There are historical moments when certain political tendencies seem to impose themselves unstoppably, as if carried by a gust of wind. A few years ago, the rise of the far-right was unthinkable; it is true that the disasters of the 20th century are now far away for the new generations, but we have seen enough films and heard so much talk about Hitlerian madness and the dictatorship that long oppressed us that it seemed impossible that anyone could still believe that those slogans were desirable and could improve collective life. And yet, we have seen how the wave has been spreading across Europe, how it has devoured the United States, how it is rising among us, perhaps to engulf us too. We have many explanations for why this has happened. The easiest and most trivial is the one that attributes it to the errors of left-wing parties, to corruption scandals, to internal squabbles. All of this is certainly present, but they are minor issues when compared to everything that the left has achieved since the Transition: free healthcare and education systems, pensions, redistribution of income through political action. Everything that is at risk when the far-right arrives; this, initially supported by populist proposals, always changes when it has already achieved power, with a coup d'état if necessary, if it sees its dominion threatened. And then the party is over, it is repression that settles in, and, unfortunately, sometimes for many years. Is it inevitable that in Spain the next government will be PP+Vox, a combination that could be terrible, and that will once again turn Catalonia into the favorite enemy, along with immigration? Can the left-wing parties do anything to prevent it? I think, at this moment, this is a key question: I don't know if we have time to avoid disaster, but, at least, we should try.

For a long time, the debate has revolved around the question of what explains the rise of the far right. Last Sunday's ARA dedicated In the rest of Europe, this correlation between the far right and immigration is also not found. This is the conclusion of the French demographer Hervé Le Bras in his book El gran engaño (Editorial Hacer, 2024), where he compares the relationship between populism and immigration in six European countries (Austria, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and the United States. According to Le Bras, this correlation can even be inverse, meaning that the less immigration there is, the more votes for the far right. There are not a few examples: in Germany, immigrants are in the west, while far-right votes are concentrated mainly in the east. In the United States, Trump wins in the Midwest and the Deep South, which is precisely where immigrants are least present. While in France and Italy there does seem to be some correlation in regional terms, when we go down to the local level, this relationship disappears.According to Le Bras, this unequal distribution of votes for the far-right is mainly explained by the divide between the countryside and the city. For example, in France, in the 2017 elections, 32% of voters in municipalities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants opted for Marine Le Pen, while this percentage dropped to 12% in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants and 5% in Paris. It is the same divide we saw in the United Kingdom with the Brexit referendum, where urban areas were predominantly against it and rural areas in favor.

The ideological frameworks of the xenophobic right are making inroads into the political mainstream. Not so much due to the growth of Aliança Catalana as to the way its discourse is contaminating the rest of the party landscape. This is not unrelated to a moral victory for the far-right, but it also means that parties have decided not to turn their backs on an issue that people consider important, such as immigration management. And they do so by sweetening the most aggressive proposals of Sílvia Orriols' party.It is a similar process (with apologies for the comparison) to what the left has done with environmentalism, which was previously a ridiculed cause and labeled as hippy, until science made everyone realize that it was a matter of paramount importance. The posthumous victory of the green parties was not their hegemony, but the assumption of their ideology by the left – and part of the right – throughout the West.I don't think Aliança Catalana will conquer the central lane of Catalanism, but a part of its ideology, which is largely racist and fascistoid, will be integrated into the ideological corpus of the democratic right (in a format acceptable to its voters) and, finally, perhaps, by the left. The first step has been to accept that immigration is a problem, a challenge that should be presented as a socioeconomic issue and not in cultural or moral terms. This makes it easier to swallow.The debate now is not about races or cultures, but about the economic model: unchecked growth and the strain on public services. On these issues, the conclusion reached by economists (like the signatories of the Informe Fènix) is that Catalonia depends excessively on tourism, which gentrifies and saturates the territory, and furthermore encourages the massive import of cheap labor, which does not help sustain the welfare state. Immigration, therefore, is only beneficial for a part of the Catalan productive fabric (not only tourism, but also the agri-food industry), which exploits it and underpays it in exchange for collapsing public services. This approach, which disregards skin colors, religions, and burqas, makes the demographic debate more accessible to the majority forces.But the migratory debate is not only making headway through technification. The identity issue is reviving. Like any small nation, Catalans fear their dissolution, the sacrifice of their culture on the altar of globalization. At the same time, certain progressivism, while condemning racism and aporophobia, attacks tourists, expats, the mafias that hide behind the swarm of supermarkets and souvenir shops, and the vulture funds, which “merserve” our rejection because they are in a position of power with respect to the defenseless neighbors who have to abandon their neighborhood, the traditional commerce that closes its doors, the Catalan that disappears from the streets. It is a kind of progressive, tolerable xenophobia, where the weak is no longer the one who arrives but the one who welcomes.The problem is that, even though we point to a different enemy, the battle is very similar to the one defended by the far-right (first those from home, rejection of diversity, defense of values and autochthonous culture). We are opening a crack through which toxic ideas can infiltrate. While remembering that the ills of the Catalan production model are not only the fault of outsiders; they are, above all, the fault of the natives who exploit them.In this context, we must ensure that this ideological conversion serves a good purpose (disarming the far-right and bravely facing a real debate) and does not provide moral cover for racism. For this reason, it is very important to frame the debate and place it in the hands of wise people vaccinated against ethnic prejudice.

The United Kingdom has had six prime ministers in the last ten years. That is, since David Cameron's failure with his Brexit referendum defeat, the country has settled into political instability that has been liquidating leaderships and majorities. Today, the Labour leader Keir Starmer is a deeply unpopular prime minister, questioned by his own party and by the electorate, for not having lived up to the leadership that his colleagues demanded nor to the expectations of improving living standards that the British needed. Starmer inherited a country fractured by Brexit, which never fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, and which today faces again the risk of recession due to the consequences of the war in Iran. 79% of British adults declare themselves concerned about the rising cost of living compared to the previous month, and especially about the rising price of food. In this context, the electoral victory of Nigel Farage's Reform UK in the local elections on May 7 has been explained as the victory of resentment, and the British press has begun to analyze the supposed "ungovernability" of the country. But the crisis that the United Kingdom is experiencing is not exceptional. It is the portrait of a fragility that runs through Europe. The agonizing end of macronism is the clearest example.

In the next municipal elections, as always, there will be movements on the electoral map. One of those that can already be clearly anticipated is the emergence of Aliança Catalana (AC) in many town halls, which will significantly alter the map of majorities. The far-right formation already made an appearance in 2023 with the mayorship of Ripoll, and some lists in other places. But if we pay attention to the trajectory indicated by the 2024 Parliament elections, what the polls say, and what the party's progressive territorial expansion suggests, that was just the beginning. With the data we have today, we can practically take for granted that next year the xenophobic party will have representation and an important role in many municipalities.

In broad daylight and on the city promenade, in September 2023, several young people threw tables and chairs at each other in a pitched battle that ended up being a kind of turning point in Manresa. That episode caused several residents to take to the streets to demand measures against "insecurity" in the street from the municipal government, led by the republican Marc Aloy. That demonstration, however, was already born divided, and some groups directly distanced themselves from it so as not to link insecurity with immigration. This is, in fact, the fragile balance in which Manresa, a city of 80,000 inhabitants with almost 22% of people from abroad, has been moving for some years.

Balaguer was the capital of the powerful county of Urgell and provided rulers such as King Peter III the Ceremonious, but that is a distant memory. The degradation of the historic center and social segregation mark a city with dwindling vitality. In the center and around the church of Santa Maria de Balaguer, ruined houses, half-demolished or illegally occupied, show the complexity of the capital of La Noguera, with 17,700 inhabitants, which is not even connected to the highway – the C-13 to link it with Lleida is just a promise, and this makes them lose industrial momentum.

Vic has exceeded the 50,000 inhabitants threshold for the first time. It has gained 20,000 in the last thirty years, representing an approximate increase of 66%, double the Catalan average in the same period. The region's omnipresent agri-food industry, especially the meat sector, is a magnet for foreign labor, which already accounts for 30% of the population, more than half of whom are of African origin.

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.

Sant Blai street has historically been one of the most commercial in Tortosa and well illustrates the changes the city has undergone in recent years. In the capital of Baix Ebre live about 36,000 people, 23.5% of whom are of foreign origin. Many of the immigrants work in the fields or run small establishments in the city. This is the case of Oman, who opened a restaurant on Sant Blai street a year and a half ago, the Luxury Rif. It is flanked by a call shop, on one side, and a kebab shop, a few meters away. A neighbor enters and asks if he minds if he orders something to eat. Oman, who is in the middle of Ramadan when we do this report, says no. "We are here, working hard," he explains about the business, where traditional Moroccan food is served. Moroccans are the foreign population group with the most weight in the region: they represent 30% of foreigners, according to Idescat data.

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.