In the end, tonight, Donald Trump has not ended with “an entire civilization”, because Iran and the United States have given themselves another fifteen days. Trump has found a temporary way out of this war without a clear objective and Iran has resisted and put its conditions on the table. Everyone has lost, in fact, we have all lost, but Trump and the ayatollahs will say they have won. The one who continues to go their own way is Israel, which has already said it does not feel concerned by this two-week ceasefire and will continue to attack southern Lebanon. In any case, this morning we have reasons to breathe a little relieved. And if you want to add a point of reflection, do not miss this article by philosophy professor Ferran Sáez Mateu, titled “Trump: how did we get here?”, in which he explains why people vote for him. “Many voters make a decision based on who they believe they are or what subjective threats they perceive”. Closer, three interesting posts, today. The first: the Spanish Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, has not dared to temporarily move Picasso's Guernica to the Basque Country, as the government of Vitoria had requested.Urtasun clings to the technicians' report which says that with the transfer, the painting could be damaged. The most progressive government in history will not take the symbolic step of exhibiting Guernica in the Basque Country. The reason interests us quite a bit: the work could be damaged. Like the frescoes of Sixena, right?Two: the Spanish government wants to change the Constitution to protect the right to abortion. They did it in France, because the extreme right, when it governs, rolls it back, and because in Spain, most abortions are not performed in public healthcare (in Catalonia, yes), but in private ones. The Spanish government will not achieve it, because to change the Constitution, a majority of ⅗ parts is needed, meaning the PP's votes are required, and the PP will not give them the votes. Why is the PSOE doing it? With the real argument of protecting rights, it forces the PP to say no and alienate itself from the female vote and align itself with VOX, with whom, moreover, they are agreeing on regional governments in Extremadura, Aragon, and Castile and León. And the elections in Andalusia are coming.And the third, and very symbolic: yesterday, the Spanish Episcopal Conference presented some details of the visit of Pope Leo XIV, in just two months. The theme of the trip will be “Lift your eyes”, which is exactly what Leo XIV himself will do in Barcelona when he goes out onto Sardenya street to bless from below the cross that has recently culminated the Sagrada Familia.Without the Sagrada Família, the Pope would not have moved from Rome, but if he came, he had to pass through Madrid (no need to explain why) and take the opportunity to make a trip that his predecessor Pope Francis would have liked to make, which is to go to the Canary Islands, a point of arrival for which thousands of Africans risk their lives trying to enter the European Union. No sooner said than done, here is the logo, of a kitsch and outdated design as has not been seen for a long time, in which the Sagrada Família appears in the middle, the Puerta de Alcalá on the left and the sea (which represents the Canary Islands, which surrounds it). And now for the best part. When presenting the trip, the Episcopal Conference says that, in this act of looking up, one finds “the recognition of God as a source of unity (Madrid), beauty (Barcelona), and charity (the Canary Islands)”.Given that you are chosen for some concept, it is fine that Barcelona is associated with beauty, but don't tell me it's not sensational that the recognition of God as a source of unity is Madrid. Madrid, destination unit in the spiritual, too. It is clear that this trip will not escape the same national tension that was already experienced in 1982 with the visit of John Paul II and in 2010 with that of Benedict XVI.Good morning.

Donald Trump has starred in another TACO moment. This is how the US political and media jargon refers to the president's tendency to back down at the last minute: Trump Always Chikens Out. But, although there have been quite a few TACO moments, the one from this past dawn has been of epic proportions. On Tuesday, Trump had announced that a civilization could die that night if Iran did not immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He had even set a time: eight in the evening in the United States, two in the morning in Catalonia. But, just as he had launched the threat, Trump also backed down with a post and surprisingly announced a 15-day truce to negotiate with Tehran under the auspices of Pakistan.

Markets have already reacted to the news of the ceasefire between the US and Iran, which includes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's consumed oil and natural gas circulates. Asia's main stock markets have led the green trend in this last session, a trend that European and North American stock markets have subsequently followed.

Humanity has taken another step in its exploration of the Moon. A new leap forward to discover the hidden face of the celestial body. The space milestone of NASA's Artemis II mission, with a group of humans positioning themselves at a record distance from Earth – 406,771 kilometers away – has coincided with a dark moment on Earth itself, also with the United States as protagonists. The president who can boast of the lunar achievement is the same one who has threatened humanity with destruction, not of a religious dictatorial regime but of "an entire civilization." In this case, the name does make sense and evidences the mentality of a Donald Trump who acts like a barbarian announcing the end of a "civilization."

When this article appears in print, we will already know if “a whole civilization” has died “this night”. After all, if God made the world in seven days, what could prevent the best president the Earth has ever seen since the appearance of Man from erasing Iran and its thousands of years of history in a single night? Trump's ability to turn everything he touches into shit is exhausting, day and night.

"Open the fuckin' strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell!" ("Open the fucking strait, crazy scoundrels, or you will live hell!"). This delicate, diplomatic phrase was written by President Trump on Sunday on his network, Truth Social, surely with the intention of de-escalating the conflict and reaching a cordial and peaceful agreement. Jokes aside, how did we get here? Although the question seems simple, it is actually misleading, due to the evident nature of the answer: we have arrived here because a very clear majority of Americans voted for Trump, knowing perfectly well what they were doing. Consequently, the question is another, and it turns out to be a bit uncomfortable: why did many vote for a character who, as in the case of numerous Latin Americans, went against their interests in a clear, explicit, unambiguous way? In politics, social groups do not vote solely based on their material interests, but on a broader framework of identity, emotional, or symbolic factors. This explains why certain segments —such as the aforementioned Latin Americans, impoverished white workers from the Rust Belt, or certain religious minorities— could support options that, from an external perspective —I mean, European—, seemed little or not at all coherent with their objective needs. Here and in the United States, everywhere, identity can weigh more than the economy in certain circumstances. Many voters make a decision based on who they believe they are (not who they are in reality), or on what (subjective) threats they perceive. A common case is the totally illusory identification with the middle class. There are other factors, though. For some North Americans of Cuban, Venezuelan, or Nicaraguan origin, for example, any discourse that evokes the specter of the socialism that drove them from their country had, and has, an immediate emotional impact, regardless of the specific policies it entails. When voting becomes catharsis, programmatic coherence ultimately ceases to be determinant. To this is added a —let's say— aspirationalism: many citizens do not vote for their current situation, but for what they imagine they could achieve.

Today is one of those days when you don't even have time to get your bearings. We are waiting for Iran, because Trump seems determined not to give any more ultimatums. Yesterday he said: "We can destroy Iran in one night, and that night could be tomorrow," meaning, this coming dawn. This time it could be for real, because these extended ultimatums are starting to be a joke and because the crude language Trump has used these days shows more desperation than ability to intimidate the ayatollahs' regime, and that makes it even more dangerous. If his threat is fulfilled, the consequences could be catastrophic, almost unimaginable, beyond the deaths, the war crimes he will commit, and the world economy also going up in smoke.To understand how erratic and neronian Trump is, we only need to think that he has the world admiring the NASA trip to the Moon: human beings had never been so far from Earth, and this is extraordinary news and of national and almost worldwide unity, but Trump himself has counter-programmed himself with a war whose meaning he does not know and from which he does not know how to get out. He only knows how to boast about the rescue of the shot-down pilot (a meritorious operation, yes, because if the Iranians had taken a prisoner the political cost for Trump would have been very high), but when you look at it, Iran already has a great hostage, which is the Strait of Hormuz, on which we all depend.Speaking of Hormuz, we highly recommend the reports that our Head of International, Francesc Millan, is currently filing from the Middle East. Yesterday we read about him sailing through the Strait, and today we find him in the ultra-modern and very exposed Dubai.Not everything is misfortune: unemployment has fallen in Catalonia and the number of people who have jobs and are affiliated with Social Security is nearing records. It is good news, which unfortunately does not prevent people from working and not escaping poverty.And yesterday an old acquaintance, Jorge Fernández Díaz, went to trial accused of having participated in the theft of information from Luis Bárcenas that compromised the PP. The Kitchen plot allegedly paid bribes to Bárcenas' driver with money from reserved police funds. On the defendants' bench are one who was a minister, one who was a secretary of state, five commissioners, two inspectors, and two police officers. Rot to the bone of the State, a type of rot we know well, because some of these, starting with Fernández Díaz, appear in all the photos of the patriotic police.And today begins the Koldo case, which affects the PSOE: purchase of masks, contracts, cronyism and favors. Do these two trials have anything in common? Yes, that Fernández Díaz was of Rajoy's utmost trust and Ábalos was of Pedro Sánchez's utmost trust.And we end with a page that makes us think that the nightmare will continue in Rodalies. It is this one signed by Natàlia Vila. As you know, the service is provided with trains from 1990, and now the new ones were supposed to arrive. First they were supposed to arrive last year, then at the beginning of the year, and now they say "in the autumn", and most will be for Rodalies and few will come to Regionals, and they will be delivered over the next 4 years, until 2030. On top of that, some new trains that are already in the testing phase are already covered in graffiti. No further questions, your honor.Good morning.

Supporters of Trumpism and the MAGA movement (we have plenty of them right here) find it a little more difficult each day to maintain their stance. According to them, both Trump and the young lions of his administration (Hegseth, Rubio, Vance) represent an advanced elite, which in no way can be reduced to the criticisms and caricatures of leftists and progressives, who are always clueless and outdated. These ringleaders of the new American right have pursued, with academic success, rigorous study plans at prestigious universities; they handle information that ordinary citizens can only dream of; they have a broad and sophisticated geopolitical vision, and they follow a well-designed plan to end the old order that emerged from World War II and the Cold War to establish a new one. Such are the grand, ambitious, and impressive goals that the new leaders of the world aim to achieve, who are also ironic, fun, cool, and politically incorrect guys. This is the picture that, in broad strokes, their defenders paint. The problem is that, as always when someone proposes a real revolution and truly overturns the established order, many do not understand it.Reality, however, seems to be something else. The latest diplomatic expression from the current US president is a tweet addressed to the Iranian regime with these exact words: “Open the damn strait, you crazy bastards, or you will live in hell (...) Praise be to Allah.” Tavern insults, copying the style of the recently deceased patriot Chuck Norris, followed by a religious allusion that is perhaps intended to be ironic but only comes across as crude. This does not seem like the communication of a US president with a vanguard vision of the geopolitical chessboard, nor do these even seem like phrases spoken by a sane person. For his part, the secretary of the Trump administration they call the War Department, Pete Hegseth, supposedly an intellectual who combines refined university training with solid military knowledge, is someone who insists on appearing in public describing apocalyptic images of fire and destruction falling from the sky upon Iran: he says this in these words, and with notably dilated pupils. Both he and his commander-in-chief (Trump) are incapable of recognizing what everyone knows: that they went to war with Iran dragged along by Israel, partly because it served as a smokescreen for both Trump and Netanyahu: for the repugnant Epstein scandal in the American's case, for the genocide in Palestine in the Israeli's case.This Tuesday, the ultimatum expires for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, which is strangling the world economy as a consequence of the turpitude of the absurd and bloodthirsty Trump/Netanyahu couple. It remains to be seen whether all this rhetoric of unleashed hells and falling fires from the sky translates into a concrete military order. It could happen (there have been warnings to this effect) that the American military disobeys the presidential order. If it is an illegal or unconstitutional order, they have a duty to do so.

They say Nabokov used to tell his students the following: "Do not inflate ignorance with eloquence." As is evident, Trump would not have attended class. Never before had a US president caused so much bewilderment in the markets, among allies, enemies, and his own electorate. His contradictory statements cause erratic movements in the stock markets and are wearing down the patience of traditional allies, whom he insults in a frivolous and puerile manner. Added to the insults directed at allies who do not allow themselves to be dragged into a war for which no one consulted them, are the threats of a neighborhood thug, such as sending Persian civilization back to the Stone Age, exactly where the president of the great superpower seems to mentally come from. He has also not shied away from threatening to leave NATO, even though the decision theoretically depends on the US Congress.

Since Pete Hegseth was appointed Secretary of Defense of the United States, a name that would later change to Secretary of War, he has dismissed more than a dozen high-ranking military officials, including several four-star generals. The latest case occurred this very Friday, when Hegseth forced the early retirement of the chief of staff of the army, Randy George, right in the middle of the Iran war. But Trump and Hegseth's purge of the military goes back much further, to the beginning of their term, so they have ended up shaping a tailor-made military leadership.

After addressing the nation to ask for more time and patience to end the war against Iran, Donald Trump is now looking to Congress for more money. The White House presented a budget this Friday to spend 1.5 trillion dollars on defense in 2027. If approved, it would be the highest allocation in modern history, with an increase of 40% compared to this year's accounts. Although the package is not directly linked to the conflict in the Middle East, it coincides with the first month of war. It is estimated that in the first 100 hours of campaign – which began on February 28 – Washington had spent a minimum of 3.7 billion dollars, that is, about 888 million dollars per day.

I start a bit far away, but it's about Trump... Manuel Azaña was the most vilified and hated Spanish political figure by the right during the republican years. He symbolized progressive reforms and anti-clericalism. He was not, by any means, a radical, but they painted him as if he were. As head of government and president, he was the main target of conservative propaganda, which considered him ultimately responsible for the "destruction" of the traditional order, that is, for secular inequality in favor of a few. A few years ago, in a rewriting operation, some fascist ideologues and publicists wanted to appropriate the patriotic Azaña, sidelining the progressivism that his intellectual parents and grandparents had so much denounced. The aim was thus to discredit Zapatero and Sánchez, supposed anti-patriots who sought to resolve the perennial mismatch of Catalonia. Fortunately, the rewriting of history has its limits.

It is true that Europe has benefited greatly from having a large part of its defense outsourced to the budgets of the United States, but Trump could reserve the role of the offended for a better cause. Because for decades, US security has been defended from American bases spread throughout Europe. And because 65% of European defense equipment orders are placed with North American companies, and that amounts to billions that have entered the American coffers and come from European budgets for decades.

Donald Trump picks up the gauntlet from the far-right in Spain and weighs in on the controversy over euthanasia for Noelia, the 25-year-old girl who last Thursday, after a long judicial battle, achieved assisted death. According to the New York Post, the American administration has opened an investigation into the case due to concerns that the Spanish system may have incurred "failures" in "matters of human rights".

Donald Trump picks up the gauntlet from the Spanish far-right and stirs controversy over the euthanasia of Noelia Castillo, the 25-year-old girl who last Thursday, after a long legal battle, obtained assisted death in a socio-health center in Sant Pere de Ribes. According to the New York Post publishes, the North American administration has opened an investigation into the case due to suspicions that Spain may have incurred "failures" in "human rights matters".

Vladimir Putin has launched his spring offensive in Ukraine. Taking advantage of a dry March after a brutal winter, the Russian army has intensified attacks against the last major Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donbas, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, with assault operations exceeding 600 attacks in four days and battalions of up to 500 soldiers. The objective is clear: to conquer what the military calls the Donetsk fortress belt before the diplomatic path, if it ever materializes, freezes the conflict map.

Pedro Sánchez continues his particular crusade against the President of the United States, Donald Trump. To the clash over Spain's defense spending, below 5% of GDP, has been added for a month the staunch opposition of the Spanish president to the war in Iran initiated by Americans and Israelis. Sánchez has solemnly intoned the "No to war" and, more casually, has used social media to throw barbs at Trump and his strategy in the Middle East. The latest was this Saturday, when Sánchez posted a video on his Instagram in which he is seen wearing a cap with the message "Make science great again".

There are unjust wars, wrong wars, and avoidable wars. But there is a worse one: war without purpose. This is where we find ourselves.

Of all the Persian Gulf monarchies that have suffered attacks from Iran since Washington initiated the war, Saudi Arabia is in the most confusing position, immersed in a genuine strategic dilemma. Among other reasons, because it is the largest and most powerful country in the region, the one with the oldest and closest ties to the United States, but the one which, along with Oman, has suffered least from the wrath of the ayatollah regime. At least, until now. Therefore, contradictory news has been published about how and when Riyadh would like the war to end, and what its future security strategy might be, given the failure of the current one.

Very often we think that Donald Trump is "crazy" and that his actions are unpredictable and disconcerting, or even delirious, chaotic and irrational. But these labels do not help to see a fairly coherent pattern behind increasingly aggressive interventions: weakening rivals indirectly and ensuring relative gains for the United States. We are facing proxy geopoliticsproxy.This idea is a reinterpretation of the concept of "proxy wars" that became popular during the Cold War, when major powers provided military, economic, or political support to allied governments in distant conflicts (in Korea or Vietnam, for example). This way they harmed the enemy while avoiding a direct confrontation between powers with nuclear weapons.We could say that proxy geopolitics is the compass of Trump's foreign policy, both in contexts of peace and war. Through interventions in third countries, it essentially seeks to weaken rival powers and gain an advantage in economic, energy, or military matters. This is how explicit the US national security strategy, published last November, is: "We must prevent other actors from achieving global dominance [...]. This implies working with partners to counter ambitions that endanger our interests." It's not about winning, but about defeating others.The eight peace agreements that Trump boasts of having achieved have not stopped violence nor brought stability. But this was not the objective. Many of these agreements seek to limit the influence of other major powers. For example, in the agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, Trump secures the exploitation of mineral reserves in a region that was mostly dominated by Chinese companies; while in the agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, US contractors will develop railway lines, gas, and oil for a century, limiting the influence of Russia and China in the Caucasus.