Catalonia concentrates such a diversity and complexity that it is a kind of Port Aventura of politics, where you have everything multiplied by two and sometimes apparently contradictory processes intertwine.

The philosophers Jordi Corominas and Joan Albert Vicens call to combat the rise of the radical right with their essay Extrema dreta. Què ens hi juguem? (Eumo), where they provide arguments to debate ultra positions.

The survey published on Sunday in this same newspaper about the rise of the far right in Catalonia is very worrying, and reminds us that classrooms are not islands immune to the growth of populism or the polarization that is shaking Catalan society and all of Europe. In this context, the debate about police presence in schools is not insignificant. The core issue is: what are we doing to ensure conflicts can be processed within the school and what model of school are we building? We need a deeper look at how we are educating for coexistence and plurality in Catalan schools, beyond just preventing conflicts. Just a week ago, I visited an educational center that is trying to deal with the increase in conflicts in the midday playground. In this center, most conflicts occur between boys and revolve around football and balls. Girls spend the break sitting in small groups, chatting, dancing, or playing hand games. And when there are conflicts, they are verbal, of the type 'we are no longer friends'. They can also be hurtful, when they turn into insults thrown like darts: 'ugly', 'fat', 'you are like this or that'. In recent years, there has been an increase in conflict in schools: according to the official registry (REVA), more than 3,000 cases have been registered in the 2025-2026 academic year. These are situations of school bullying, sexual or sexist violence, as well as cases of hate and discrimination. Many happen outside of school but are detected in classrooms. Forms of conflict are not the same for boys and girls. School coexistence data in Catalonia confirm this. Boys concentrate more visible, physical, and sanctioned conflict, while girls appear more in relational and less visible forms of conflict. This is not a minor difference: it describes different ways of inhabiting school and expressing discomfort. Girls, in general, are more adapted to school culture, and for boys, it is more difficult to build their virile identity there. The data also show an important gap: girls, in general, have a better command of orality and expression, while many boys have fewer tools to put words to what is happening to them.If we broaden our view, the pattern is reinforced. Boys show higher early school dropout rates (15–20% compared to 10–13% for girls) and more failures in compulsory education. This gap continues outside of school: about 80% of young people in juvenile justice are boys and over 90% of the prison population in Catalonia is male. These are not isolated phenomena, but rather trajectories that connect school difficulties, a deficit of tools to manage conflict, and greater exposure to violence, often in contexts of inequality and vulnerability.

Xavier Antich (la Seu d'Urgell, 1962) arrives at the newsroom of ARA just as the vote of the members to elect the new board of Òmnium Cultural begins, in which he is running for re-election with a transversal candidacy of Catalanism and without rivals.What has led you to run for re-election at a time when there is debate about whether leadership needs to be renewed?

Since its emergence as a leading player, many political parties have tried to find a way to react to the far-right. The radical populist right's ability to win over diverse voters, as well as to mobilize non-voters and profiles disconnected from politics, disconcerts many formations accustomed to playing on a different playing field. The far-right's rhetoric and the issues it raises, especially immigration, have fueled the desire to build a strategy to confront it. Whether out of conviction or electoralism, how to react to the far-right is a matter of concern and occupies minds.

The latest survey published by ARA predicts an increase in the two far-right parties, the Spanish nationalist one and the Catalan nationalist one. While Vox would obtain between 14 and 17 deputies, Aliança Catalana would multiply its representation by ten (or more), obtaining a range of between 20 and 22 deputies. If we believe the poll, in the upper range there would be more than a quarter of far-right parliamentarians in the chamber. These are serious figures that, before they become a political and social reality, require a rapid reaction from the country.

The joke of the moment: President Díaz Ayuso declares Madrid a “free territory of nationalisms and identity ideologies”, “the most heterogeneous region that exists because it is made up of all forms of being Spanish”. It sounded like a reverberation of one of Francoism's slogans: “España, una, grande y libre”, now concentrated in the capital.

Joint front of entities, unions and parties in Girona against the manager of the Instagram account Girona Perduda, which with more than 30,000 followers has become since the start of the school year a channel for citizen discontent, on aspects such as cleanliness and safety in the streets, linking immigration and crime with a mixture of photos, videos and true data, others exaggerated, disinformation and fake news. Another example of allegedly non-partisan accounts that serve the far-right to polarize public opinion, according to the assessment of experts consulted by ARA, which in December uncovered the links between the administrator of Girona Perduda and Vox.

After verbally attacking the ERC deputy Najat Driouech, the also deputy Albert Tarradas, from Vox, backtracked and stammered a confused apology “if my statement may have offended”, while saying some idiocy about humor (fascists, when they threaten, often say they were joking, so they don't have to face the consequences). The hate speech of this Tarradas against a Muslim deputy caused consternation, with reason, and led many to exclaim that such an event had no precedent in the Parliament of Catalonia. In this, they are mistaken: there are precedents, and the most recent ones are found in the trajectory and the political legacy, never sufficiently lamented, of Ciutadans. The aggressive, frontal, defiant style of characters like Arrimadas or Carrizosa, always based on lies or misrepresentations, leading the premises of the discourse to aberrant conclusions, were forms of hate speech, then against Catalan independentism and the left. Ciutadans built a large landing strip for the far-right, on which Vox and Alianza Catalana have comfortably landed with their racist and xenophobic rhetoric, and with their phobia against progressivism —which they call woke—. Now they are not only in the Parliament of Catalonia, but their prospects (especially regarding AC) are to increase their presence significantly.In the Balearic Islands, it is not just any deputy, but the president of the Parliament, Gabriel Le Senne, who also chairs the island delegation of Vox, who is awaiting trial for hate crime for having torn up a photograph of Aurora Picornell and the Roges del Molinar, murdered by fascism on the night of the Epiphany in 1937. But the judicial case against Le Senne —curiously— is not progressing, and it will soon be two years since the events without him having to assume any political consequences either. The reason is the support that the government of the Popular Party, presided over by Marga Prohens, has given him and continues to give him. I mention this as an example of a fact that is quite visible: despite the multitude of voices lamenting that the PP has “let itself be dragged along” or conditioned by Vox, as if it had undergone a dramatic shift in its trajectory, the reality is that the PP's support for Vox wherever they have agreements is total. Not only that: the, let's say, relapses of the PP into supremacist, xenophobic, confrontational, civil war-mongering, and demagogic discourses and attitudes are also no novelty, but rather a well-marked constant in the party's history.All this leads to this dark moment when hate speech is aired with an arrogance that endangers any idea of social cohesion. It does not help at all when the left also falls into populisms of the worst kind, such as Rufián's finger-pointing gesture in Congress against the deputies of Junts. Wanting to fight —out of strategy or pure arrogance— against the far-right with the weapons of the far-right is not a form of audacity, but a direct path to brutalization and failure.

1. Waterloo Place is a place where nothing ever happens. The gentlemen's clubs in the Pall Mall buildings turn the stroll under London's stately arcades into a diorama frozen in another era. Suddenly, however, this beautiful corner of Westminster has experienced an artistic jolt that is also a pertinent political critique of global reach. Banksy has placed one of his works which, instead of being a usual wall painting, is a sculpture with volume, with relief, and with a lot of depth. A man, in a tailored suit, blinded by his own flag, walks without realizing he will fall from the pedestal. The work is the perfect metaphor for the extreme right of national priorities which, with America for Americans, Spain for Spaniards, and so on, heads straight for a leap into the void. Wrapped up in nationalist causes, with eyes covered by hatred and selfishness, it leads us all towards the precipice. A small step for a fascist, but a step with nefarious consequences for humanity.

This past weekend I rewatched Gran Torino, one of the best films directed by Clint Eastwood (and that's saying a lot, considering he's one of the best directors of the last fifty years of Hollywood). It coincided with the publication of the YouGov poll for this newspaper, with the data that 66% of Catalans, an undeniable majority, are in favor of restricting immigrants' access to the country. This same majority is, at the same time, in favor of guaranteeing equal rights among all residents. However, 30% declare themselves in favor of applying the national priority defended by Vox and Aliança Catalana (and which the Popular Party has adopted). Released in 2008, Eastwood's film already speaks openly about immigration, and it's a hymn to the diversity and social cohesion of a country (the USA, but it could be Catalonia, it could be the Catalan Countries) historically formed by immigrants. However, being a hymn doesn't mean it's accommodating or well-intentioned: it shows how Black people have prejudices against Asians, Asians against Whites, Italians against Chinese, Chinese against Hispanics, Poles against the Irish. White supremacism over everyone else is portrayed, as well as the resentment and xenophobia that minorities profess towards Whites, etc. There is violence, weapons (we are in the USA), linguistic, cultural, and religious conflicts, and tattered American flags on the porches of rundown houses in degraded neighborhoods. But Eastwood clearly takes a stand for people's capacity to welcome and coexist. It's a capacity based on tolerance, empathy, and intelligence, qualities that define us as human beings before patriots.

There are definitions that allow us to approach the concept of the far-right. For example, a study by the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) considers it "the most illiberal form a right-wing party can take" and highlights several characteristics, such as hostility towards liberal democracy, nativism, authoritarianism, and populism in its proposals. When, moreover, it contemplates the use of violence, we speak of the far-right. Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde explains that today nativism (the xenophobic way of understanding nationalism that adopts slogans in the style of "Home first") is the main trait that unites the global far-right. But, of course, how is the degree of nativism measured, taking into account, moreover, that there are traditional parties that apply similar policies? Or the degree of populism or hostility towards liberal democracy? Abstract concepts lead to subjective assessments and, in the case of Catalonia, where two parties commonly considered to be of the far-right coexist, we have a clear example.

This Thursday, all news programs echoed the video by Vito Quiles, the far-right stalker who pursues and attacks people to turn it into propaganda. Public and private channels followed suit. This time, the images had gained relevance because the victim was Begoña Gómez, President Pedro Sánchez's wife. The premeditated violence of the sequence, recorded on mobile and edited by the agitator, provided the spectacularity that television often uses as a criterion for including events in its agenda.

The direction that the far-right has taken in Spain and around the world has generated a consequence that has been quite visible in recent weeks: the divorce from the Church. The most palpable proof was the clash between Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV over the war in Iran. However, in Spain, the distancing has also become evident in the migratory debate. To the point that a few days ago the bishop of the Canary Islands, José Mazuelos, came out to strongly criticize Vox, but also the PP, for opposing the massive regularization of immigrants: "Many people should get into a cayuco". In fact, the migratory issue has dominated Spanish politics in recent weeks and the regional pacts between the PP and Vox, which have focused on "national priority" in public aid and benefits. And it is precisely this that has caused the most frontal rejection from the Catholic Church hierarchy and entities like Càritas.

If we define intelligence as the capacity of human beings to weave links between what they know and what they feel, transforming the understanding of the world into empathy, creativity, and beauty, it is evident that we would like our rulers to have a good dose of it. But we can make it more prosaic and, although etymologically intelligence" means "to read within" or "to choose between", I would ask for no more than a somewhat objective understanding of the world, even if it were without empathy; and if beauty cannot be, I would like it to be replaced at least by rigor and by the will not to cause unnecessary suffering.

Killing children is not easy; one must know how. In abstract terms, extermination proclamations of an entire people can be made, as Netanyahu or other genocidal leaders do, but the truth is that this job –annihilating creatures– cannot be done by just anyone. Who will go door to door, when the extermination of an entire race is decreed, to finish off all the children living there? Who will be able to pull the trigger or drop a bomb, who will aim with a squinted eye directly at the head of a child who barely stands a few feet tall? Who will plunge a knife into tender flesh and endure the sharp, horrifying screams? Very few people, in fact, could carry out the worst of acts, the most fatal and terrible: ending the life of a defenseless sprout. That is why soldiers must be trained to dehumanize the other in a process that is two-way. Because it is impossible to see “the enemy” in a creature if one has not suffered a significant erosion of one’s own humanity.

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.