with that decision by the European Commission. Added to the entire disinformation apparatus operating through social networks is the strange phenomenon of Xenia Fedorova, the journalist who directed Russia Today in France until it had to close.

France and Germany have definitively buried a project that foresaw the development and joint manufacturing of a next-generation combat aircraft. It was one of Europe's most ambitious defense programs, valued at 100 billion euros, but discrepancies between the two main partners, Airbus and Dassault, have derailed the project, according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel and the agencies AFP and Reuters, which cite sources from the German government.

The French writer Julie Héraclès first saw when she was in high school the photograph that Robert Capa took after the end of the Nazi occupation in her hometown, Chartres. "Since I saw it, I've always kept it in mind. It has always intrigued me," she explains. The image shows Simone Touseau, a 23-year-old French woman, with her head shaved and a brand on her forehead made with a hot iron, holding her infant daughter and next to her mother, who had also been shaved. Both were publicly humiliated by an enraptured crowd on August 16, 1944. The photo is a symbol of the savage purge that took place in France after the Allied victory.

France, a European country that was a pioneer 25 years ago in recognizing the slave trade and slavery as a crime against humanity, is now opening the door – timidly – to its reparation. The country was one of the main colonizing powers in Africa, the Caribbean, and America, especially between the 17th and 18th centuries, where it promoted slavery. The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, has argued this week that the "immense issue" of reparation should not be evaded.

The spectacular figures give an idea of the scope of the problem: the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into 84 nursery schools, 20 primary schools, and 10 nurseries in the French capital due to complaints against monitors and childcare educators, for both sexual abuse and acts of mistreatment (violence, punishments, etc.). The Prosecutor's Office announced this week, coinciding with a strike this Tuesday by educational staff who look after children in schools during non-teaching hours, both during the lunch break and in activities held in the afternoons, when classes have already finished.

Following the regional elections in Andalusia, there has been much talk again about the far-right's attempts to seize power. One of the tactics to achieve this – not only in Spain but also in other countries like the United States or our neighbor France – consists of trying to dominate the media, the more massive the better, with the aim of influencing society's beliefs or the collective imagination. This tactic is part of the “cultural war,” which seeks to impose a hegemonic way of thinking. Societies are plural, and the free expression of differences in political, ideological, religious positions, etc., is a symptom of democratic health. It is revealing, however, that lately it is the anti-democratic right that invokes freedom of expression as a weapon in this “war,” while when it is in power, what it does is eliminate all dissident discourse.In France, a scandal occurred a few weeks ago in the cultural sphere that is still causing a great deal of uproar. The circumstance that caused it seems trivial: the Algerian writer of French expression Boualem Sansal (a candidate for the Nobel Prize for years), who had been imprisoned for months for political reasons in his country and was released thanks to international pressure, decided to change publishers. So far, everything suggests that this is a personal and not at all reprehensible decision, but the problem is that the publishing house Grasset, which will publish his next book —a chronicle of his stay in prison, with the ambition of a bestseller”— is in the hands of the Bolloré group. The founder and owner of this holding company, which includes several well-known periodicals and television channels such as Canal+, is the millionaire Vincent Bolloré, who has openly declared himself in favor of leading a "civilizing project" based on the ideals of the far-right and the most rancid Catholicism.

Spanish strawberries, mostly produced in Huelva, have flooded French supermarkets for decades. Their price is clearly lower than French varieties. But little by little, strawberries produced in France have been gaining ground. According to the sector, for the first time, 50% of this fruit consumed in France has been grown in the country. The rest is imported, mainly from Spain. "It hasn't happened suddenly. Over 15 years, we have gained 10% of the market share from Spanish strawberries. It hasn't been a sudden change," explains Emeline Vanespen, director of the main French association of strawberry producers (AOPn Fraises et Framboises de France).

Like someone watching an animal documentary, I have observed with interest three things that have happened in recent months in the French literary market, a traditionally protectionist market that has managed to defend itself, in part, from Anglo-Saxon cultural colonizations and which, for this reason, I furiously envy.The first noteworthy news is that at the beginning of March this year it was announced that Amazon would be a "partner" of the Paris Book Fair; by partner they obviously meant that it would put a lot of money into it. For a while now, our neighbors have had a tug-of-war with Amazon: since 2023, a law has imposed a minimum shipping fee of three euros for book shipments (I read that Urtasun recently said they are studying doing something similar in our country). The fact is that Amazon interprets, very conveniently, that if the book is delivered to a locker, this fee does not need to be applied. The discussion is served, of course. That Amazon is a threat to bookstores is nothing new (I agree with what Oriol Soler said recently on this, although thinking that Amazon is our only problem seems reductive and a bit misleading); what is new is that following the announcement of Amazon's sponsorship, the French Booksellers Association decided to stand up and withdraw from the Fair on the grounds that Amazon has predatory and hegemonic aspirations that are a danger to everyone in the sector: authors, publishers, and booksellers. I am pleased to see the fighting spirit of the French and I wonder what would happen if this had taken place in our country. I get the impression that we would have swallowed it whole, because we are always short on audacity and full of fears, and perhaps also because the links in our system are weaker than the French ones. The fact is that following the controversy, Amazon decided to withdraw from the Book Fair. Sometimes, standing up yields results: let's tattoo it on ourselves so we don't forget it.The second noteworthy fact is that this year the Paris Fair has not counted on the main imprints of Hachette, which I would say is the French publisher with the largest market share (similar or higher than that of the Planeta group in Spain, if AI does not deceive me). Not only has it not gone, but it set up a small alternative festival on its own during the month of March. This confirms that we must not only fear the big international groups but also the national ones, as the predatory and hegemonic will affects us all. The controversy at Grasset publishing house

The third event that interested me is what happened with the Grasset imprint, which is precisely one of Hachette's most important. There they publish (they used to publish) authors like Virginie Despentes, Vanessa Springora, Sorj Chalandon, Bernard-Henri Lévy or Pascal Bruckner; they and 110 more authors made public an open letter in Libération announcing that, following the dismissal of Olivier Nora (the historic editor of Grasset for twenty-six years), they would no longer sign with Grasset. 115 authors, oh my god!, and another fifty have since joined the protest. I am almost convinced that the authors from here would have resigned ourselves to it and moved on, although, of course, in private we would have complained to exhaustion: that's how we are, in private we say everything (praise and blame) but in public we keep quiet like no one else. All of Grasset's mess has its trigger in the owner, Vincent Bolloré, a magnate who with his millions dedicates himself to promoting far-right ideas, for example, through Europe 1, the most important private radio in France which – oh, what a coincidence – decided to buy shortly before the French elections. We can already imagine that the billionaire has not ruffled a single hair over the departure of this hundred or so authors who consider Nora's departure an "unacceptable attack on editorial independence and creative freedom" and who refuse to "be hostages of an ideological war that seeks to impose authoritarianism on culture and the media"; Bolloré has not been moved because we can deduce that literature, in fact, doesn't give a damn about it. All of this is, without a doubt, very sad and discouraging news. And what do we do with all this? On the one hand, we should look at it closely and follow it with attention, because as that saying goes about the neighbor's beard, perhaps we should start soaking ours. On the other hand, it would be advisable to become aware that keeping quiet and swallowing is not always the best strategy, that resistance is sometimes not only necessary but also useful, that the collective has a strength that the individual does not have, etcetera. Well, perhaps it would be useless and it would be better to stay on the couch sprawled out watching documentaries, because there are plenty for all tastes: in some the zebra always succumbs to the lion, in others a buffalo charges a predator with a horn thrust, and in some there are even fish that join together forming a swirl to confuse and save themselves from the worst of their predators.

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“Midnight will soon strike in the century”. These are the words of Edgar Morin who, at 104 years old, continues to show his lucidity in a long interview with Le Monde. Concerned “about the neo-authoritarian regression that is spreading across the world” and which favors “one of the two Frances: the one that was for a long time monarchical, aristocratic and religious, a Petainist France, as opposed to the republican, secular and social one”, he regrets that humanists find it difficult to unite at a time when “a conscious regenerationism of the original identity and the common destiny of all humans” is essential. And all this in “a catastrophic process underway. And although Trump and Netanyahu are not eternal, right now there is no option for salvation. We can only bear witness to impotence. The only hope is the improbable. Let's resist”.

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The inhabitants of the French village of Hagenbach, with only 800 residents, cannot come to terms with it. In this Alsatian municipality, a father locked his son inside a van parked in front of the family home for almost a year and a half, forcing him to relieve himself in bags and bringing him food only twice a day. He did not go to school, had not showered, nor had he had contact with anyone during all this time. The French gendarmerie rescued him after a complaint last week from a neighbor who had heard a child's voice inside the vehicle. The officers found the boy, who is now nine years old, naked, in a fetal position, and malnourished. He was unable to walk.

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Just a month ago, Juan Carlos I decided to postpone the trip he had planned to Sanxenxo – to return to the regattas – and stay in Abu Dhabi after the outbreak of the war in Iran. Thirty days later, the conflict in the Middle East has not ended, but the emeritus king has decided to leave the Arab country where he has resided since 2020 to receive an award for his memoir book, Reconciliation. The recognition is from the French association Lire la Société, but it is still surprising that the emeritus king receives an award from a country like France, a republic that values the figure and trajectory of Juan Carlos I when the Spanish state has condemned him to ostracism.

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The Mossos d'Esquadra have located in Lloret de Mar a six-year-old minor who was registered as stolen by the French judicial authorities and who had been missing for months with her mother and maternal grandmother. The investigation began a year ago. The search was activated following the issuance of two European Arrest and Surrender Warrants (EASO) by the French authorities against the mother and grandmother, for an alleged crime of child abduction reported by the girl's father.

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When he had only been in office for a few weeks, the US ambassador in Paris, Charles Kushner, sent a letter to the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, to reproach him that he was not doing enough to curb antisemitic acts in the country. "Not a day goes by in the country without Jews being attacked in the streets, synagogues and schools being desecrated, and Jewish-owned businesses being vandalized," Kushner stated in the rather undiplomatic letter, sent at the end of August last year. Macron had announced just a few days earlier that France would recognize Palestine.

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1. French politics is gripped by the threat of the far right, a threat that is spreading throughout Europe in the form of fears of a widespread rise in neo-fascism. This anxiety is in keeping with the logic of times in which the right seems to accept the drift towards post-democratic authoritarianism, and neo-fascists capitalize on it with the classic game of copycats. For some time now, the names of Marine Le Pen—given her pending criminal case—and Jordan Bardella have been mentioned as potential presidential candidates. However, this weekend's municipal and regional elections, while not decisive, have highlighted the gap between rhetoric and reality, giving France signs that might suggest the reactionary movement is not as potent as it seems, provided the right doesn't lend it a hand.

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The leader of the National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen, He made no comment on the election results on Sunday night.Only the party president, Jordan Bardella, spoke—very briefly—to celebrate the increase in the number of mayoralties. "It's the biggest gain" in the party's history. "Never before have the RN and its allies held so many elected positions in France," stated Bardella, the party's future presidential candidate if the courts uphold Le Pen's disqualification. Despite his words, neither Bardella's lackluster tone, nor Le Pen's silence, nor the overall atmosphere suggested a night of electoral victory. While the advance of the far right is undeniable, especially in the southeast of the country, the situation remains somewhat different. (Northern Catalonia and Occitania are the new fiefdoms of the RN) And in some northern areas, the majority of the municipalities it has won are in rural areas, in towns or small cities. National Rally only managed to win in one city with more than 100,000 inhabitants, Perpignan, where it already governed. And it secured Nice, where Éric Ciotti, leader of the UDR (Union of the Right), Le Pen's ally, won.

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The French municipal elections this Sunday These were the last electoral test before the presidential elections scheduled for 2027, where the support base of the far right and the resilience of the main parties were tested in a fragmented political landscape marked by parliamentary instability. We've compiled some charts to help understand the results:

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