Between April and May 1954, one of the most ambitious expeditions of the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona, inaugurated in 1949, was organized in the protectorate of Morocco. The sculptor Eudald Serra, who was part of the expedition, wanted to model a nude bust, but local law and morals made it impossible to find any woman who would pose. Serra did not give up; he simply looked where colonial power was absolute. With the collaboration of the Spanish authorities, he visited prisons, reformatories, and "public houses." The use of sex workers as models was systematic and deliberate in many campaigns, taking advantage of their extreme vulnerability in a context of colonial domination.

France, a European country that was a pioneer 25 years ago in recognizing the slave trade and slavery as a crime against humanity, is now opening the door – timidly – to its reparation. The country was one of the main colonizing powers in Africa, the Caribbean, and America, especially between the 17th and 18th centuries, where it promoted slavery. The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, has argued this week that the "immense issue" of reparation should not be evaded.

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.

I'm not one of those who would remove Columbus's statue from the end of La Rambla, because I love folklore. Columbus and the Asland cement factory are my two favorite monuments in the province of Barcelona. I also like the black towers of La Caixa, a lot, but for other, more romantic reasons. I'd like to get lost there...

Several novels by Zadie Smith (London, 1975), one of the most important writers in contemporary English literature, had been published in Catalan since her debut, White teethBut the vicissitudes of the publishing world (what gory novel wouldn't Smith herself write!) have condemned it to the unglamorous oblivion of secondhand bookstores, and thus the appearance ofThe fraud, her latest novel, splendidly translated by Marta Pera and published by the very young Jande publishing houseThis is great news. And we hope there will be many more to come, because Smith's novels are too good not to be part of the literary conversation among Catalan-language book readers.

Spain's first significant shift in its narrative regarding its colonial past. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares acknowledged the "contrasts" in history this Friday, admitting that "there has been pain and injustice towards the indigenous peoples." He made these remarks in Madrid during the opening of an exhibition entitled Women in Indigenous MexicoThis allows us to read these words as an attempt to reach out to the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, who since the beginning of her term He has repeatedly insisted that Spain must apologize for the excesses committed during colonization.Sheinbaum herself responded to the minister, assuring him that today's declaration is "very important" and calling it a "first step."

"Forgiveness magnifies both the one who offers it and the one who grants it." These were the words of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in February of this year. She was referring to the pardon that Mexico has formally demanded from Spain since 2019 for its colonial past and for the excesses committed during the conquest of the Americas. This request for an apology sparked a clash with the Spanish royal family and government a year ago, when Sheinbaum failed to invite King Felipe VI to her inauguration after the monarch failed to respond. a letter from his predecessorAndrés Manuel López Obrador, asking for this pardon. The Spanish government dodged this request and, considering it "inexplicable" that the monarch was not invited, did not attend the event despite having been invited. A year later, and after the Mexican president reiterated several times that an apology was needed, the Spanish government, when questioned by the ARA on the matter, avoided commenting, and Sumar, the minority partner, limited itself to showing "the utmost respect and sensitivity to the demands for historical memory" of Latin American states.

Madagascar will receive next Sunday three human skulls that the French government handed over this week, complying, for the first time, with the 2023 law requiring the return of human remains for a proper burial. It has been 128 years since French troops, in the midst of their colonial conquest of the western African island, massacred the Sakalava ethnic group, killing and decapitating King Ampanjaka Toera. The skulls of the monarch and two of his warriors were subsequently transported to Paris and have been on display for years at the French capital's Museum of Natural History.

He's not yet 30, but Lola Olufemi (London, 1996) has been a leading author on feminism, racism, gender, and anti-capitalism for years. Her two books have been published in Catalan thanks to the publisher Raig Verd and the translator Josefina Caball. The first, Feminism interrupted (2023), aims to be a warning of the danger of feminism becoming a commodity and claims that it is "a weapon to fight injustice." The second, Experiments to imagine differently (2025), breaks down the traditional form of the essay to return meaning to words like future and revolution and for claiming "being able to be and live differently."

In the wake of Donald Trump's victory and the rise of the far right across Europe, the view has spread that left-wing political movements, or at least some of them, have unwittingly contributed to this trend. From within the left itself, and not coincidentally, this responsibility is often attributed to feminism or, more generally, to wokism, a derisive term that also encompasses critical race theories and decolonialism. The idea is that the demands of these movements—which are or should be essential to left-wing progressivism—go too far and have therefore provoked a perverse effect or one backlash, another term imported from the English-speaking world. Using a different term, we would talk about the boomerang effect, a device that can hit the person who threw it hard. Another argument is that certain claims, which are considered exaggerated (such as all those related to gender fluidity and the trans issue), endanger the rights acquired through workers' struggle or by left-wing governments.

"We know about it since Christopher Columbus's second voyage, because there are thousands and thousands of documented references: the circumstances of the invasion of America were terrible, terror and extreme violence were used, but Spain is a self-conscious country and refuses to accept it," says historian and professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) Antonio Espino (Córdoba, 1966), who has just published  La invasión de América. Una nueva lectura de la conquista hispana de América: una historia de violencia y destrucción [The Invasion of America. A New Reading of the Hispanic Conquest of America: A History of Violence and Destruction] (Arpa), an expanded revision of the book he published with RBA in 2013.