The Constitutional Court has admitted for processing an appeal from the Spanish government and has overturned the decision of the Balearic Government to repeal the law of democratic memory of the Balearic Islands, which was done last March with the votes of the PP and Vox. The repeal came after many back-and-forth discussions on this matter (it was among the one hundred and ten points of President Prohens' investiture agreement, which Vox made the PP pay for without forgiving a single one, and with interest) and after some scandal such as the one staged by the president of the Balearic Parliament, from Vox, who during a session in which democratic memory was precisely being debated, furiously tore up a photo of the Roges del Molinar, murdered by the Francoists in 1937. For the moment, the repeal remains provisionally without effect pending the TC's ruling on its more than probable unconstitutionality. This is important news, to which the entity Memòria de Mallorca, which works for the recognition of the victims of fascism on the island (where, contrary to what some still believe or want to believe, there was a true massacre of people executed in cold blood), reacted immediately, demanding that Prohens' executive apply the democratic memory law: for three years of the legislature, before repealing it, it has kept it in suspense and has avoided convening the commission responsible for its development. The TC's decision may also point the judicial path for the democratic memory laws of the Valencian Country and Aragon, also repealed by the PP-Vox binomial, following their denialist policies of Francoism's crimes.Vox has reacted to the news with its usual rhetoric of the communist dictatorship that Spain suffers and all that. More worrying is the PP's reaction: as Anna Mascaró explains in Ara Balears, sources from the parliamentary group of the Peperos say that they are fine with the repeal being suspended, because (as they said, they emphasize) they only voted in favor to have Vox's support to approve the budgets. To say this with so much carelessness and cynicism is truly frightening. Memory laws are among the most delicate and sensitive that a government can manage. They are also a touchstone of a government's democratic quality. To bargain with them with indifference and cold blood indicates that we are facing rulers of more than dubious democratic credibility, and they are not even aware of it.There are things that are better understood by comparison: if the French or German right were to agree not only to govern with the far-right (that alone is already unthinkable, because they practice the cordon sanitaire policy, which is naturally essential), but also to repeal memory laws to approve budgets, the scandal would be indescribable. By the way, to the wise people on duty who oblige us by scolding Mallorcans and Valencians for having PP and Vox governments: keep your paternalism, keep your arrogance, and stop making a fool of yourselves, please.

The Parliament demands "immediately" the transfer to the Generalitat of the properties and health facilities located in Catalonia that continue to be state-owned. The motion, promoted by ERC and approved with the votes of all groups except Vox and the PP, which voted against it, gives the Catalan executive a maximum of six months to prepare and present a fully updated inventory of all properties of the Generalitat's health system that are not its own. The report must specify the legal status, the registry status, the estimated asset value, the net book value of the assets, and the investments made by the Catalan administration.

Agustín de Foxá (Madrid, 1906-1959) was a Spanish aristocrat and diplomat best known for a novel openly hostile to the Second Spanish Republic, Madrid, de corte a checa (1938). The book that interests us here, however, is another: Por la otra orilla (1955), in which he paints a nostalgic and paternalistic view –very typical of that era– of Latin America. I own the first edition of this collection of chronicles published by Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, with a cover that inevitably evokes the aesthetic of the NO-DO (the book, by the way, cost 80 pesetas in 1955; it was very expensive). Abstracting from the cloying adjective of some passages, as well as the underlying ideology, it is a generally interesting and well-written work.In Foxá, Hispanic America seems to him, in general, a space of cultural continuity, a “bother world” where Spain has left a deep mark and, at the same time, has received influences that have also transformed it. His descriptions combine imperial nostalgia, aesthetic fascination, and the search for an exoticism that aims to be effective and is often expressed through poetic prose. Foxá observes the New World as an inverted mirror: a territory where Spanish history has taken unexpected paths. Throughout its 526 pages, this perspective, characteristic of the Francoist mentality and the texts published by Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, tends to idealize the colonial past, presenting it as a civilizing and sentimental bond, but in Foxá's case, without entirely shying away from the most problematic parts previously sugarcoated. On page 437 ("El cenote sagrado"), he even relativizes, for example, the issue of human sacrifices in Mexico, which was quite problematic in the midst of national-Catholicism.

The current CAP Passeig de Maragall, in the Sant Martí district of Barcelona, still appears today –half a century after Franco's death– in the name of the Spanish Falange (FET y de las JONS). Despite the Generalitat managing the center and assuming all maintenance costs, the registered ownership remains in the hands of the dictatorship's political apparatus. This is the most disconcerting finding of the research by historian Neus Moran, who documents how the State protected health heritage from Francoist plunder before the transfer of powers.

In an article titled “Close this building, President”, published on Monday in El País, Professor Rafael Argullol asked Pedro Sánchez to close the building of the Superior Headquarters of the National Police, on Via Laietana in Barcelona. Argullol, who was detained and interrogated there, recalls that it was a place of torture during the Franco dictatorship and suggests that it should end up being a library or a memorial.

My grandmother was only three years old when she lost her father. Her mother was left a widow and pregnant with her younger sister, María. This event completely changed the destiny of their lives.

In diversity policies, work is almost always done out of social urgency, often imposed by external causes. But today we need to talk about a different urgency, one that is born from our own deficits: what I call the Factor M (migration factor) of Catalonia's collective memory.Catalonia has just reached the historic milestone of 8 million inhabitants. It is a far-reaching transformation, but also a direct challenge: can everyone really feel part of this "us"? Can those who don't see their history reflected anywhere say "we are 8 million"?This urgency is manifested in three deep divides that segment our society:1. Neighborhood emptiness. The founders of our neighborhoods —those migrants from the 50s and 60s— are building their memory of heroic struggle. This history, however, seems to end with them. Today, these neighborhoods are full of new international migrants who have been giving them life for more than two decades, but who live parallel lives. They share the space, but not the history; they do not come to be fully recognized as neighbors, nor do they join associations to "build the neighborhood." This demographic change is often experienced with resistance and distrust, a scenario that feeds those who want to create fragmentation.2. The academic void. If we take the history books of Catalonia, migrations are practically non-existent; it's as if they never happened. How can we educate in a sense of belonging if the official narrative ignores the roots of more than half of the class? The children of Moroccans, Filipinos, or Ecuadorians, who are Catalans, are they not part of our history? If school explains a history to them where they appear as anomalies, we are telling them they are subordinates, not protagonists of the country where they live.3. The political vacuum. We are witnessing the advent of highly mixophobic parties that manipulate data to invent a past of non-existent homogeneity. They seek a society that does not negotiate with diversity, but rather criminalizes it, evoking past times of persecution against minorities. This discourse gains followers precisely because there is no solid public narrative about the memory of migrations — the M Factor — to contradict it.We must be brave in self-criticism: the national identity we are building cannot leave anyone behind. Catalanism cannot be an exclusive project, reserved for an elite that looks at diversity from a distance. Because without memory, identity is fragile: an identity without memory is not identity. If a citizen does not find their trajectory reflected in the official narrative, in history museums, or in the nomenclature, they will hardly feel that Catalonia's future project is also theirs. Memory is not just remembering; it is recognizing ourselves as equals in the craft of history.

The German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, was a spark in a context already saturated with tensions, rigid alliances (with me or against me), and powers willing, or perhaps even resigned, to enter into total conflict. Today, however, although the world remains dangerous and unstable, the logic of military escalation is not the same. Therefore, even in the face of aggressions as serious as the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the US attack on Iran, nothing resembling the start of World War III has occurred. Like it or not, a key element remains nuclear deterrence. Since 1945, the major powers have known that a direct conflict could lead to a nuclear brawl with apocalyptic consequences. This awareness has created a system of mutual restraint that, paradoxically, makes it unlikely that certain wars will escalate. In the case of Ukraine, both NATO and Russia have carefully calibrated their actions to avoid a direct confrontation. They have also measured the language used to refer to the possible use of these terrible weapons, even in the case of a verbally incontinent person like Trump.

The Barcelona Prosecutor's Office has closed the torture investigation to the activist and philologist Blanca Serra, the first victim who went directly to the Prosecutor's Office for Historical Memory and not to the courtsThus, she is recognized as a victim of Francoism, and this is done for the first time based on the 2022 Democratic Memory Law. Blanca Serra and her sister, the historian Eva Serra – who died in 2018 – were detained at the Via La7 police station in 1982. The investigation concludes that during their arrest in February 1977, they suffered "torture perpetrated in a context of crimes against humanity." The Public Prosecutor's Office adds that the Political-Social Brigade arrested them solely for their political activity opposing the dictatorship and that they "inflicted physical and psychological violence on them to obtain information and a confession, which caused them traumatic aftereffects." All of this occurred within a context of persecution and political repression established by Francoism, the Public Prosecutor's Office adds in a statement.

The High Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) has rejected granting the urgent precautionary measures requested by the Francisco Franco National Foundation to immediately halt its outlawing, promoted by the Spanish governmentThis is stated in an interlocutory ruling, to which ARA has had access, in which the court argues that there are no "reasons of urgency." The decision is subject to appeal.

The proposed project by the Barcelona City Council and the Catalan Government to build a Provincial Court building on the current "historic site" of the city (Passeig Lluís Companys, 1-5) is a complete absurdity. And it is absurd both in terms of its content and its procedure.

If the PP leaders are bothered by being labeled the ideological heirs of Francoism, they'd better get used to it. They will be considered as such, and more than deservedly so, as long as they make such government decisions.anti-democratic, vengeful, and painfullike the one that prevailed, with the votes of Vox and the PP itself, in the plenary session of the Catalan Parliament on Tuesday, March 10.democratic memory lawThe law, finally repealed in this session after several back-and-forths of low-level political maneuvering, was not a law against anyone, but a reparations law that offered, after more than eighty years of pain and oblivion, recognition to the victims of Francoism and their families. Destroying this law and trying to justify it with subterfuge (for example, that it wasn't necessary because a state law already exists on the same matter, an absurd way of trying to evade the issue) fails to conceal the reality: the victims of Francoism are being attacked again out of pure vengeance. The People's Party (PP) may not be willing to say it this way, but the Vox deputies are making it perfectly clear with their interventions and actions in the Catalan Parliament. The erratic interventions of spokesperson Sergio Rodríguez, or the fits of rage from President Gabriel Le Senne, are unacceptable mockery in the seat of sovereignty of a people who believe in democracy and want to live in it. Fascism is never compatible with democracy: it parasitizes it and exploits its very nature (democracy cannot deny anyone freedom of expression or the right to vote) to destroy it from within and spread its message of hatred and revenge. The Spanish nationalist right already won the Civil War and is eager to win it again: the spirit guiding the dismantling of the Memory Law is nothing other than a poorly disguised, if not entirely disguised, civil war mentality.

From cross-border routes of the Republican exile, which follow the same paths that thousands of people took clandestinely on foot during the Civil War, from Portbou to Maçanet de CabrenysThere are a lot of them. Over the last few years, the Democratic Memorial of the Generalitat of Catalonia, in collaboration with the municipalities of Alt Empordà, has worked to study and properly mark them. However, a new one has now been added to the list, which, for the first time, has also been marked in collaboration with the Occitan administrations. The first democratic memory route carried out jointly with Northern Catalonia.

Figueres was dubbed the Catalan Guernica because of the high number of deaths caused by fascist bombings during the Spanish Civil War. In the midst of one of the deadliest bombing raids, in Plaça del Gra, a nurse found little Elena crying desperately among the mutilated bodies and rubble. The girl threw herself into the nurse's arms as bombs continued to rain down on the civilian population. Elena was located years later in the French town of Fumel, where the nurse had taken her in, believing she had been orphaned. The little girl was able to return to her parents, but she could never forget the noise of the planes and bombs over the city, nor, of course, the nurse who had saved her and cared for her like a daughter. Like a nightmare, the drone of the aircraft was also forever etched in the memories of the protagonists of the six stories told in the play. Noise of airplanesWritten by Manel Puig, directed by Àngels Barrientos and Maria Rosa Oliveres, and performed by actors from two amateur theater companies, the play, consisting of six monologues—one for each of the six stories told—has been a great success in Castelló d'Empúries and Llançà, where every performance has sold out. It begins a tour of several towns in the Empordà region this January. According to Manel Puig, the play's success stems from the fact that "instead of focusing on the war at the front, soldiers against soldiers, it deals with the suffering of civilians on the home front," based on the experiences of six real people. Puig also maintains that presenting these experiences of the Spanish Civil War through theater allows "historical memory to reach the public more easily, especially young people."

"Praised be the most holy sacrament"," the nun would announce loudly in the middle of the dormitory in the morning. And they, half asleep in bed and with their eyes still stuck shut with sleep, would answer in unison mechanically:May He be forever blessed and praised"The nuns would wake them up like that day after day. Maria Forns remembers it perfectly, even though it was more than half a century ago. She was 16 years old when she was placed in a convent against her will.

Bagdad is always there. With its imposing sign, almost dazzling lighting, the obviously Arabic inspiration in its decorations and accessories, and the iconic image of the girl emerging from Aladdin's lamp. It's been around for fifty years. Yes, this December Bagdad turns half a century old. Today it's essentially a tourist attraction, which in turn is a driving force for the neighborhood where it's located, the indomitable Paral·lel, the avenue of theaters and entertainment that has seen better decades, a time of splendor that many long to revive. The revitalization of El Molino and the perennial project to reopen Arnau are epiphanies yet to be fulfilled. Joana lives on the neighboring Vila i Vilà street and remembers the times when Paral·lel was a cauldron, a hive of energy in contact. And Bagdad? It has never been inside, but it is loved all the same as an essential part of the everyday landscape of its almost lifelong surroundings.

The fifty years of the Spanish monarchy holding the head of state have fractured the right-wing bloc. The event, intended to commemorate the half-century of the Bourbons' rule since the death of Francisco Franco, will be boycotted by the far-right Vox party. Santiago Abascal's party announced on Tuesday that it will not participate and will once again snub King Felipe VI. "We are not going to participate in the farce that the government has prepared, which is an ode to Sánchez's totalitarian regime," stated Vox spokesperson in the lower house, Pepa Millán, who avoided commenting on the dictator. In her opinion, this event and the rest of those scheduled for this 50th anniversary of Franco's death are not "a tribute to democracy, the Transition, or the rule of law." In fact, the far-right party made it clear in mid-October that it would not participate in any event with the Spanish government where it could not denounce its alleged "criminal and corrupt actions." Aside from Vox's boycott, the absence of Sumar, Podemos, ERC, Junts, EH Bildu, the PNV, and also the BNG and Coalición Canaria will be repeated. Therefore, the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the monarchy in Congress will be incomplete: initially, only the PSOE and PP will attend, while the rest of the parliamentary spectrum will be absent.

Near Girona's train station, there's a square that welcomes travelers with cobblestones and centuries-old plane trees, home to hundreds of starlings. Most locals know it as "Bar Núria Square," a kiosk-licensed establishment frequented by early risers and those who stay out late. But what few Girona residents know is that the square's real name, Poeta Marquina, honors a Barcelonan who had no connection to Girona and who, after the war, became one of the leading figures in Falangist propaganda. He was also the author of the first official lyrics to the Spanish national anthem. Royal MarchCommissioned by Alfonso XIII. The older residents still remember that it was formerly called "Plaza del Carril" (Railway Square). The French train station was located in the section closest to the elevated tracks, until the viaduct was built in 1974. The current cobblestones bear witness: they exist because a large part of the square is still owned by Adif, the Spanish railway infrastructure manager. Now the square is in the news following the Girona City Council's failed project to change the name of Poeta Marquina, which the Francoist council imposed during the post-war period, over the popular name of "Plaza del Carril." The owners of the shops and apartments who participated in the referendum held just before the Feria de Abril (Fair) responded with a No The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of changing the street names. Turnout was very low, at 22.52%, but the result was clear: only 16 people voted in favor of the name change and 34 voted against it. In a press conference, the Councilor for Ecological Transition and Urban Planning, Sergi Font, considered it "a shame to let slip the opportunity to erase a Francoist name." The result has now been submitted to the Naming Commission, which must make a final decision, but Font had already emphasized that the result was decisive and should be taken into account.

This week, RTVE has released a short documentary film entitled At ground level about the so-called early exhumations of Franco-era graves. The broadcast was accompanied by a special moderated by Xabier Fortes. Both programs can be found on the RTVE Play platform.

Walking through the main streets of pre-Eixample Barcelona can be unpleasant due to its safety, dirt, and neglect. We can understand that the demographic and tourist pressure to which they are exposed makes it difficult to always keep them in perfect condition. What I find incomprehensible is the obsession with hiding their best features and what they represent. Everyone will have walked past the building at the end of La Rambla, going down to the left, whose possible uses have been much discussed. References are always to "the cannon foundry." There's a plaque commemorating it for both citizens and tourists.