Our history can be explained through kings, wars, revolutions, and great inventions. But it can also be explained through the stones, sediments, volcanoes, and minerals that have conditioned human life throughout the centuries. Without all the resources that the Earth offers, many of the great civilizations would not have been possible. And without the geological processes that transform it, our history would have been very different. This is the perspective proposed by the geologist and popularizer Esther Lapaz, who invites us to retrace the past of humanity through geology in her new book Con los pies en la Tierra (Ediciones B, 2026).

If there is one place in Africa that is worth visiting to understand the deep mystery of the continent, it is Great Zimbabwe. These are enigmatic ruins that rise in the southeast of Zimbabwe, far enough from the capital, Harare, and the country's second city, Bulawayo, for most tourist circuits to ignore them. A big mistake, since when you walk among the walls of Great Zimbabwe, or when you climb to the fortifications on the high part, you realize that Africa is much more than what historians say who insist on narrating the history of Africa starting from the arrival of the first explorers.

The Black Ball has demonstrated the Javis' ability to connect with mainstream audiences on topics that until recently were quite marginal. The film's phenomenon goes beyond the award at Cannes and the audience awards at the Toronto and San Sebastian festivals: it attracts audiences in droves to theaters. It debuted with 4.7 million euros in its first three days and more than 610,000 viewers, exceptional figures. In two weeks it has reached 2 million viewers and almost 15 million euros in box office revenue.

The main Chinese automotive groups (BYD, Geely, Chery, Changan, SAIC, and Great Wall Motors) have begun the conquest of the European market, despite the tariff war between the Asian giant and the European Union. The Chinese offer products packed with technology with a very competitive price-quality ratio that has attracted hundreds of thousands of European buyers over the last five years, coinciding with the massive arrival of vehicles – especially electric and plug-in hybrids – from China.

If we Catalans were monarchists, like the British, James I the Conqueror would be a central figure in our popular imagination. But it has been several centuries since we lost our own dynasty. That is why we have embraced republicanism. The passionate Carlist substitute—traditionalist and rural—has also passed into history for over a century now. For all these reasons, only a mythical shadow and a shall we say friendly indifference remain of the Conqueror. What do people know about his life, his politics, his warrior ardor? Very little. And he is our great king.

The Transition in Catalonia posed a double challenge for the post-Franco authorities. On one hand, a unified opposition movement had taken hold with a clear demand for self-government. On the other, Catalan society was ideologically positioned on the left, with a weight of communists and socialists unprecedented in the Spains and, therefore, susceptible to leading the democratic autonomism. Seen from Madrid—and contradicting the cliché of “rather a red Spain than a broken one”—, the second eventuality was more feared than the first, given that it was seen as possible to control a future Generalitat through a reduction (or subsequently harmonization) of powers and/or an institution in more favorable hands (the local UCD) or in representatives capable of confronting the Marxist bias (be it the historic Josep Tarradellas, or the rising Jordi Pujol).At least that is the working hypothesis of the economist and historian Eloi Gummà (Barcelona, 1996). Based on his doctoral thesis, From Anti-Francoism to Pujolism (Akal) he attempts to explain how Catalonia went from a democratic opposition leaning to the left to an autonomism leaning towards the right. That is to say, through what circumstances the reference party went from being the PSUC to the Convergència i Unió coalition, and the collective leadership represented by the Assembly of Catalonia was ceded to the personalism of Jordi Pujol.The fight for hegemony

According to Gummà, the explanation must be sought, as stated in the book's subtitle, in "the struggle for hegemony". The global neoliberal wave at the end of the Cold War synchronized with the counterattack led in Spain by the governments in Madrid and by the employers' associations. It was about political and economic initiative against the left, the unions... In this sense, the author's ambition, to raise pertinent and uncomfortable questions and to place the Catalan narrative within international dynamics, is to be appreciated. Even more so for doing it in Catalan –despite some inconsistency when translating the citations–, within this new essay collection (Veus de Clio), directed by the historian –and author of the prologue and director of the thesis– Xavier Domènech.The complicity between Gummà and Domènech is evident—not only because of the occasional informal 'Xavi' that we read. Both of them belong to the historiographical school that, starting from the now emeritus Pere Ysàs and Carme Molinero, has vindicated the decisive role played by the communist environment in making the continuity of the dictatorship impossible upon Franco's death, in mending the Catalan social fabric, and in positioning Catalonia as a spur for democratic and autonomous demands. However, this genealogy is not exempt from some debatable interpretations.On the one hand, there is a certain Manichaeism in characterizing the unitary anti-Francoism around the PSUC as the ideal, perhaps without bearing in mind that democratic dynamics needed to integrate sectors that did not participate in the struggle for freedoms. Without taking importance away from the role of the opponents, they represented only a part of the entire citizen universe. On the other hand, there is an uncritical acceptance of the image created by Pujolism itself. Certainly, for 23 years the Generalitat acted as if it were a national and hegemonic government. However, in those same years we have a vote differential (lower participation in regional elections) and consolidated majorities in favor of the left in many municipalities (including the large ones) and, above all, in Madrid. Sometimes, the temptation of conspiracy theories can distract us from more mundane explanations.

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In the summer of 1966, the construction of what is known today as the Casal began in Puiggròs (les Garrigues), a large multipurpose building with a stage and balconies, which to this day still accommodates all kinds of social, recreational, and cultural events, in addition to a bar-restaurant.

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A sign from the gods, a bad omen, a cosmic wonder, an evidence that mathematics governs the visible world... Eclipses have fascinated humanity since the dawn of time. And at each historical stage they have been interpreted in different ways. Today we know that an eclipse is "the total or partial occultation of a celestial body by the interposition of another celestial body between it and the observer". But perhaps it was more romantic to believe that a dragon devoured the sun, as they thought in China in the 8th century BC.

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The year 1939 not only meant the end of democracy, but the dismantling of Catalan cooperativism, one of the most solid traditions of popular self-organization in Europe. Despite the submission to which it was subjected by the Franco regime, the sovereign and solidarity spirit of the movement remained alive in clandestinity thanks to figures like Pérez Baró or Ventosa i Roig, making the spark arrive practically intact until 1976, the year the Roca Galès Foundation was established to take over from so many people who still believed in this self-management model. Its birth was not a mere institutional procedure, but an act of resistance and recovery of the political soul of Catalan cooperativism.

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Days before July 4, 1776, Benjamin Franklin invited twenty-one chiefs of the Iroquois nations to Philadelphia. These leaders represented the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a league of six Indigenous nations whose territories spanned part of what is now New York, Quebec, and Ontario. The Indigenous delegates were lodged on the second floor of the Pennsylvania State House—now known as Independence Hall—directly above the room where the U.S. Declaration of Independence was about to be signed.

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The dampness that seeped through the walls and the darkness that filled the narrow corridors and rooms of the air-raid shelter in the Jardins de la Infància in Girona were forever etched into the memory of the citizens who hid there when planes flew over and bombed the city during the Civil War. On days of inclement heat waves, visiting this basement, reconverted into a Democratic Memory Space of the Girona History Museum, allows one to learn how the people of Girona protected themselves against aerial attacks and, at the same time, enjoy the much-desired climatic comfort on days of suffocating temperatures.

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This summer marks 90 years since the failed landing in Mallorca by a group of Republican troops, mostly Catalan, led by Captain Alberto Bayo. In the wake of the anniversary, new editions of two recommendable classics have appeared: El desembarcament de Bayo a Mallorca (Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat) by the late Father Josep Massot i Muntaner and Els grans cementiris sota la lluna by Georges Bernanos (Nova Editorial Moll, translation by Antoni-Lluc Ferrer). These necessary rediscoveries coincide with the appearance of an exceptional book: Una isla brutalizada (Documenta Balear).The uniqueness is at least triple. Firstly, to tackle the first research book dedicated to his native Mallorca, Joan Maria Thomàs (Palma, 1953) has immersed himself in the family archive, from which he has recovered documentation, photographs and, above all, an epistolary treasure. Thus, the 491 letters shared by his future parents during the first months of the war allow him to reconstruct its impact, both on the front and in the island's rearguard, the profound sociopolitical transformations, the terrible repressive consequences and the complexity hidden behind the Manichaeism of any civil conflict. Furthermore, the personal notes of the Catholic municipal judge and military volunteer Gerardo Maria (Palma, 1905-1985) and of the young woman from a good family and volunteer in passive defense Àngela (Palma, 1910-2016) enrich the narrative with custom, linguistic (the letters will always be in Mallorcan Catalan, except for some brief parenthesis) and localist notes.A cruel persecution

Furthermore, the emeritus professor at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili substantiates, in line with what previous bibliography has already pointed out, the decisive nature of the failed landing in strictly framing those in favor of the rebels and in cruelly persecuting the rest: whether they were the captured, harassed, and shot militiamen, whether we spoke of the thousands of islanders who suffered the different repressive gears, whether it was the author's uncle priest –the musicologist Joan Maria Thomàs Sabater– accused of Catalanism. “Because what was happening was not only the expansion of a great animosity against an enemy that continuously bombed the civilian population, but a massive preventive repressive policy, which detained and imprisoned thousands of Mallorcans who seemed to the military and public order authorities to be susceptible of forming part of the 'internal enemy', assassinating a part of them, although the first great wave of deaths would not arrive until the landing occurred”. According to the latest census, we would be talking about 1,993 victims with names and surnames, but only the remains of 329 have been located in 28 different places, and only 68 have been identified.And third and last, Thomàs constructs, with the mettle of good historians, a critical account that does not seek to exonerate but rather to understand and make understood the complexity inherent in those events. He does so, for example, by collecting the legal and Christian scruples of Gerardo Maria himself, who, despite voluntarily joining the rebels and sharing an eschatological interpretation of the conflict, distances himself from violent excesses and, faced with veiled threats for his lack of repressive enthusiasm, will leave for the Peninsula. This unease will never place him in public dissent with the dictatorship, but it surely explains that in 1953, as a judge, he carried out the exhumation of a victim murdered in Mallorca during the war by a prominent local falangist. And a civil war on an island is practically a war within the family.

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The Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg has died at the age of 87, as reported by the newspaper Corriere della Sera. Born in Turin in 1939, Ginzburg was a meticulous teacher, with an insatiable curiosity, who revolutionized historical studies. He grew up in a home that strongly fueled his vocation. His father, the philologist, journalist, and editor Leone Ginzburg, was a prominent anti-fascist who died tortured by the Nazis in 1944. His mother was the writer Natalia Ginzburg, author of seminal works of Italian literature such as Family Lexicon. The historian would confess years later that his mother's passion for literature, combined with the stories he heard as a child about the persecutions and repression of the war, was decisive for his future.

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Now that it is the fiftieth anniversary of the historic First Catalan Women's Conferences, there are three ways to remember them: watch the documentary Feminism 76: When our lives changed, produced by RTVE Catalunya; read Feminist Catalonia. May 27-30, 1976, by Isabel Segura; or attend some of the activities that will be held during this month of June at Fabra i Coats under the title Feminisms in revolt. 1976-1926.

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Lucy Worsley (United Kingdom, 1973) began her career as a curator of historic houses and learned that history is not only explained through parliaments and battles, but also in the kitchens and bathrooms of the house. How was laundry done? What was the bathroom like? These are questions she addresses in If These Walls Could Talk (Capitan Swing). By joining small details, she achieves a reconstruction of the great changes that have occurred in our society.

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Behind the stone walls of the Pedralbes Monastery, countless generations of women have lived for seven centuries. Each corridor holds many stories, not only of prayer and introspective silence, but also of struggles, conspiracies, survival, and creativity. It is a rare and ancient place because neither the confiscations of church property, nor revolutions, nor dictatorships, nor even the voracious appetite for real estate, have been able to swallow it up. Those who entered were required to take vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, but for a long time it was a space where patriarchal power could be transcended. This year it celebrates its 700th anniversary with exhibitions, panel discussions, and the revelation of many of the secrets hidden within the tombs of a queen and the ladies who accompanied her. We invite you to explore all the spaces of the monastery through the lives of seven women, some powerful, others very humble.

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A claw, a chair, a laundry paddle, a plume, a printing press, a dress, an urn, or a corset. These are some of the 25 objects that journalist Sílvia Marimon Molas, Culture Editor at ARA, has featured in the book Inventory of silenced stories (Eumo Editorial), an essential and highly educational journey through everyday objects that have been crucial in shaping our society today. Objects that Marimon links to both renowned and anonymous women who have too often been forgotten in history books.

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In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Augusto de Muller y Ruinart de Brimont (1829-1893) arrived in Tarragona from Reims. Belonging to a prominent winemaking family from Alsace, De Muller sought an area in Spain untouched by the phylloxera plague, where he focused his activities on the production and export of wines. The volume of his international sales, with branches in Bordeaux and London, made him the leading businessman in Tarragona during his time, a city where, for much of the first third of the 20th century, the wine trade was the main economic driver, overshadowed by other, far less significant, activities. The port of Tarragona became De Muller's export hub.

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No one could have written his story. A spy, a gigolo, a con man, a charlatan who was the monarch of Andorra in 1934, for little more than a week. If thousands of documents didn't exist to prove it, Boris Skossyreff's life would seem like a delirious fiction, a spy novel written under the influence of morphine during the height of modernism. For twelve days in the summer of 1934, a Russian-born con man with ties to the Nazi regime proclaimed himself King of Andorra and placed the small Pyrenean principality at the center of international attention.

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Looking back This is an ARA podcast that explores the silences, struggles, and wounds of the Franco regime to understand how this past continues to shape the present.

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