The slow but sure capitulation of the PP to Vox has found an anchor point in the principle of national priority, the banner of ongoing negotiations and an alibi for neo-authoritarian shortcomings. The right wing has always operated on the simplistic logic of good guys and bad guys, of "us" and

In 2010, the late British historian Tony Judt questioned the malaise that was engulfing our world after the great crisis of 2008 in an essay that, sixteen years later, remains relevant. The book, which in the Catalan version was titled The World Is Not Enough, began with a resounding warning: "There is something profoundly wrong with our current way of life." After recalling that "we cannot continue living like this," in a world so unjust and unequal, and noting that, however, "we seem incapable of conceiving alternatives," the essay advocated a return to social democracy, which is the policy that has historically brought the most well-being and equality to European society and which Judt considered, without idealizing it, as "the best option available." Of course, as long as it served to change the current state of affairs. In fact, the book concluded with a paraphrase of a well-known statement by Marx: "So far, philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

Pedro Sánchez has inaugurated with Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, the weekend with which the Spanish government seeks to establish Barcelona as one of the reference cities against trumpism. The two leaders met this morning at the Palau de Pedralbes, where they held a meeting, and thus inaugurate two days in which up to three summits of international progressivism coincide in the Catalan capital, with the Spanish president acting as host.

For Sant Jordi, you can also buy history books. In fact, it is advisable to do so: to buy and read good history books, now that revisionisms, denials, and pseudo-historians are once again occupying platforms and spaces in the media, in addition to flooding social networks. History is one of the most decisive areas of knowledge in the construction of societies and civilizations: without knowing where we come from, we cannot know where we are or who we are, and we are more exposed to lying, self-serving, and – these indeed – indoctrination narratives, which some are interested in spreading to seize control of power.Two excellent books have recently arrived in bookstores to understand what Francoism and Nazism were, and to comprehend the danger posed by the rise of new fascisms and far-right movements. These are the volume El franquisme, by Josep Fontana, published by Eumo, and the essay Els irresponsables, by Johann Chapoutot, published by Angle with translation by Andreu Gomila.Edited by the historian —and Fontana's disciple— Jaume Claret, El franquisme brings together conferences and other texts by one of the most outstanding Catalan historians of the second half of the 20th century, and one of those who analyzed the Francoist regime most penetratingly and incisively, as was Josep Fontana. Reading this book, which combines rigor with the good writing that was its hallmark, disproves and invalidates the relativistic, nostalgic, and amiable views of the forty years of dictatorship that are disseminated by parties like Vox or even the PP, and by their intellectual and media circles. Fontana precisely describes several fundamental aspects of the regime, from the creation and aggrandizement of the figure of the Caudillo to the ideas that Francoism applied in economics, through the involvement of the Spanish Church in the regime's governance, otherwise known as national-catholicism. An agile, yet in-depth, look at black Spain, and, of course, furiously anti-Catalan, which the current nationalist right wants to return to power. A Spain that, contrary to what is often made to believe, is not at all distant in time.The irresponsibles have an explanatory subtitle (Who brought Hitler to power?). Its author, Johann Chapoutot, Professor of Contemporary History at the Sorbonne University, explains how Hitler's rise to power through elections was not a matter of chance, but the result of a series of powers (economic, business, financial, media) who were convinced that a government of the national socialist party would be useful to their interests. These prominent figures of German society were also sure that they would easily control an individual like Hitler and prevent him from losing control and committing excesses. We already know how it all ended, and the parallels with all those who seek to whitewash and normalize Trumps, Netanyahus, Mileis, or Melonis with the argument that they have been voted for are so clear that they do not need to be emphasized.

Although the People's Party insists actively and passively that Vox is a party like any other to justify their pacts with them, reality shows every day that this is not the case. The incident staged by deputy José María Sánchez in the Congress of Deputies, in which he climbed the podium to shout at the then acting president of the chamber, Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis, at a distance of a few centimeters, had not been seen in the chamber throughout the democratic period. And perhaps the closest thing to it was on February 23, as recalled by the socialist Patxi López.

The controversial reaction of Vox deputy José María Sánchez García, who confronted the presidency of Congress during the debate of a non-law proposal (PNL) on historical memory, has put the focus on the deterioration of parliamentarism. "What happened is not an anecdote. It is a way of doing politics based on noise, intimidation, and disregard for the basic rules of democratic coexistence." This is the conclusion drawn from this episode by the parties of the plurinational majority, as stated in an institutional declaration promoted this Wednesday by the PSOE. Various parliamentary sources from the parties that have signed it, consulted by ARA, agree in diagnosing that the presence of Vox in the lower house has caused a change in parliamentary life, which worsens year after year. The declaration could not be read at the end of Wednesday's plenary session because Vox, PP, and UPN refused to sign it.

1. In February, the Goya Awards for Spanish cinema were presented in Barcelona. In March, Cornellà hosted a Spain-Egypt football match that went around the world because of the massive chant of “Muslim, he who doesn't jump”. In April, on the eve of Sant Jordi, AENA invents a literary prize for published works with one million euros for the winner. Maurici Lucena's intention is to re-stitch Ibero-American literature through a literary air bridge, a prize that excludes novels written in Catalan, Basque, or Galician if they are not translated into Spanish. Shall we continue? What are they preparing for May? The agenda for the Hispanization of Catalonia seems set and strategically prepared. It is, almost, a post-war plan, made with more subtlety and elegance because with culture and leisure, everything goes down better. After severing the Procés, after beheading its leaders, and once they have the troops demoralized, enraged, or resigned, the plan to dilute residual independentism is systematic.

The right wing has already advanced its flirtation with the far right. And there is no time to lose. Two councilors from the PSC of Ripoll broke the taboo by saving the budgets for Sílvia Orriols, mayor of Ripoll and a reference of Catalan neofascism. Fortunately, the party has intervened and the councilors have placed their positions at the disposal of the PSC leadership, a step towards the exit door. We all know that, in the realm of local politics, the psychopathology of small differences between natural allies can lead to extravagant combinations, and that miserable personal interests can upset the apple cart. But, at a time when the PP has taken off its mask throughout Spain and Feijóo has opted for the normalization of Vox – carrying Abascal's baggage –, for the socialists to break the democratic taboo by giving recognition to the leader of the Catalan far right was a gift to the right wing (of Catalonia and Spain) and a disturbing – and apparently unnecessary – sign of weakness. We hope the anecdote will serve as a vaccine. Now that Pedro Sánchez seeks the role of European leader in the fight against neofascism, it was a pathetic gaffe.

The Islamophobic shouts at the Cornellà-El Prat stadium during the match between Egypt and Spain have gone around the world and are a very worrying exponent of the level of disinhibition of the extreme right everywhere. The case is especially regrettable because the best player of the Spanish national team and probably of the world is a Catalan of Muslim religion named Lamine Yamal, raised in the Rocafonda neighborhood of Mataró. The Barça star has sent a forceful message through social networks and has branded the "racists" and "ignorant" the scoundrels who on Tuesday chanted all sorts of insults, including to Pedro Sánchez, at the Espanyol stadium.

We read in ’ARA that Vox resorts to Catalan only in the regions where Sílvia Orriols' party is strong. They have made posters with the slogan of Plataforma per Catalunya, “First our own people”, in one language or another, depending on the market, and so on. In the provinces of Barcelona and Tarragona you will see the posters in Spanish, while in Girona and Lleida you will see them in Catalan.

Although some wish to save appearances and keep alive the border between the right and the far-right, the reality is that the right-wing parties are looking for each other, and increasingly shamelessly. The taboo of pacts with neo-fascists is falling across Europe as conservative or liberal right-wing parties fail to stop the leaks towards the far-right. Every day they incorporate more elements of reactionary thought: patriotic retreats are returning, a symptom of a moment of growing confusion, with an absence of reference authorities. A time of distrust.

When the euthanasia law was approved in June 2021, support for the initiative was very broad in Spanish society, which had experienced emblematic cases such as that of Ramon Sampedro (died in 1998), played by Javier Bardem in Alejandro Amenábar's film Mar adentro, or that of Ángel Hernández, the man who helped his wife, María José Carrasco, to die in 2019 and who was acquitted of the crime of aiding suicide once the law came into force. According to a CIS barometer from January 2021, 72% were in favor of the law and only 15% against.

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.

As the writer Joan Lluís Lluís has stated on social media, the fact that the Elna Maternity Hospital is under the control of the fascists of Reagrupament Nacional is repugnant. It is also painful, due to its powerful symbolic significance. For those unfamiliar with the case, the Elna Maternity Hospital was a healthcare institution founded in 1939 by the Swiss educator and philanthropist Elisabeth Eidenbenz (also known as the Swiss Maternity Hospital) in the town of Elna, in the Roussillon de Argelès region. Its purpose was to house and assist pregnant women forced into exile by the Spanish Civil War. It operated until 1944, when the Nazis closed it during the occupation of France, and its memory was not recovered until the early 2000s. At that time, the Elna City Council acquired the building to convert it into a memorial. To learn about its history, the books by historian Assumpta Montellà on Eidenbenz and the Elna Maternity Hospital are recommended, as well as the documentary – co-produced by TV3 – The Light of Elna, directed by Silvia Quer.

The far right is not making as much progress as it would like across France, but it is gaining new municipalities and strengthening its position in Northern Catalonia. National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen's party, already secured the mayorship of Perpignan a week ago with an absolute majority in the first round, and this Sunday it won in the second round of the municipal elections In Ribesaltes and Cañoses, in Roussillon. The far-right politician Steve Fortel also won in Elna, and Gilles Foxonet, another far-right politician, retained his position in Baixàs. "It's a lesson for the future of Catalonia and Spain: simply calling them fascists isn't enough," former mayor of Elna Nicolas Garcia told ARA. "We Catalans can't win," added Forques councilor Jordi Vera, who emphasized that 60% of the population comes from outside Northern Catalonia.

The left—despite party divisions—is holding its ground in major cities, while Marine Le Pen's far right has faltered. The French municipal elections have resulted in a map with more far-right mayoralties than ever before, but the National Rally (RN) has not achieved the electoral success it had hoped for. In many municipalities where the far-right candidate had managed to advance to the second round, it ultimately failed to win. The results—still provisional—show that the far right, with some exceptions, is struggling to surpass the 50% threshold and continues to struggle to gain traction in major cities. This is a setback for Le Pen, who had aimed to win in Marseille. According to the initial results, the RN has not won in either Nîmes or Toulon, two cities that were within its reach and which it had expected to win. In large and medium-sized cities, the far right is securing few victories. He retained the mayoralty in Perpignan (Louis Aliot had already won in the first round) and won in Carcassonne and Nice, although the Nice candidate, Éric Ciotti, is not from Marine Le Pen's party, only an ally.

This has been a week of campaigning across France for Sunday's second round of municipal elections, but not in Perpignan, where the first round saw far-right mayor Louis Aliot win a reelection with 50.61% of the vote. He swept the board after absorbing a segment of the traditional right wing, even with the public support of former mayor Jean-Marc Pujol, his long-time rival who lost in the 2020 elections and who had presided over the city council for eleven years. In February 2020, he received former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont with full honors before holding his massive rally of 100,000 people in Perpignan to show solidarity with the exiled leader, after his municipal government had already supported those facing repression on several occasions. Pujol is a conservative from the Republicans party, which governed in coalition with the Catalan nationalist party Unitat Catalana, but now considers Aliot to represent "the right."

When Hitler committed suicide, he had sixteen thousand books. Currently, about 1,300 are preserved in the United States, between the Library of Congress and that of Brown University. They are books underlined and with his annotations in the margins of the pages. What does a person's library say about its owner? This is the question that the documentary The Books Hitler Didn't Burn aims to answer, which Channel 33 broadcast on Wednesday night. It's worth recovering it from the 3Cat platform. Produced by German public television and the Arte channel, it delves into Hitler's book collection with Timothy Ryback, the world's leading expert on his library. Hitler was a great reader and knowledgeable about European literature and the history of science. But in no way does the documentary try to investigate his tastes. The documentary asks more ambitious questions: what do these books tell us about the origin of Hitler's murderous ideas? What do they tell us about the current far-right?Hitler preserved publications that Nazism had burned. Also revealed are all the businessmen who gifted the genocidal dictator with books and left the trace of their dedications. From a guide to Berlin written by a Jewish cultural critic to a vegetarian cookbook, passing through a treatise on urban heating systems and a manual on how to improve cigar factories.Hitler has often been considered an ideologue, but the documentary shows how the dictator fed on cultural currents of the time that extended beyond Germany and influenced many other leaders and their immigration laws. The documentary recovers the underlined passages from Peer Gynt, by Henrik Ibsen; Fire and Blood, by Ernst Jünger, or The Passing of the Great Race, by Madison Grant, among other titles. The text is juxtaposed with archival footage of Hitler and Nazism, and the result is very impactful. It is sickening to discover how some of the ideas that emerge from Hitler's library connect with current discourses by Vox or Aliança Catalana. The documentary shows how some of these books are still used by far-right criminals. It also explains the origin of the replacement theory and how Nazism used it.But the documentary is not limited to an exercise in memory: it highlights how current media are repeating the strategy. It delves into books that talk about eugenics, analyzes antisemitic literature with experts, and highlights the texts that Hitler read before launching the genocide. The ideas contained in Hitler's three great libraries, in Berlin, Munich, and his Alpine residence, are still chilling today. The Books Hitler Didn't Burn is not a look at the past but at our present to demonstrate how all his theses were already there before Hitler. And how they still endure.

The first round of municipal elections held this Sunday in France confirms the advance of the far right. Final results will not be known until next Sunday, but Marine Le Pen's party, the National Rally (RN), has managed to advance to the second round in the vast majority of municipalities where it ran and will compete to win in city halls where it has not yet governed, such as Marseille, France's second-largest city, Nice, and Toulon. "It is a huge victory for our movement," Le Pen declared in a message to X.

The French return to the polls this Sunday to elect their local representatives. France is holding the first round of municipal elections, votes that don't usually carry national weight. However, this time, the proximity of the presidential elections—scheduled for spring 2027—will mean that the results will be interpreted through the lens of national politics. Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN), a party that has traditionally had a weak local presence, wants the municipal elections to be its springboard to the Élysée Palace. Le Pen and her right-hand man—and likely presidential candidate if she is definitively barred from running—Jordan Bardella, want to translate their strong showing in the recent legislative and European elections into more mayoralties. This won't be easy because the RN's limited local presence means it can't field candidates in a significant number of municipalities. There's an anecdote that perfectly illustrates the situation: Bardella won't be able to vote for a candidate from the party he leads because Garches, the municipality of 17,000 inhabitants where he lives on the outskirts of Paris, doesn't have a candidate from Réagrupament Nacional.