The BBC is going through one of its worst economic moments in its history. This February, the British audiovisual corporation announced a cost-cutting plan of more than 600 million pounds, which will translate, mainly, into job losses and the cancellation of some of its programs. Tim Davie, who was still director-general, warned that the company had to cut 10% of its cost base over the next three years if it wanted to ensure stability, and this has translated into this announcement of 2,000 layoffs, almost 10% of the 21,500 it has in total.

On the war: the United States and Israel have neither overthrown the ayatollahs' regime, nor do they control the Strait of Hormuz, nor is Trump advancing peace talks as he wants us to believe with this daily obsession of talking, talking, and talking.Trump wants to claim victory and cannot, he wants to announce peace and bombs and missiles continue to be heard, and Tehran says they are not negotiating anything, the war is harming the lives of people and businesses all over the world, and it is sending us into an energy crisis that could strangle us all. The dictatorship of the Iranian clergy has understood that Trump is in a hurry to finish, and logically they are not; the regime is already very damaged, and now they want the whole world to blame Trump for the general impoverishment.In this regard, I recommend again theanalysis by our Head of International, Francesc Millán, on what might happen now. Because Trump said the war would last 4 weeks. It will be 4 weeks the day after tomorrow, Saturday. What should we do: insist on the diplomatic path or escalate the war, with nuclear weapons if necessary?In this scenario, today the anti-crisis decree is being voted on in Congress. It will be approved because Junts has already said they will support it because the PSOE will support what we explained yesterday about the zero VAT reduction for self-employed workers earning less than 85,000 euros per year. The vote and debate will be today, but yesterday Esquerra and Junts already debated another issue that will be voted on in a month, which is the decree extending rental contracts. And Rufián went all out against Junts: "Who do they work for? For whom? If they overthrow this decree, I wish them years of political ostracism. And I promise you that while I am here, I will strive very hard for that to be the case. Very. Because they do terrible harm to people, to this country, and to my country. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes..."

Two weeks of unprecedented rail chaos and the Catalan rail network is still operating at half capacity, with many sections shut down and undergoing safety inspections. Now that the initial shock has subsided, the question is: How will this mess be fixed? No one doubts that it will take many years (and many millions) to bring the network up to date. But just as important as the injection of funds and the renovation work is improving organization, coordination, and integrating climate change into future planning.

In these 15 years of the ARA, the Catalan economy, which three lustrums ago had a gross domestic product (GDP) of about 200 billion euros, has today more than 300 billion, more than 50% higher; it has experienced a total restructuring of the financial system, the flight of business headquarters with the referendum of October 1, 2017 and a fall in activity like in the Civil War due to the coronavirus crisis. This period has now ended with Banc Sabadell shareholders' refusal to accept BBVA's takeover bid, which BBVA had already attempted in 2020. But the story of this newspaper, which hit newsstands (there were still quite a few) on November 28, 2012, featuring Mois Noguera, the first Catalan born that year, on the front page, began two months after a general strike against labor reforms under the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as Spanish Prime Minister. Following the biggest economic crisis since 1929, recovery was beginning to offer hope, but the world was reeling from the shock of the attacks on the debt of Greece and Ireland, and other countries with high deficits, including Spain.

France will have to wait at least until Friday to find out whether it will have a new government or whether the President of the Republic will call early legislative elections. This Wednesday evening, the deadline for resigned Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to reach an agreement with the parties to form a government and approve the 2026 budget was due, but it was not possible to close the deal within such a tight timeframe. The acting Prime Minister told President Macron that negotiations are on track and that an agreement and a new Prime Minister could be reached "within 48 hours." The Élysée Palace subsequently confirmed in a statement that the President will appoint the Prime Minister by Friday at the latest.

It is the most repeated generational accusation. And they are right. boomers We have failed. Democracies are failing, the climate crisis seems unrelenting, authoritarian leaders dominate geopolitics, a climate of war is returning, social inequalities are becoming bloody, educational disarray is growing, ideological and religious polarization is advancing hand in hand with new dogmas, cultural wars are driving away dialogue...

Another government falls in the heart of Europe. France is left without a government. Another prime minister in the pillory. François Bayrou lasted nine months, not much. His immediate predecessors were also brief: five prime ministers in five years. Barnier and Attal, both former prime ministers, lasted three and eight months respectively; both combined did not reach a year. The country hasn't found the formula, and each new political shock brings the danger of a future victory for Le Pen's far-right a little closer. France's crisis of political governance and economic weakness are paradigmatic of the directionlessness of a Europe that sees Trump scorn it and Putin besieging it in Ukraine. magnitude France is in a slump, and Europe is suffering.

The vast majority of the Barcelona metropolitan population (88.65%) lives in areas where the main food offering is ultra-processed products, with few fresh or healthy options. This is the warning from a study presented this Thursday by the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) on food environments in the municipalities that make up Greater Barcelona. The report finds high territorial and social inequality in access to food.

Contrary to what the monotonous apocalyptics believe, the world has not come to an end – the world does not advance, it only turns, and still thanks to it –; but this Our world, the one that began in 1989 with the end of the Cold War, does seem to be at an end. The media complaint of the bouffons The conflict between Trump and Musk, for example, is the most grotesque part of a process of decline that has many faces. To summarize: the global expectations arising from the fall of the Berlin Wall were those of a great hegemonic power, the United States, surrounded by countries that, for one reason or another—economic, military, or technological—were heavily dependent on it. Twelve years later, however, the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent, more or less unsuccessful, armed conflicts that arose from it, revealed a very different reality. Six or seven years later, between 2007 and 2008, what had begun as a one-off crisis in the American mortgage system became a global crisis, the effects of which still linger, seventeen or eighteen years later. I invite the reader to recall—I fear bitterly—what their purchasing power was. real around 2005 or 2006, and what it is today, twenty years later. Around 1989, or even at the beginning of 2002, when the euro was introduced, all of this was almost unthinkable. What kind of world is going on down there now?

Fear has taken hold in the stock markets. The declines experienced by the indexes, which began on Thursday in the US and have spread across the globe, reveal that no one expected US President Donald Trump to dare to play with fire in a manner that has little to do with economic rationality. The day after the delirious announcement of tariffs by the leader of the world's leading power, investors, far from calming down, have become even more nervous. And we'll see if Monday continues a situation that, in the worst-case scenario, would turn into panic.

Last week, the European Union authorities presented a plan in which they asked the population to always have one on hand. kit survival for possible emergency situations in which we may find ourselves - such as natural disasters or even a possible war.

"I live through torture: all evictions are a very hard experience, but you don't live the same way at 30 as you do at 60." The speaker is Elena Olivella, 62 years old. She is, most likely, one of the last "lifelong" residents left on Ferran street in Barcelona, ​​next to the emblematic Sant Jaume square. She holds a title that also has an expiration date, because her eviction is scheduled for March 4.

Judging by the widespread yearning to go on holiday detectable in the air, we must be near the end of the world.

Since ancient times, several civilizations have understood the arrival of cold weather as a time of the year when it was necessary to be prepared. There are examples of this even in the Neolithic, when the first sedentary people accumulated the summer harvest to try to have reserves during the time of the big frosts. In the global energy industry, every year we experience similar behaviour: governments and large companies around the world try to ensure that the onset of the cold weather catches them with sufficiently full tanks so that they do not have to suffer during the winter months. But this year, the year of the beginning of the economic recovery after the covid-19 shake-up, the forecasts are not very good. And there is a key factor: gas. For weeks now, experts have been warning that this winter there could be a natural gas shortage crisis in several parts of the world that could have major economic, political and social consequences. And one of the regions of greatest concern is Europe, where reserves are at remarkably low levels despite the fact that, on the continent, natural gas is used to generate around a fifth of electricity.

Optimism pervades Europe's leading economic indicators and institutions. This week the European Central Bank (ECB) has announced that it is beginning to withdraw the emergency stimuli it put in place at the start of the pandemic, and so the end of 2021 is starting to be considered the end of the crisis. However, the urgency of opening a debate affecting the heart of the functioning of the European Union is being felt. Coronavirus has blown away Europe's deficit and debt rules, which are fiercely defended by the fiercely defended by the frugal Nordic countries but this exceptionality will not last forever. The suspension is temporary, until 2023. The question is to what extent it is realistic to return to rules that set the deficit limit at 3% and debt at 60% of GDP when the Eurozone currently has a deficit that exceeds 7% and a debt that is close to 100%. With recovery on the horizon, the political debate is also beginning between those who want to seize the moment to soften these rules and those who are more reluctant to change them.

Only three countries in the European Union meet the limit of 3% of public deficit that was planned before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, because all have focused on curbing the impact of the crisis with public aid. Spain, however, already dragged high levels of debt and deficit which have soared even higher, and that is why the European Commission warns that it needs to be "prudent" when it comes to continue spending from 2022 to underpin the recovery. Brussels thus recommends prioritising the use of European funds to avoid the risks associated with an even greater increase in public debt. Spain finished 2020 with a public debt of 120% of its GDP and the highest deficit in the EU (11%).

The collateral effects of the covid-19 pandemic, still painfully among us, are like ivy covering the entire façade of our cracked social edifice. The metaphor is pertinent because housing is, right now, one of the greatest weak points. We had already come from a precarious situation, the result of the economic crisis of 2008, which had become bogged down and has now only worsened due to the economic ravages also caused by the coronavirus. The moratorium on evictions for people in social emergency situations has managed to stop the blow, but if, as planned, it ends with the end of the state of alarm on May 9, we will come across a new wave of homeless people difficult to manage. Many families will face the threat of becoming homeless with the end of the furlough scheme and the self-employed aid, measures that, if there is no further extension, will expire around the same time, on May 31.

The unemployment figures for February are another bucket of cold water, another negative month for the labour market. Catalonia has added 4,209 more unemployed and the total number of unemployed is already soaring at 512,290, a figure that had not been reached since January 2016. It is the largest monthly increase in February in the last nine years. In these twelve months of covid-19 the number of unemployed has grown by 117,076, a 29% increase. It has only decreased in July and September, when it did so very timidly. The situation, therefore, is worrying. The pandemic is dragging on, the vaccination process is slower than expected and businesses are not working at full capacity, stranded as they are in uncertainty. Many businesses are at the limit of their endurance, so that, once the furlough scheme comes to an end - in Catalonia there are 190,000 workers in this situation, 20,000 more than in January - the outlook could be even bleaker, more delicate. In Spain, where the symbolic barrier of 4 million unemployed has just been surpassed and there are almost 900,000 employees on furlough, the situation and the outlook for the immediate future is just as bad. So far, the desire of the Catalan and Spanish governments to give good news, to create a minimally optimistic climate to accompany the way out of the pandemic and economic crisis does not reverse the harsh reality, which is what it is: covid-19 will take time to disappear and will continue to interfere in society for some time, with all that this entails in terms of economic downtime. Therefore, rather than making toasts to the sun, what is needed is concrete and effective policies, carried out side by side with social entities and businesses.

Youth unemployment is an endemic problem of the Spanish economy. Also in Catalonia, of course. It is one of the highest in the euro zone. With the covid crisis it has shot up again, as it could not be otherwise: right now it is at 27% between the ages of 16 and 29, but 38% between 16 and 24, when overall unemployment is 13.9%. Moreover, we come from a financial crisis, which in 2013 skewered the figure to 50%. The State's economic model is based on low-skilled jobs, with construction and tourism as the main drivers. Changing this paradigm is the only way to break a dynamic that does not generate stimuli to achieve a high educational and technical level, either through university studies or vocational training degrees. In fact, where there is a more evident deficit is in vocational training, which, despite attempts to link it to industry, does not function with the quality and scope that would be necessary. The result, then, is that the youth population continues to be the main victim of a system that, on the whole, gives them few job opportunities and, when they do exist, they are of a low salary level. Low salaries are a drama.