The ERC deputy in Congress Francesc-Marc Álvaro presented the book, but it was another republican in Madrid who took the party president's message. "I went to jail for Catalunya, not because Colau is a deputy on an Esquerra list." Oriol Junqueras has cut short the unitary list of the left promoted for weeks by Gabriel Rufián with the collaboration of his former colleague in the lower house, Joan Tardà. In fact, a few days ago Tardà himself suggested in an interview in Público that Colau be number 2 on a list headed by Rufián and that David Fernàndez (CUP) also be in third position.

The fact that the contempt with which the President of the United States refers to Europe is insulting, and that Donald Trump is a product of the speculative jungle, does not negate the need to ask ourselves if he is right in any of his statements. This is not out of a desire for self-flagellation, but rather to break free from the complacency that we Europeans will pay dearly for.

In one way or another, most of us manage to encapsulate ourselves for a few days in summer when we're allowed to recover the basics, be it the scent of a fig tree or watching the clouds pass by. From the calm, current events take on an even greater appearance of a stage driven by cruelty and arbitrariness. A sinister circus from which it seems worth protecting oneself, distancing oneself. This summer we have witnessed what seems like the end of the world: inextinguishable flames that incinerate trees, animals, and villages; narcissistic leaders and hypertrophied egos that set the pace of international relations, incapable of stopping the killings in Ukraine or Gaza. History, in the case of the Alaska summit, has passed us by like a bad B-movie, where the supposed president of the free world, transformed into a capricious CEO, flatters the bloodthirsty Russian president by driving him around in the Beast, the presidential armored vehicle, while being unable to force a decent ceasefire agreement for kyiv. With the golden stage set dedicated to Putin, the United States provided cover for those who believe that Russia's unity and stability can only be achieved through force and the distortion of history, those who believe that power is fueled by cruelty, mystery, theatricality, and manipulation.

For the first time, the magazine Forbes has compiled a list of the 100 most influential women in Catalonia. The list, ordered alphabetically, was selected by a committee of experts and consultants led by the president and editor of Forbes, Andrés Rodríguez, and the president of the Forbes Women Advisory Board, Gloria Lomana. The list aims to fully represent the political, social, cultural, artistic, and sporting landscape of Catalonia.

We are forced to think that Marx was right and that history repeats itself first as a great tragedy and then as a miserable farce. Looking around us, we notice a disturbing undercurrent, even if a little ridiculous in its forms, especially regarding the European and Spanish far right in particular. An army of scorpions is running around our liberal democracies undermining the values of coexistence and diversity, while the big economic questions have fewer and fewer answers and are more and more worrying in terms of inequality and social mobility.

When Catalan society had not yet overcome the trauma of 2017, and the harshness of prison and exile had conditioned the capacity and freedom with which to make a rational analysis of the mistakes made and an inventory of setbacks and political advances, covid arrived to finish submerging political action in impotence and unbridled emotions.

Good old Groucho Marx used to say that it wasn't politics that made strange bedfellows, but marriage. As always, he was right, but this is not today's topic. The subject is the complex politics of alliances that is straining Spanish politics and the no less bizarre alliances that may be forged in Catalonia in the coming weeks and their dangerous consequences. Which partners will form the government of Catalonia at a time when the worst economic crisis is still in pandemic proportions after a year of exhaustion, with political prisoners and young people sitting on a powder keg?