This man who is running for the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, went to Catalonia to explain something he calls Contrato con España and which amounts to the most notable measures he intends to implement if Spain hires him as president of the government. They are a series of dreadfully stale right-wing things, which include the defense of national sovereignty (banal nationalism and not so banal in abundance), the “lightening” of the state (cuts in the labor, social, and cultural spheres), “organizing” immigration (open bar for xenophobia and aporophobia), the “guarantee” of pensions (they want to privatize them), the “strengthening” of public healthcare (they want to cut it even more), and a stellar, dazzling measure, without which the “good people,” who are the ones Feijóo addresses, cannot live: guaranteeing the teaching of Spanish in Catalonia, and it is understood that also in the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands, where there are also natives who insist on speaking (and teaching in school!) the Catalan language. In the clause of the “contract” referring to education, there is also a commitment that candidate Feijóo assumes and that I cannot refrain from reproducing, because it constitutes a singular and enormous absurdity: “[...] education must reward effort, increase requirements, and reinforce the authority of the teacher. The contents will be developed by the royal academies”. The royal academies do not perform nor have they ever performed any type of educational or pedagogical task, and the works they produce have nothing to do with primary or secondary school. Now all that is missing is for the students to have to complete their training with a year on the Juan Sebastián Elcano.

I am not very up to date with the music scene, nor have I been a big fan of Oques Grasses, and I had always thought, perhaps from the original sin of Barcelocentrism, that these guys from Osona moved in the more or less modest figures of the rest of the leading groups in Catalan. But I read that they accumulate millions of plays of their hits more popular, and at the time of their farewell they filled the Montjuïc Stadium for four days, with 225,000 tickets sold, equaling a feat that until now only Coldplay had achieved. I have seen the videos of the concerts and they make a great impression. So many young people singing their anthems by heart; quality music, with diverse influences; celebrities and guest artists, and above all a feeling of resounding success, of mainstream, which is still not common in artistic expressions in our language.

Spain, the lack of self-esteem and Spanish nationalist fervor marked this Tuesday's colloquium at the Círculo Ecuestre, where languages were the protagonists. "Ayusism" fully permeated the Barcelona club in front of about sixty attendees, and served to comment on the existential obsessions typical of a nation-state that is not France and refuses to be Switzerland. It did so with a key person from the Madrid president's inner circle, the deputy spokesperson for the PP in the regional Parliament, Rafa Núñez, who created the Vox brand but was signed in 2022 by Isabel Díaz Ayuso. He was accompanied by the leader of the Catalan PP, Alejandro Fernández, and the party's brain and senator Juan Milián.

The President of the Generalitat must launch, set in motion, whatever you want to call it, a round of talks to also launch, set in motion, whatever you want to call it, a national pact for education. As part of the pact—and the issue is not minor—classrooms will be air-conditioned within a period of five years. This will give us a new distraction, which will consist of worrying about climate change, complaining about colds due to temperature changes, killing students who do not close the doors, et cetera.

The campaign –or perhaps action– by Barça with all that youth (I love, already, using the expression “youth”) with wonderful, punkish and even highly elaborate hairstyles, encouraging, with complete normality and naturalness, the use of Catalan (I also love the expression “to use”) makes me feel, by proxy, the power of the human spring. Bernal, Cubarsí, Kika, Fermín (and his father), Clara, and Marta speak to you about this fact, which we should take for granted, of speaking the language in which they said dirty things to conceive us and, later, give birth to us. To this is added another young woman, Aitana, who explained that at home “they are Spanish speakers” but that “thanks to going to school in Barcelona” she learned "perfectly Catalan". The singer lives in Madrid and it turns out she is a fan of Crims.

Even though it is also starting to have –needless to say– its deniers, the PISA report continues to be a reliable and reference instrument in the educational field. The dismal results obtained by the Spanish state in the latest edition, clearly below the European average in reading and mathematics, confirm all fears. The unrest of teachers is expressed through strikes and protests on the first day of class: criticizing and devaluing these protests is a temptation that some politicians and commentators fall into, but that is falling into the classic error of killing the messenger. With their mobilizations, teachers and professors come to give the same bad news as the PISA report: the situation of public education is not sustainable and it is necessary to work on it in an extremely urgent and serious way. It is necessary to work on reality and not on words, speeches, or slogans. There is an inversely proportional relationship between the highly delicate nature of the educational system and the flood of voices that feel emboldened to have their say with pretensions of pontificating. Those who best know the classrooms are those who work there day by day, and it is them who must be listened to and followed.The chaos is widespread throughout the Spanish state, and Catalonia is no exception: not even with the deviation caused by a biased sample that has invalidated the tests (something much worse than a simple error, in a Government that has made an alleged good management of public services its banner), the results obtained by Catalonia are not significantly better than in Spain. Catalonia, which has always stood out for being an advanced country in terms of educational quality in relation to its environment, does have reasons to speak, in this case, of decline, of free fall, or of any metaphor for defeat. The Basque Country is not spared either, which was the other nation on the Peninsula that had traditionally stood out in educational matters.The right to education must be respected, says President Salvador Illa. Indeed, only this right has some surnames that cannot be left unsaid: the right to public and quality education must be respected. And in Catalan. The autonomous communities have transferred educational competence, and in many – governed by the PP or by the PP with Vox – a frontal offensive against public education is observed at all levels, from primary school to university. In the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands, and also in Aragon, the offensive is also against the Catalan language. The aim is to turn public school into a space of conflict, to scare families and redirect them to charter and private schools. In Catalonia, the political and judicial offensive against those who hate the Catalan school comes from way back, and all kinds of discourses and theories are added that intend to use teachers and students as guinea pigs for all kinds of false debates. Let the teachers teach, let the students learn, and respect the right to strike and the right to public, quality education in Catalan.

Scenes of marriage. Mercè Rodoreda used to say that “love, the further away the more beautiful”. A writer and a street name in towns in Catalonia by the cartload. There are many little birds that choose small towns to build their warm-blooded nest. They don't come from far away. They are couples who take flight from nearby cities (15, 20, 30 thousand inhabitants) and land here, parading their close passion that comes out of their mouths in Spanish.

We read in L'ARA that the writer and poet Juana Dolores “is about to abandon Catalan as a literary creation language, due to the systematic pressure and lynching she suffers on social networks”. She reasons it like this: “90% of my work is written in Catalan. If they want me to continue writing in Catalan, I hope the situation changes, because the truth is that I am about to stop doing so and I realize that it is becoming more and more of a hassle for me”.

More than a year after his appointment as bishop of Lleida, Daniel Palau, who is also the head of the media secretariat of the Tarraconense Episcopal Conference, speaks to ARA.

According to data released by the Balearic Government, the support of the citizens of the Balearic Islands for public schooling in Catalan continues to be very widely in the majority. Overwhelming, if we prefer similar adjectives. In Mallorca, 81.85% have chosen to enroll their children in schools in Catalan. In Menorca, 89.7% of families have done so, and in Formentera, 82.45%. The exception to the general trend has been Ibiza, where only 53.28% of families have chosen Catalan, compared to 46.71% who have chosen Spanish.The total in the Balearic Islands as a whole has been 78.57% of favorable votes for Catalan, although this percentage does not represent reality accurately enough, because it is necessary to differentiate between the results from Eivissa and those from the rest of the islands. Naturally, results need to be improved everywhere: normality would be a percentage of 90% or higher in favor of Catalan on each of the islands. Even so, taking into account the demographic revolution that the Balearic Islands have experienced in the last 25 years (which requires careful study, not with prejudice or broad strokes) and the strong pressure against the use of Catalan exerted by Spanish nationalism, not only through politics but also through tourism as the sole dish of economic activity, certain media, and networks, these are reasonably good results. Not to contemplate them and congratulate ourselves, but to urgently get to work to reinforce the use of the native language of the Balearic Islands in their own territory. The case of Eivissa is the most difficult and, for that very reason, does not need defeatism or sterile apocalyptic messages (and almost always interested ones), but full support for the people of Eivissa who work in favor of Catalan in a more than meritorious way on a daily basis.For three years, this government, presided over by Marga Prohens, has given parents the "freedom" to choose the language of schooling for their children. This is what remains of a linguistic segregation plan that, at the insistence of Vox and with the approval of the PP, intended to separate students by language and thus create a social fracture with public schools as the scene of confrontation. A socially undesirable separation of students into "mallorquinites" (locals), "forasterets" (outsiders), and "immigrantets" (little immigrants), so as not to have to share classrooms with certain people (there are, it seems, those who propose this same thing for Catalonia). The plan in question was fully rejected by the educational community of the Balearic Islands, but the "freedom of choice" has remained and yields similar results each year. Some say that the PP is fine with it, because in this way it satisfies its Vox partners without everything translating into any notable change in practice. We must think that this is not the case, because if it were, we would be facing the most absurd and stupid educational policy imaginable, which would degrade public schools through gestures without content or meaning. And the rulers of the Balearic Islands would not engage in such a policy. We are sure of that.

July 14th, the French national holiday, to commemorate the end of the Bourbon monarchy and the establishment of a republic driven by easily embraceable universal values, such as liberty, fraternity, and equality. It was only fitting that in "Casablanca," the "Marseillaise" competed against a Nazi anthem to become the anthem of freedom sung with pride and courage by a group of Free Frenchmen, in one of the most moving scenes in cinema history. It would all be very beautiful if it weren't for the fact that in the name of this fraternal republic, France has pursued languages like Catalan to the point of self-loathing and extinction.It is similar to what the Spanish state has done in Catalonia. What it has done, and what it continues to do:The Supreme Court has ruled that Spanish cannot be excluded from the signage of public educational centers in Catalonia. He says that “Castilian is the official language throughout Spain, which means it is a language that cannot be excluded from communications between public authorities and citizens".As Sebastià Alzamora titles his article today, “if you are Spanish, speak Spanish”, which is what my parents had to hear in their youth during the dictatorship. It's the same old song, when it suits us we are Spanish (especially when it comes to paying taxes that go away and don't serve the well-being of Catalans) and when it suits us (always) our language is not Spanish enough. We know all this by heart and, even so, meanwhile, President Illa went to Madrid yesterday and signed Catalonia's loyalty to the State. A loyalty that, as we see, is not reciprocal and that, by dint of repetition, led to the logical conclusion of half the country wanting independence in 2017. Loyalty is only possible from equality. And what exists between Spain and Catalonia or between Spanish and Catalan is a Catalan subordination to the supremacy of the State over the province. The rest are rhetorical sleight of hand that no one can believe anymore. Or kind, almost pleading, ways of telling the Spanish that the current government of the Generalitat will not organize any October 1st for them. 

A 15-year-old boy died last night in the Sagrera neighborhood, in the Sant Andreu district of Barcelona, when he was shot with a firearm in Parc de la Pegaso. According to councilor Parlon, the first indications point to a gang revenge.We have a serious problem, which we did not have, with firearms. In Barcelona this year there have already been seven people killed by bullets. One a month. Drug trafficking gangs use cities as their distribution centers, there is a lot of money circulating, a lot of weapons circulating (remember that we have a war in Europe, in Ukraine, specifically), and their crimes take place in any neighborhood, from Balmes/Travessera to Parc de la Pegaso. They are no longer settled in Barcelona, but rather they live in Barcelona, and they kill there, whether it is the day the Pope comes or the day the Tour de France is presented. And they buy other businesses and have the capacity, if the police and justice do not confront them, to turn us into a narco-society.This week I mentioned here that around 300,000 people would have requested papers in Catalonia (given the Spanish total), and they ended up being a bit less, 257,000 applications, out of a total of one million seven hundred thousand in all of Spain. And this, when at first the Spanish government was talking about half a million in total. More than half have already been admitted for processing. In Madrid, the applications ended up being 200,000, and in the Valencian Community 167,000. On these two pages there is a detail of the ages of the new citizens, from which countries they come from, and which sectors they will work in. We will not review now the challenge that integrating all these people means in every sense. Immigration allows the economy not to stop, but services are needed. Will they pay taxes, and, at the same time, how will we pay for all this? And this is where the budgets that the Parliament approved yesterday come in. It is good news, which arrives in July (!), and thank goodness, because now we were going with the extended budgets of 2023. In fact, having budgets should be an obligation, because as we have said here many times it is not their money, it is our money. However, Catalonia will always fall short, with or without budgets, as long as it cannot dispose of its fiscal effort. This is why a new and much better financing system is needed. And speaking of all this: are you aware of the complaint about the dismissal of a worker from the company Aticco for speaking Catalan. The company says it didn't happen exactly like that, that the decision "responds exclusively to professional reasons", but the worker denies it. In fact, two of the dismissal reasons they gave her had to do with the use of Catalan. The Minister of Linguistic Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila, has ordered the Office for the Protection of Linguistic Rights to open an investigation and take appropriate measures.

Yesterday, the extraordinary regularization process for immigrants opened by the Spanish socialist government ended, and all forecasts have been exceeded: one million two hundred thousand requests have been submitted. If we do a rule of three with the initial forecasts, around 300,000 applications from people who already live here without papers may have been submitted in Catalonia.For Pedro Sánchez, the overflow of the figure shows that the idea was good, because it was necessary. But the Supreme Court has opened the door to taking this regularization of immigrants to European justice so that it clarifies whether European law is respected, as the processing of more than one million applications could not comply with the European migratory pact. The Supreme Court has gotten involved because the Valencian and Aragonese governments, both from the PP, have asked it to. But, as I was saying, yesterday Sánchez puffed out his chest and at an event to present an integration plan he said that without immigrants Spain would lose 19% of its wealth creation in the next 25 years. The slogan of the plan caught my attention: “Where do they come from? They come from building the country”. A slogan that emphasizes the most economic aspect of immigration. Without immigration there are no caregivers, or bricklayers, or bus drivers… and they are essential because they are jobs that keep the country running every day. But building a country is something more. It has to do with rights and duties, and in our case, with integration into a culture and a language that do not have the maximum protection of the State (in fact, they rather have the maximum aggression from some parties and State bodies). And here is where the slogan of making country, so Pujol-like, is a mockery. I read in the chronicle of ARA: “Regarding Catalan, sources from the Sánchez government indicate that knowledge of the language will not have special value”. It is devastating. And at the same time, it is not new; it is coherent with the state in which we live, where only Spanish is mandatory. The lack of ambition of the Illa government on this issue, with the interested appeasement of business sectors, is regrettable. Much effort to fight the battle (or so they said) so that Catalan can be spoken in the European Parliament, but no step to do something as normal as requiring people who come to a country to know the language. It is a harm to the language and to coexistence. And without the Catalan language, immigrants cannot build a nation in Catalonia. Immigration is used to instill fear and win elections with messages of hate. Look at what is happening in South Africa, with demonstrations against immigrants, blaming them for unemployment, crime, and the deterioration of public services. Sánchez, in the role of going it alone against the world on immigration, gives speeches of the type “in the face of hate, humanity,” but with humanitarian appeals we already know that we will not stop the hate speeches of the far-right. And demonstrating political leadership in immigration in Catalonia means that Catalan should be for everyone, especially for the newest Catalans.Good morning.

We tend to think that Europe has been as it is for a long time. But no. The Europe we know, with its countries and languages, was born dizzyingly between 1870 and 1871. And this continental Big Bang exploded because of a Catalan, General Joan Prim.

Òmnium decided some time ago not to stand idly by in the face of the Spanish courts' attempt to end the Catalan school model.

I suppose you are aware of the news that the European Court of Human Rights has dismissed the lawsuit by parents of the Canet de Mar school against the ruling that ordered 25% of classes to be taught in Spanish.

When you enter the classroom, it's hard to know exactly what level of Catalan is being taught. In less than half an hour, they go from clarifying when a perquè is written together or separately to explaining how to justify that there is a left-hand topicalization in a sentence — when an element of the sentence is moved to appear later and give it more emphasis — as well as deciding whether a verb is copulative or if a sentence is missing the pronoun that refers to the circumstantial complement of place. In fact, the way the session is conducted resembles a review class, were it not for the fact that we are in a classroom on the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) campus and that the person at the blackboard is Aina, a fifth-year degree student.

In the endless debate about the state of health of the Catalan language, it happens, as in so many other areas, that we often guide ourselves by our perceptions and impressions rather than by careful analysis of the data. In the case of language, moreover, it seems to be true that every Catalan carries a sociolinguist within. It is evident, in any case, that it is not a debate that we can face with complete coolness, free from worries and even anxieties, because we have the perception that too much is at stake: we project into the uncertain future of the language the uncertain future of all of us as a society.

3Cat's SX3, with funding from Grup Transversal, this week opened the doors of Fantàstix, a new cultural, family, and immersive experience focused on the power of stories, imagination, and the active participation of children. Located in the Sagrada Família neighborhood, the space, which was a former 2,000-square-meter parking lot, has been transformed into a "factory of imagination," where the narrative focuses on the premise of recovering the power of storytelling, which has disappeared from the world. The project's intention is to become a new meeting point for families, the educational world, and Catalan children's and youth culture.