<![CDATA[Ara in English - editorial]]> 10 <![CDATA[The problem is inequality]]>

It's not a bad thing for some people to be rich, especially if their fortune was hard-earned, legally acquired, or inherited. None of these circumstances is a crime or something to be rejected. The fact that some people have quite a bit or much more than others isn't essentially negative. The point is that there are minimum standards that guarantee a decent life for everyone in society, that what is known as the social elevator works.

]]> <![CDATA[Ambitious young people]]>

I read that the L'Estrella bakery, the oldest in Barcelona, ​​​​after being closed for a few months, will be able to celebrate its two hundredth anniversary. This is exceptional news, amid the avalanche of information about traditional businesses closing due to a lack of generational relevance, trades being lost, architectural heritage deteriorating, entire neighborhoods losing their personality. Great news.

]]> <![CDATA[A common front for commuter rail?]]> The President of the Generalitat (Catalan regional government), Salvador Illa, did the only thing one can do this Tuesday in the face of the mess that the commuter rail service has become: apologize to the public and promise that he will put all available resources into fixing it. This initial gesture of humility is even more than the one made last week by the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, in Congress, where he almost scolded the Catalans for complaining. Even so, the situation is so serious that it demands much more than an apology or vague plans for future improvement.

]]> <![CDATA[A decent minimum wage for everyone]]>

The Spanish government's decision to set the minimum wage at €14,000 per annum is a milestone that was unthinkable only a few years ago. We have gone from a minimum wage of €10,304 in 2018, to €12,600 in 2019, €13.300 in 2020, €13,510 in 2021 and finally the €14,000 that will be applied retroactively as of January 1 this year. In total, this represents a 35% rise in 3 years, and the aim is for minimum wage to stand at 60% of the average salary before the next elections. According to government calculations, this will mean raising it again between €168 and €658. This was the commitment of the coalition deal between PSOE and Unidas Podemos.

]]> <![CDATA[The year in which politics and management have to go hand in hand]]>

In recent years, the opposition has often accused the Catalan Government of being too focused on the independence process and of having put management on the back burner. The height of this criticism was voiced a week ago by Salvador Illa, when he said that the last 10 years had been the worst of the last 300, in a sentence that was also extremely unfortunate. The fact is that it has been a recurrent and too generic criticism, because over the last 10 years many things have happened, and part of the paralysis is also attributable, but not only, to the application of the Spanish Constitution article (155) which limited self-rule in Catalonia. However, it is true that the Catalan independence bid has covered priorities and debates that are key to the future of the country, such as infrastructure, which has now exploded with the El Prat airport project, but also the economic, energy, education, and so on.

]]> <![CDATA[A key moment for de-escalation]]>

Catalonia begins this Monday its peculiar 2021 tourist season. At least in the sense that restrictive measures for the entry of visitors to the State have been eased through a Ministry of Health decree, following the recommendations from the European Commission. It will no longer be necessary to have a negative PCR test result, until now mandatory. It will only be necessary to meet one of the following criteria: to have been vaccinated, to provide a negative antigen test result, to present the recovery certificate (having had covid and no longer being infectious) or to present a negative PCR test result. An important leap, and that could still improve during the good weather, which should make it more likely that government forecasts be met: a recovery of over 50% of the €20bn of tourist spending registered in 2019.

]]> <![CDATA[A pitiful week in Spanish politics]]> Murcia has thrown Spanish politics into disarray in the space of a week. The attempted no-confidence motion against the PP president of the community by Cs and PSOE has accelerated the recomposition of forces and balances within both the right and the left. The most damaged has been Inés Arrimadas, who in a few days has seen how her strategy of starting to seek equidistance between PP and PSOE in Murcia has ended in a great fiasco that, in fact, calls into question the viability of Ciudadanos, a party now affected by an unstoppable flight of positions. The waning trend of the orange party is nothing new, it has simply been precipitated and leaves the party's leader on the ropes. The winner of the week is the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who has not hesitated to take advantage of the occasion to throw herself back into the electoral arena with the undisguised aim of recovering all the space on the right for the PP, leaving Cs as residual traitors and embracing the far-right Vox without qualms. If Ayuso triumphs on May 4, she will be in a position to set herself up as the natural successor to a blurred Casado, who has wanted to turn the page on Rajoyism without fully embracing either Aznarism or moderation. With Ayuso, there is no doubt that the hardest and most ideologically uncomplicated PP is returning: neoliberal, and ultra-Spanish. In any case, the triple right may soon be a memory.

]]> <![CDATA[When times change and not everything goes in the name of art]]> The Me Too movement is not yet four years old - it emerged in October 2017 - and it has already managed to change the way behaviours that until then were considered almost habitual or inevitable are looked at or tolerated. It does not mean that they were liked, it does not mean that they were not traumatic for those who suffered them, but socially they were not condemned and the shame was more for the victim than for the person who had carried out the aggression. Fortunately, this is changing, although there is still fear of the stigma attached to reporting cases of abuse of power when, in addition, they are related to aggression, whether physical or psychological.

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