In an interview with El Periódico and published this Sunday, the PP candidate for the presidency of the Spanish government, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said that “government with Vox can work, it already does so in four autonomous communities”. It was not so long ago that PP leaders, and especially Feijóo, avoided being photographed with those from Vox at demonstrations, so as not to be associated with the far right. Those were the times when Vox called the PP “derechita cobarde”, while they were eating into their ground and electorate.

"Challenging the narrative of the far right". This was the title of the debate organized on Thursday by the Biennal de Pensament and the CRÍTIC School of Thought, at the former La Model prison. It is clear that the public is not indifferent to everything surrounding this issue: the venue was at full capacity with more than 200 people, and about thirty attendees—mostly young people—were left outside.

Justice must not kill. This idea is part of the European legal consensus built around human rights. In the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, no one has been executed since 1997, when the last execution took place in Ukraine. Abolition is today a condition for membership. The exception on the continent is Belarus, outside the Council of Europe, which maintains capital punishment. But this legal consensus coexists with a certain social erosion. According to the 2025 Barcelona Social Values Survey, 35.7% of Barcelona residents believe that the death penalty can be justified always or in some circumstances; among young people aged 15 to 24, the percentage reaches 47%. The trend is not only local. In several countries of the European Union, support for capital punishment is around 50% or higher. In the United Kingdom, in recent months, far-right groups have proposed reinstating it, also appealing to opinion polls. All of this is part of a broader context in which the European populist right advocates for increasingly harsh penal policies.

Ungovernable? At this point, the unusual situation with two decrees (two packages of measures that aspire to be voted on as decrees) competing with each other, so to speak, to be approved in Congress, is more of a snapshot of Spanish politics: fragmentary, tense, contradictory, difficult to govern. But also plural and diverse. The two decrees, or the two aspiring decrees, are, after all, a portrait in the form of a legislative rarity of what the majority that invested Pedro Sánchez is. A conglomerate of forces that ideologically goes from Junts to Podemos (neither of the two is far-right or far-left, by the way, but they do take pleasure in the role of uncomfortable partners and tough nuts to crack), passing through ERC (which tries to overcome post-process populism with Rufian-style populism), the Basque right and left (much clearer and more solid than the irritated, and irritating, Catalan independence struggle), plus another conglomerate, Sumar, which everyone knows has not worked, but which includes important parties within the Catalan Countries such as Compromís or Més per Mallorca. It is what the Spanish right usually ridicules as the Frankenstein, a majority made of many pieces, supposedly of political corpses (cadaverism related to the civil war is an ingredient very present in the patriotic recipes of PP, Vox and derivatives). Someone can also speak of frontism, of a left-wing front against a right-wing front.

The German far-right is disguising itself as a lamb to win elections. Alternative for Germany (AfD) has changed the recipe with an image of hope to break its electoral ceiling, a turn that has allowed it to win elections in the eastern states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in just two weeks. The party has moved from the campaign slogan "Enough" from five years ago to "Everything is possible" and "Everything will be fine" in Saxony-Anhalt, a change in strategy with which the ultra-rightists move from a narrative denouncing the decline – which, in their view, Germany is experiencing – to selling optimism and enthusiasm. Fear and hope are combined in a perfect cocktail to reap electoral profit from the disenchantment that part of the population feels regarding the federal government of the traditional right-wing CDU and the social democrats of the SPD.

Far-right nationalist populist parties are leading the way everywhere, from Washington to Warsaw. Why, then, be so alarmed by the small electoral victories of one of these parties, Alternative for Germany (AfD)? “Because it’s Germany!” is the almost instinctive answer in many heads around the world.

What do the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), the German Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Bulgarian Vazrazhdane, the French National Rally, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), and the Spanish National Democracy or the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE) have in common? Some are far-right and others are far-left, but they share certain unequivocal attitudes: they are openly pro-Russian, and some have been funded with little dissimulation by the Kremlin. Some defend Putin's traditional/conservative values regarding the family, while others consider him the best ally against the United States. Of course, all of them oppose NATO, which is to say, they are in favor of unilateral disarmament like the one preached by the last dinosaurs of the USSR.The so-called “hybrid war” that Russia exerts against its Polish or Romanian neighbors—minimalist attacks, controlled explosions without casualties, targeted sabotage—responds to a logic perfectly coherent with the Kremlin's strategic tradition. These are not military operations in the classic sense, but rather a form of psychological and political erosion intended to fracture European cohesion by means of, among other mechanisms, formations like those I mentioned before. The goal is clear and simple—division—but its realization proves tortuous: in a Europe that, sooner or later, will have to rearm itself to guarantee its own security, any ambiguous episode can fuel internal dissent and hinder, or even prevent, decision-making.The model is by no means new. From the final years of Tsarism, those of the Rasputin era, to the USSR or the current Russian Federation, Moscow has successfully cultivated a specialty: poisoning, both informational and literal (they say Rasputin ended up being immune to cyanide; Litvinenko was not so lucky). The disinformation of the Soviet era—those campaigns of rumor-mongering and blatant infiltration into leftist Western media—was a weapon of attrition that sought to sow doubt about the reliability of democratic institutions.

Definitely, the authoritarian delirium that threatens democracies has moved to Europe. Meanwhile, in the United States, Donald Trump, with polls clearly on the decline, is losing his cool, probably unable to understand that the continued display of his indecency has ended up discomforting some of his own. There are reasons to think that Trump—despite still having two years left in office—has entered a downward slope. We will have objective data soon, when the midterm elections arrive, which, if the polls are not wrong, augur a serious defeat for the Republicans.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU has obtained the worst result in its history in regional elections this weekend in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. A "disaster" admitted by the chancellery and a humiliation for a Merz who, upon coming to power, promised to reverse the strength of a far-right that has been tailing him for some time. The popularity of Alternative for Germany, for the moment, has no ceiling. In Saxony-Anhalt it was on the verge of governing, for the first time, in a German state, and on Sunday it won the elections in the land of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in eastern Germany, and came in third in Berlin. While Merz's political survival is increasingly threatened, the AfD continues to grow in the shadow of economic and industrial decline, which has slowed the German engine, and a feeling of insecurity that is fueled by the criminalization of rising immigration in the last decade. But, above all, the far-right has demonstrated a great capacity to exploit voters' disillusionment with the political establishment of the Grand Coalition.

Still in shock from the far-right victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt two weeks ago, Germany is taking the temperature of the ultra-wave this Sunday in the elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and also in Berlin. The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is looking to leverage the momentum of the victory in Saxony-Anhalt to try and repeat it in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the second eastern state to head to the polls. And it could succeed, although far from an absolute majority and with few options to govern. Polls give the AfD 37% of the votes, followed very closely by the Social Democrats, currently in government, with 35%.

Now that the Eleventh of September has passed and we have returned to talking about country, coexistence and a single people, a less solemn and more uncomfortable exercise is convenient. Let us imagine, for a moment, another Catalonia. Not an ideal country, but a country that would have understood that every arrival forced an update to the social pact. Immigration was not a passing emergency: it challenged the school, housing, work, language, rights and the very idea of citizenship.Let us imagine that governments had understood that welcoming is not just about registering, processing papers, or ritually celebrating diversity. Welcoming means ensuring that those who arrive can live with dignity, participate on equal terms, and define the shared country. It was necessary to abandon the vertical logic—some receive and others must show gratitude—and build a horizontal integration. Immigrant people would not have been treated only as a workforce or cultural difference, but as political subjects.Imagine if school segregation had been effectively combated, including in its racial dimension. We would not have centers that concentrate all the complexity while others remain on the sidelines. The children would have shared classrooms, playgrounds, and expectations; they would have grown up as equals, not learning that there are schools for those from here and for those from away. Perhaps today it would be harder to convince them that their neighbors are a threat.Imagine if housing had been considered a central immigration policy. That the public stock had been expanded and discrimination fought. Avoiding concentration would not have meant dispersing people, but rather distributing affordable housing, services, and opportunities throughout the territory. The problem is not that immigrant people live together, but that they can only live where inequality confines them.Let us imagine that it had not become normalized for a part of the population to remain trapped in the most precarious jobs. Qualifications would have been recognized and exploitation pursued. Work would have been a path to autonomy and recognition, not a permanent mechanism of subordination.Let us imagine a democratic secularism that guarantees, with the same criteria, the freedom to believe, not to believe, and to express one's convictions. A secularism capable of distinguishing the criticism of a doctrine from suspicion towards Muslim people. The problem is not debating Islam, but demanding that it demonstrate its compatibility with democracy and belonging to the country.

What if women stopped voting? It has been talked about for a few weeks now: in the United States, there is an ultraconservative movement that advocates for it, wanting to replace the individual vote with a family vote—and we already know how that would end. The invention is called household voting and one of its main defenders is Pastor Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist who advocates for a theocratic transformation of the United States. This is not some freak that no one pays attention to: Wilson was invited by the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, to preach at the Pentagon last February.

Salvador Illa should launch in the "coming days" a round of contacts with parliamentary groups to promote a national pact on education that should serve to address the crisis the sector is experiencing. And in these conversations, he will also invite the far-right parties, Vox and Aliança Catalana. As the Government spokesperson, Sílvia Paneque, explained, the executive always includes all groups that make up the parliamentary arch in these types of calls, but added that neither Vox nor Aliança Catalana "have ever attended" these meetings. "The Government prioritizes agreements with groups that do not have hate speech," added Paneque. There is no established calendar yet and the Government has not specified whether Salvador Illa himself will be at these meetings, but Paneque stated that the president's "will" is for this round to begin "as soon as possible".

The Swedish legislative elections this Sunday leave no clear winner, but there is no doubt about who the losers are. On one hand, the far-right party Sweden Democrats (SD, by its Swedish acronym), which has retreated for the first time since it entered Parliament in 2010 and has lost the title of second-largest force. And the other major casualty is the Social Democratic Party. Although it remains the largest formation in the country, the result obtained is the worst in the last century, since Sweden implemented universal suffrage.

On the way back from the Diada celebration in Barcelona, I heard that the protesters were making the same demographic summary: there were people over 50 and under 25. And the presence of young people is interpreted as a green shoot that dispels the idea that the end of the 2017 process created a cut that had no tail behind it.It helps that the failure of the 2017 process objective, plus the subsequent state repression and the division of the parties, apart from leaving the Government in the hands of the PSC, has shifted the center of political debate in Catalonia, so that problems such as the lack of housing, insecurity on the streets, the poor service of the suburban trains (Rodalies), strikes in Education, Healthcare or the farmers' protests, the use of the language... all this has ended up filling the voting intention polls for Aliança Catalana, which mimics the messages of the entire European far-right: there are groups impossible to incorporate into Catalan identity, who furthermore commit crimes and take the aid, with the approval of traditional parties, some corrupt and all clinging to their seats. And so, the lifelong debate, the Catalonia-Spain one, is replaced by the local version of a darker and more authoritarian global agenda. Yes, we have a debate about the regional financing system or the application of the amnesty, but the protest vote, of radical change, is shifting, polls say, towards Aliança Catalana, hand in hand with the identity vote in a radical sense (particularly Islamophobic, as we heard in the party's speeches at the Diada) and the punishment vote against the institutions.Where do these votes come from? Many of them come from the sovereignty movement, especially from Junts, and now Vox intends to attract the most Spanish-leaning disenchanted vote from the PSC, also taking advantage of the fact that it has now reached the middle of the legislative term with serious management problems in all the departments most important in terms of budget and impact on the lives of the majority. At the end of the week, Santiago Abascal will come to Catalonia to open the political season, taking advantage of the fact that Aliança Catalana has placed at the center the debate on the favorite topic they share, which is immigration. For Vox, the enemies are immigration and Sánchez, who does not defend Spain's borders. And for Aliança Catalana, the enemies are immigration and the rest of the parties, which do not defend security, public services; that is to say, Catalan identity and Western identity.

Twenty-five years have passed since that fateful date; the scenarios are different, but the perplexity persists and grows. On September 11, 2001, we abruptly discovered two things: that there is no rearguard when fanaticism prevails and that the end of history was merely a mirage built by an enthusiastic idealism. From the images of the destroyed Twin Towers, we have moved to the images of migrants entering Ceuta, driven by planned rumors and great despair. A quarter of a century has passed between the two news events, and we have exchanged the decapitated ingenuities of the end of the Cold War for the saturated incredulities of the new hybrid wars. This August, with our eyes set on the Spanish city in North Africa, we have also discovered two things: borders can be very precarious and a peculiar explosive mix of cynicism, irresponsibility, and fanaticism has colonized politics, especially in the international sphere. When we saw the first plane crash into Manhattan, we thought, during the initial minutes, that all of it was not entirely real but rather a movie; when we saw the flood of people entering Ceuta, we did not doubt the certainty of the event, even though fake and real images are mixed on social media. The world became more insecure in 2001; now it has become more chaotic, indecipherable, and explosive. Beyond the facts, there are the inertias that now dominate the public sphere of developed societies: fear, distrust, unhealthy nostalgia, and disinterest in the truth. And, above all, the rejection of politics, which a part of the citizenry considers “a problem.” In this theater, the predatory leaderships of figures like Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu obtain the admiration and adherence of those who demand “immediate changes” and “effective solutions.” These are leaderships that offer a plausible refuge at a price that many citizens are willing to pay: militarized security in exchange for sidelining rights, freedoms, empathy, and compassion. Behold the banner—hardly original—of those who want to bury the world that emerged in 1945.

The European far-right is enjoying a sweet moment. The overwhelming victory of Alternative for Germany in the Saxony-Anhalt regional elections is just the latest in a chain of warnings: the far-right has become normalized. But at the same time that it gains strength, it also highlights its internal divisions. "It has become a normal party that wins and loses for the same reasons as the rest of the parties: because of the economy, corruption, the campaign, or the ability to set the agenda," asserts Javier Carbonell, an analyst at the European Policy Center. "That it is a consolidated force is a fact, but the relationship with the rest of the parties is not yet normal; it is not easy to form coalitions with them," qualifies László Andor, former European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, and now an analyst, in statements to ARA.

Last Monday, King Felipe VI received the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles; the Chief of the Defense Staff, Teodoro López Calderón; and the Commander of Ceuta, Luis Fernández Herrero, at the Zarzuela Palace. The Palace's communication services immediately released a solemn image in which the King and the two military commanders were seen dressed in military uniforms. A detail that did not go unnoticed and which triggered speculation due to the absence of President Sánchez, who is responsible for setting and directing governance strategies. The military power, therefore, wanted to make its presence felt, and the Head of State offered them the opportunity, amidst rumors about discrepancies between the President and the Minister. And it is hard to believe that the image was innocent. In a country that comes from where it comes, the staging is, at the very least, unsettling. What is the reason for this militaristic gesture in the face of a crisis of considerable complexity that does not admit dysfunctional gestures, much less of this character? The monarch staging the army.

It is no coincidence that one of the protagonists of the election campaign in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt has been an old acquaintance for the citizens: the old Simson motorcycle, associated with the daily life of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The motorcycle, painted blue, the color of Alternative for Germany (AfD), is the vehicle with which the leader of the far-right party Ulrich Siegmund has ridden through election events in which, even, members of the AfD have sung the anthem of the GDR.

The 2026 Diada leaves two elements on the table. The first is that, contrary to forecasts, there has been an upturn in participation in the independence movement's mobilizations, which is good news for a movement that has been living in a state of collective depression for years. The second is that all the actors of Catalanism, with a special mention for Òmnium and its current president, Xavier Antich, focused their messages in the same direction: the necessary fight against the far-right represented by Aliança Catalana.