When I returned from the United States and colleagues, future correspondents, came to ask me for advice for the day they could go to work there, I told them – and I tell them – that knowing American history or the political system of checks and balances is all well and good, but that the most important thing is that they be in shape. That they would experience a lot of heat and a lot of cold, that they would be subjected to extreme climatic conditions: scorching temperatures, monstrous snowfalls, and months with frozen sidewalks and without being able to have a coffee on a terrace, tornadoes, gales, that the electricity would go out, meaning the refrigerator and air conditioning. Or the heating… and that, in addition to suffering it, they would have to go and explain it on the front lines. And that if they didn't make themselves physically and mentally strong, it would be very hard for them.Well, this has already arrived here, in Catalonia. You only have to look at the records that are being broken these days:“Barcelona breaks its heat record in 113 years. The Fabra Observatory registers a temperature of 40.9 degrees”. In Vinebre, temperatures exceeded 44 degrees. And we have it for another week.It is not adventurous to think that the usual September downpours may be particularly dangerous this year, taking into account the amount of heat that the land and sea will have stored. All these extreme phenomena have a cost in health, physical and mental, in lifestyles, in leisure, but also, in the functioning of basic services and the maintenance of infrastructure. Increasingly, governments will have to drop everything they are doing to deal with emergencies and, in general, to adapt public spaces and services (streets, natural parks, schools, hospitals, residences) to the new climatic conditions. And us, too.

Another U-turn from President Donald Trump. After being the entire NATO summit in Ankara charging against Spain, the President of the United States has changed his tone with the government of Pedro Sánchez and assured on the plane back that the Spanish state "has completely redeemed itself" because Moncloa has accepted an "important payment request". "Spain has been very generous today. They have agreed to an important payment request and, if they hadn't, we wouldn't even have spoken to them," the American leader assured.

When it comes to Donald Trump, it is very difficult to discern what is true and what is pure bluster in his words, but the reality is that it is becoming increasingly evident that Europe must go it alone in the field of security. The latest NATO summit, held in Ankara, has been the clearest example that these United States are not a reliable ally. Trump has once again staged his particular show, in which he has insulted political leaders like Giorgia Meloni, has threatened countries like Spain, has insisted that he wants to keep Greenland, and has made it clear that, if it were up to him, he would dismantle the Atlantic Alliance because he sees no use for it. His press conferences are a collection of absurdities that serve both to provide sensationalist headlines and to cause confusions that quickly go viral on social networks, such as referring to Iran as the Islamic Republic of Japan.

With Catalonia at 40 degrees and the historic record of 40.5°C at the Fabra Observatory, it's not that Trump's threats don't matter, but rather that they can't be hotter (or so we hope). When in less than 24 hours, Trump threatens Denmark over Greenland, Iran with a ceasefire, and Spain with a trade cut, it's clear we're facing a new operation to "flood the zone" with short, blunt, and provocative headlines that set the agenda, as the sinister Steve Bannon advised him during the 2016 campaign.

Probably, no country wishes for a diplomatic conflict with the United States. Even if it's Trump's United States, they remain the world's leading power, still situated within the traditional Western bloc. However, this is not the case for Pedro Sánchez. Moncloa welcomes a new clash with Donald Trump, at a time of maximum tension due to the alleged corruption cases surrounding the PSOE and the Spanish government, and in a week when the focus of the NATO summit in Ankara, at a state level, was also on the bouquet of flowers that could not be delivered to Begoña Gómez due to the justice's veto on her leaving Spain. That is to say, even though Spain has responded with restraint, it suits Sánchez that for one day the framework of debate returns to international relations.

A few minutes after the United States was eliminated in Seattle, the Belgian players played the Village People's Y.M.C.A. in the locker room and began to imitate Donald Trump's dance. The footballers mocked the American president after he had boasted about personally calling his good friend Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, to lift the suspension on striker Folarin Balogun. The striker played, it was no use, and the United States was eliminated amid criticism and ridicule from most football fans worldwide.

Messi was about to follow Cristiano Ronaldo’s path home this Tuesday. Both ended up crying, but the Argentine did so out of relief after a dramatic comeback (including a missed penalty and questionable refereeing bias), and Cristiano so that everyone understood that the news was that he would no longer play in any more World Cups. It was a moment that arrived amidst general indifference, including that of his teammates and the Portuguese press, who are fed up and eager to lock him away in the museum once and for all.

Narcissism usually operates on a relentless logic. In this sense, it is not at all strange that Donald Trump has juxtaposed, without any complex or sense of ridicule, the celebration of his 80th birthday with the 250th anniversary of the creation of his country. Last July 4th, he made public a brief triumphalist and somewhat delirious speech in which the United States was presented as the culmination of the human race. Two authors came to mind who, as those kind enough to read me know, have helped me understand that nation for very different reasons: Alexis de Tocqueville and Walter Lippmann. If you are not familiar with Democracy in America (1835) or Public Opinion (1922), this is a good time to delve into them. If Tocqueville had contemplated the 250th anniversary of the United States coinciding with a presidency as polarizing as Trump's, it is quite likely that his reading would have been more curious than scandalized: Tocqueville was not exactly a prophet of consensus, but an analyst of the forces that shape democracy. In this sense, he would probably see the Trump phenomenon as an extreme, but at the same time understandable, expression of the tendencies he himself diagnosed 191 years ago. He affirmed that American democracy is capable of generating unexpected leaderships because the system favors the rise of figures who connect with the immediate passions of the people. I imagine he wouldn't celebrate it, although he wouldn't necessarily consider it a catastrophe either: these are things that can happen. Tocqueville also warned of the danger of democratic despotism, a form of power that is not imposed by force, but by the ability of a leader to present himself as the sole interpreter of the “real people”. Here, perhaps, he would make a severe objection: the simplification of conflicts and the disqualification of institutions and counter-powers are the mechanisms that erode freedom without remedy. Modern despotism, he said, "degrades men without tormenting them". That is, it makes them children, feeds them with easy certainties, exempts them from critical effort. Tocqueville admired the solidity of the North American constitutional system, its ability to absorb tensions without breaking. The fact that, despite the intensity of the political conflict, elections continue to be held, courts act, counter-powers function, etc., would confirm the intuition that American democracy has exceptional elasticity. The question is: until when? Before Trump's second term, this suspicion might have seemed an exaggeration. Right now, it is a perfectly real possibility.

1. We have seen ridiculous things in the history of football – a suitable territory for egos needing recognition to let loose – but Donald Trump asking President Infantino to withdraw a red card for Balogun, a forward for the United States team, and the order being immediately executed breaks records for frivolity and indecency. It's not surprising from Trump, because he has been showing off for years and prioritizing his conviction that anything is permissible for him, that there are no limits for him, but it seems to be a vice that contaminates. The anecdote comes at a time when the contradictions his uncontrolled ego has led him to are generating accelerated disrepute that is already directly impacting the United States, where awareness of the president's irresponsibility is spreading. The way he acts, doing and undoing, means that, for example, in Venezuela he today supports those he wanted to overthrow yesterday, or that in the Middle East the impasse his delusions have led him to is giving life to the totalitarian regime of the Iranian ayatollahs, who have abruptly curbed his excesses by exposing him for what he is.

Neither Donald Trump's calls nor FIFA's favors have served much. The United States' journey in their World Cup has ended in the round of 16 after deservedly falling to Belgium, who will be Spain's opponent in the quarterfinals. will be Spain's opponent in the quarterfinals. Mauricio Pochettino's team played its worst match at the least opportune moment, likely distracted by all the noise caused by the scandal surrounding Folarin Balogun, the local forward sent off against Bosnia who was pardoned after pressure from the White House. An unprecedented event, where the president of a government boasts about having pulled strings so an expelled player can play the next match. But Balogun, likely overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the previous 24 hours, did very little on the pitch and the Belgian red devils ran over the hosts (1-4).

I remember the last July 4th lived in the United States, in 2022, already returned to a certain normality after the long pandemic. The joy with which the neighbors lived that night of celebration, each in their neighborhood with the people close by, was an act full of citizenship. I celebrated it in the Harlem neighborhood, with neighbors from multiple countries, origins, races, and cultural traditions. From the European perspective, we look at it with some indulgence: as an act of alien ingenuity, revealing of a nation as dominant in the last century as it is young in its historical journey. After all, it is a nation that has just turned a quarter of a millennium since its founding. Thus, while nations with more than a thousand years of life like Catalonia survive being part of a state, a nation in its youth like the American one has enough strength in the year 2026 to threaten a country like Iran – the contemporary political form of a civilization with more than two thousand five hundred years of history like Persia. This arrogance is probably the reason why we have a feeling towards the United States of both fascination and antipathy. What makes a creature relate with such virulence against ancient civilizations of continents like the Asian or the European – China, Iran, Germany, to give the latest examples?Trump's United States is unaware of its original sin: being David in the grand narrative of history, facing Goliath with the weight of tradition. Cycles of domination have their limits, and if the Carolingian Empire did not even last a century and the Roman Empire – the greatest example of European hegemonic domination – lasted five, we can think that the path remaining for the great globalization power will be short, no matter how much Trump said the opposite on Saturday, July 4, from Mount Rushmore. There he announced for the umpteenth time a new "golden age" like the one founded by Presidents Washington and Jefferson or grown by Lincoln and Roosevelt – the four, carved into the background stone of South Dakota. The evolution of economic, demographic, and geopolitical data, however, suggests the end of the first great golden chapter – the one that began with the post-World War II agreements.

Donald Trump reportedly called FIFA President Gianni Infantino personally to demand that Folarin Balogun be allowed to play tomorrow against Belgium, according to reports from The New York Times. Balogun, the United States' top scorer in this tournament, was sent off in the round of 16 match against Bosnia after inadvertently stepping on an opponent. In recent days, members of the United States government had complained about this incident, and today, surprisingly, FIFA announced that Balogun will be able to play in the round of 16 against Belgium. According to The New York Times, Trump reportedly called Infantino personally last Wednesday to discuss this matter.

Sometimes a single image is capable of condensing the spirit of an era. In this case, the photograph by Cheney Orr, from the Reuters agency, showing a young black girl surrounded by white supremacists with their faces covered in a subway car, perfectly captures what it means to belong to a minority in the midst of Trumpism. Furthermore, the fact that the image was captured during the celebrations in Washington of the 250th anniversary of the United States' independence gives it even more value, because it shows that, a quarter of a millennium later, what was once the world's most advanced democratic experiment has still not resolved what has always been its pending subject: the real equality of all human beings, regardless of their race, gender, or religion.

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Few political formulas have had such a long life and such great force as these words from the Declaration of Independence of the United States. Approved on July 4, 1776, they represent a historical break: power could not derive from blood, from the crown, or from divine will, but from the rights of individuals and the consent of the governed.

On June 23, 1985, I saw Bruce Springsteen at the dusty Richter Stadium in Montpellier. It was the eleventh concert of the European tour of Born in the U.S.A. and some forty thousand people filled the venue and accompanied the voice of the Boss when he started with the song that gave its name to one of his most famous albums of that decade. The song, misinterpreted as a wholesale patriotic exaltation, was in reality quite the opposite: a denunciation of the way the country had abandoned a generation of its citizens. Springsteen himself complained about it, many years later (2016), in his book "Born to run: "

The nation and God. God and the nation. The 250 years of history of the United States are characterized by both concepts, sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory.

My father had a preference for the Spanish expression "in the small details you see the person". At the G-7 leaders' summit in France, two moments showed two people in two very different lights.

I belong to the generation of the child of Toy Story, that from one day to the next went from playing in the cowboys to be an astronaut. My heroes of Bonanza were sidelined by Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin. The United States had reached the pinnacle of Humanity's technological progress, and they were the best at explaining it. Despite the assassinations of the 60s and the disaster in Vietnam, the feat of Apollo 11 and the lesson of honesty from Watergate still kept the USA on its pedestal.

Among the reasons for President Donald Trump to offer a memorandum of understanding to the Shiite Totalitarian Theocracy of Iran (STTI) were: saving the Soccer World Cup in the United States (he did not want to disturb this great business with the sound of missiles), lowering fuel prices before the November mid-term elections, and finding a dignified way out of the quagmireof the Persian Gulf after failing to overthrow the regime as an electoral asset.

The American comedian and journalist Bill Maher managed to get the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance, on his show. I say he managed to get him on because Maher hosts and presents a show where Donald Trump started as a laughable clown and is now the personification of the greatest national catastrophe, and he's no longer funny, only scary. In this situation, what did Maher ask Vance? Only one thing. Fair play on election day: “With Trump, for you there will only be two possible outcomes: either we win or they cheated. This shit has to end. And you or Marco [Rubio; one of the two will succeed Trump in the candidacy] will have to do it. Can you tell me that you will do it, that you will bring the whole country to common ground, at least on this, and that you will recognize the other's victory if you lose?”