"We don't learn the lessons of history because we don't know what questions to ask." Lea Ypi was in Barcelona this week. I could introduce her as an Albanian intellectual with British citizenship, as a philosopher, as a professor at the London School of Economics, as the author of books such as Books and IndignityIn short, the things their CVs say. But I prefer to emphasize the reasons why her work captivates me: her way of being in the world, the need to give voice to ideas but also to life, to the human condition and its complexity.

"Let's Focus" is the title of the conference organized by ARA. Focusing properly on a problem is the first step in addressing it. And it's a way to open cracks in the growing pessimism in society. It's necessary to build spaces of trust inspired by critical thinking to help recover the initiative that is being taken away from citizens.

The coming year is unsettling. The final days of 2025 were filled with wishes for a happy new year, and we want to believe them more than ever, but a cold analysis of reality is decidedly pessimistic. It's better to prepare for this scenario than to ignore it. Last year, around this same time, we feared the arrival of the new US president. After a year, our worst fears have been realized. We have entered a new world where the three major global powers are led by autocrats or enthusiastic apprentices. The "soft" power of the European Union has proven to be softer than warm butter, while that of the US has become as hard as heavy weaponry. The three powers are on the verge of dissolving the European Union so they can negotiate with each member state and extract the best terms from this area of prosperity: lowering the living standards of its citizens promises to be an immense business for their corporations and their power. We have entered a true dystopia.

All those who find it acceptable to live in a dictatorship don't necessarily want to be subjugated, repressed, or punished if they don't do or aren't what's expected. It's that they believe they do—and are—what's expected, and that, therefore, in a dictatorship, they would be, if anything, part of the oppressors, not the oppressed. That's why they like the idea: they're not idiots. They imagine they would get rid of a few undesirables.

In 1688, the 19-year-old Swiss physician Johannes Hofer presented the thesis Nostalgia medical dissertatio, oder Heimwehe to explain the feeling of sadness experienced by some soldiers while on the front lines, far from home. It was the first time the term had been used. nostalgia, created by the young man himself from the Greek words uswhich means return, and algaePain. The sorrow of the soldiers who longed for their homes and surroundings was also concentrated in this German word, Heimweh, which unites, Heimhome, and Weh, pain.

"What characterizes today's youth is the collapse of ideals, disillusionment, and consequently, to a greater or lesser degree, skepticism." This phrase has come to mind now that the topic of [the youth movement] is being discussed again. loss of confidence in democracy among young CatalansBut the charm of the phrase is that it belongs to the philosopher José Luis López Aranguren, taken from the book European Youth and Other EssaysPublished... in 1961! A good phrase to begin putting into perspective the alarm about today's youth supposedly turning to the far right.

Recent political and opinion movements surprise us with their questioning of democracy as a political system. We take for granted that democracy is the desirable, normal, and permanent political system once achieved. However, history continually reminds us how vulnerable a democracy is. It is striking to see that the United States—the oldest democracy still in existence—could abolish it. As in enough precedents we know, this could even pass for a democratic decision.

1. The evaporation of social democracy. Bad reason when things are not called by their name. And certainly social democracy, which had played a key role in the balance of European democracies, has been fading, dragged down by the conservative radicalization of liberal democracies. Lea Ipy (Tirana, 1979), professor at the London School of Economics, has long warned of this mutation of European socialist parties and the left in general. In her opinion, it was in the late 1970s that "the traditional social democratic parties moved away from representing citizens from the perspective of class and economic vulnerabilities." And yet, it was by this route that the Spanish socialists came to power (1982), combining ideological mutation with the democratic legitimacy that the Spanish right, partly emerging from Franco's regime, was barely seeking.

1. Warnings. An image to remember: Xi Jinping in Tianjin, setting a different tone from Trump by hosting Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi. A sign that highlights the American president's exhibitionist disarray and points to significant changes in the global balance of power. Something is moving. It's no good getting distracted.

Woke has become the preferred insult of the new extreme right, from Trump to Ayuso. If you are concerned about social inequalities and discrimination based on identity – sexist, racial, linguistic or whatever – you have already screwed up. You are woke up, a naive, an outcast who has had his brains brainwashed by communist radicals and who doesn't know what life is about. Life is about triumph, about power, about the freedom to do whatever you want. The poor should get their act together and the different, starting with the immigrants, have only come to piss us off and take advantage of our good nature. What's this nonsense about worrying all day about minorities? And the majorities, what? And the normal, what?

1. Danger. Whereas recently in Spain three manifestos signed by retired military officers "concerned about the progressive deterioration suffered by the homeland in the last legislatures" were published, now in France twenty generals in the reserve and a thousand officers published a manifesto on "the grave hour" that the nation is living, and warn that if "laxity continues" there will be an "intervention by our active comrades in a dangerous mission to protect our values of civilisation and to safeguard our compatriots in the national territory". Marine Le Pen has immediately backed the manifesto. The reaction of the French government has been as flat and discreet as that of the Spanish government. And, meanwhile, in both countries, a rising far right is setting the right's agenda. We can look the other way and minimise these events as anecdotal. But history is full of situations in which people have been unwilling to see a danger until it was upon them.