When Pau Palaus returned from his first trip to Lebanon, in May, he organized an event in the Plaça d’Arbúcies to explain the experience to his neighbors. He lives on the outskirts of the village in a farmhouse called Ca l’Ocell, where he has a small stage to rehearse shows and set up small-scale performances. Roser Loscos' violin was playing in the square, and the children were asking him questions. “And did you bring food to Lebanon?”, a girl asked him. Pau is a clown; with his company, he has visited about thirty countries, won awards like the Zirkólika, and a few years ago he set up the association Contaminando Sonrisas, with which he organizes solidarity expeditions to countries in conflict or places that have suffered natural disasters. It was the bombings in April, launched by Israel over the south of the country but also in the capital, and the contacts Pau maintains with some Lebanese clowns that prompted him to travel to Lebanon. Not to bring food, precisely, but rather “hope”: “Talking so much about the number of deaths, in the end we end up dehumanizing war, and what I try to do is bring a little humanity to the conflict”. He usually shares these trips with a small team of collaborators, but this time, for logistical reasons, he had to travel alone. He performed mainly in the most popular neighborhoods of Beirut, including Dahieh, the suburbs where Hezbollah is considered to have its main urban base, and where Israel usually has its sights set. In total there were 27 performances in less than two weeks, many improvised in the middle of the street, during days when bombs continued to fall despite the theoretical ceasefire. A ceasefire that never quite is, as has been demonstrated in recent weeks. “The bombings that fall during a ceasefire are the most dangerous, because people let their guard down. I thought I would find an empty city, with everything closed and people at home, and it's the opposite, shops are open, life goes on almost normally. In Beirut I spent the day watching the drones that flew over us all the time, but they didn't pay any attention to them.” During the last two days of my stay in Beirut, the suburbs suffered a new wave of attacks, in which the government of Israel claimed to have killed a high commander of Hezbollah, the Shiite paramilitary group allied with Iran. It is estimated that since the United States and Israel launched the offensive against Iran, there have been more than 3,000 deaths in Lebanon and one and a half million displaced people, mainly due to bombings ordered from Tel Aviv to attack southern Lebanon and occupy about thirty border towns. “During a performance I was giving, a group of people received a call saying that two missiles had fallen in their village and seven people had died. There was a bit of a commotion, but the show continued, and when it ended, those same people came to congratulate me as if nothing had happened.” During his nine days in Lebanon, Pau recounts having a dream: hundreds of buses arriving in Beirut loaded with clowns and invading the country. He told this to two Lebanese documentary filmmakers who were helping him set up performances in Beirut, and from this, a new project has emerged and is now underway: to record an eight-episode series in eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa to demonstrate that the work of a clown can be a symbol of peace and also of transformation. “They stopped making documentaries focused on war some time ago because they found it too emotionally taxing, but now they see the possibility of addressing it from the perspective of hope. The intention is to invite other artists who are willing to perform with me in these places,” he explains. The series will likely begin filming in August, taking advantage of Pau being invited to a circus festival in the town of Ramallah, in the West Bank.A destroyed capitalIn recent months, Pau has met some Lebanese clowns and artists, and from this have come different collaborations. Last week, for example, Contaminando Sonrisas promoted from Catalonia – with economic and logistical support – a series of performances by a pair of local artists who perform mask and puppet shows. “They were born in Syria but had to exile themselves to Lebanon and grew up in Shatila, a refugee camp in the heart of Beirut built in 1949 to host Palestinians fleeing the war. It can be said that it is already part of the city itself, but it is a very degraded place, with mafias and corruption, where young people have many difficulties finding work. Meeting this pair of artists with so much sensitivity has been like finding a flower in the middle of the rubble," he explains. This coming Wednesday, Pau will once again leave for Lebanon to perform in other areas particularly hard-hit by the war. He will visit the Bekaa Valley, near the Syrian border; two refugee camps in Tripoli, further north, and the peripheral neighborhoods of Beirut. In addition, he will conduct a free training workshop for about fifteen local clowns. “Many public services have not been functioning for years and the population has had to self-manage. I don't know if they have much hope left, but they have a lot of resilience,” he adds. During his performances in May, he was able to personally verify the accounts that Western media correspondents have been giving in recent times. On the one hand, the destruction that continues to plague the capital. “There are many damaged buildings, and for each one, they can tell you what year it was attacked. Apart from an explosion at the port [in 2020], which was brutal and it is still unknown who was responsible. The Lebanese say that life is what happens between one war and another, because conflicts have been constant throughout their history,” he laments.

In Montserrat, the spiritual heart of Catalonia, Saint Ignatius of Loyola examined his sins to begin leading a life in God's service, abandoning the sword that had always accompanied him as a knight. With this reference and commending himself to La Moreneta, Pope Leo XIV made a strong plea for peace this Wednesday in a turbulent world. "May hatred give way to hope and peace," he stated from inside the basilica after the rosary prayer presided over by himself. But he also had a message in favor of immigration when he finished his speech: "Thank you, Catalonia, for having welcomed so many people from other countries, because you teach how to integrate everyone into a single family," he said from the outside, in line with what he had defended on Tuesday at the Lluís Companys Stadium.

Peacekeeping missions are facing an unprecedented crisis. The number of international personnel deployed has fallen to 78,633, the lowest figure since 2000 and a 49% decrease from 2016. This is the main conclusion of a report by the prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which warns that the viability of multilateral peacekeeping is at risk. While the number of deployed personnel has been decreasing throughout the decade, 2025 saw the steepest year-on-year drop (17%), coinciding with the start of Donald Trump's second term in the United States. Last year, there were a total of 58 active operations in 34 countries, three fewer than in 2024.

According to a study cited by Cinco Días, 70.8% of users of the betting platform Polymarket lose money. At the other extreme, 0.1% concentrate 58.5% of the winnings and 1% accumulate 84.1%. Many enter thinking they are participating in an intelligent market. Very few take home almost all the money.Polymarket presents itself as a prediction market. Its users bet on future events: elections, judicial decisions, inflation, sports results, political appointments, or military conflicts.Betting on whether a footballer will score a goal, well, that's fine. But betting on whether the United States will launch missiles against Iran, honestly, I don't understand it. Even less so on a legalized platform.Its defenders use a fallacious argument. They claim that thousands of people, incentivized with real money, incorporate data, analyses, and intuitions. And that, thanks to this, the sum of all these bets results in a form of collective intelligence faster and more precise than any news or official communication from a public or corporate body.Let's see, betting on who will win an election already poses dilemmas. Betting on whether one country will bomb another opens the doors to immorality. Furthermore, leaked or insider information is an opaque advantage that turns into money.The U.S. Department of Justice announced charges on April 23, 2026, against a U.S. soldier accused of using classified information to earn over $400,000 on Polymarket through bets related to the military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.There were also suspicions surrounding bets linked to attacks against Iran. Several newly created accounts on Polymarket reportedly won around $1.2 million after betting, shortly before, that the United States would attack Iran before February 28, 2026.A market can be technically sophisticated and morally miserable. It can produce useful information and, at the same time, incentivize repugnant behavior. It can be called prediction, investment or financial innovation. But when someone makes money because other people will be bombed, captured or murdered, the word market falls short.What collective intelligence are we talking about? I would speak more of collective immorality. War already generates too many indirect benefits. Turning its probability or calendar into a direct bet goes beyond obscenity. The tragedy of others begins to have a price. Pain transforms into contract. And death, into an opportunity for profitability through gambling.How disgusting.

This is a compass article. Like the magnetized needle instrument, the aim of these words is to try to show us where we are. Or, more precisely, where the Iran war is, a strident earthquake that has strained international politics and the economy.

On April 14, 1931, 95 years ago, the sky of Barcelona and the entire State was tinged with unprecedented hope. For many, the proclamation of the Second Republic was not just a change of regime, it was a modernizing shake-up that aimed to place Spain at the forefront of Europe. Between 1931 and 1933, that reformist impulse brought to light rights that seem natural to us today, but were groundbreaking then: women's suffrage, the divorce law, Azaña's profound military reform, and a religious reform that sought the secularism of the State. Milestones that were framed in the Constitution approved on December 9, 1931. Within that text, a declaration of intent that still resonates today with clear validity stood out above all. Article 6 literally stated: "Spain renounces war as an instrument of national policy".

“There are days that are born without knowing they can end up being remembered. Apparently ordinary days, caught between routine and uncertainty, that unfold with the same cadence as always: a kiss before leaving home, a shared concern, a promise cast into the future before going to sleep. And yet, some of these days hide a disturbing question: will this be one of those days that history will point to?”

The day after the night when an entire civilization was to be annihilated, a robot-man and a robot-dog were doing somersaults in Dubai. Tourists were photographing them as they waited to enter the future. The future has been very dizzying these days in the Gulf countries. The uncertain future of the Gulf is still dizzying.

This article is being written from the 41st floor of one of the many superlative hotels in Dubai. 

When the generation that lived through the Civil War saw us dawdling with food on the table, they lost patience and would say: "You should have gone through a war." It was a serious expression, laden with anger and frustration. It wasn't the time to answer anything, because that wasn't just another little battle, but the verbalization of the trauma of having known what it is to go hungry.For the moment, most of us continue not to go hungry (though queues can be seen at social centers and churches), but we have been experiencing wars for years now. Large-scale war, and quite close to home, has already become the constant framework within which our lives are unfolding. And the roar of conflicts is felt ever closer. And their effects, in our pockets or spirits, too. The survival kit was much more than advice for alarmists. How long will it be possible to continue leading this dual life, more or less normal and with future plans, if we live surrounded by fires?We are witnessing the atavistic struggle for political and economic power, but with an exponential killing capacity, which mixes war and spectacle, while we become impoverished and our prospects are impoverished. There is a hunger for certainties, for not going backwards, for not being cannon fodder at the orders of obscene politicians. There is a desire for effort to be recognized, for public discourse not to make reality even more obscene, for our children not to be forced to become cynics. There is a desire to ask ourselves who benefits from the return of war, even when it seemed that the last one had been a sufficiently dissuasive warning that the next one could be with stones.

Escalation is usually understood as a simple increase in violence, but it is actually a more complex phenomenon: a crisis escalates when it intensifies, expands to other geographical areas or domains (land, naval, aerospace, or cyber), or affects increasingly sensitive targets, thus becoming more difficult to control. Today, this risk is greater because war increasingly depends on a set of technologies that change its logic: the use of precision and long-range weapons, the proliferation of drones –and, above all, the possibility of using them in swarms–, artificial intelligence, cyberspace, electronic warfare, satellites, and, in some cases, hypersonic weapons. But also because many of these capabilities are more accessible and spread beyond major powers. Not all have the same weight, but they share a common underlying effect: they accelerate events, increase ambiguity, and make it more likely that a limited action will be perceived as a more serious step than perhaps intended. The first problem is speed. Precision capabilities –the combination of guided weapons, sensors, command and control networks, and navigation tools that allow for the precise location, tracking, and engagement of targets– can produce profound effects in a very short time. The novelty is that the time between observation, decision, and action has been radically shortened, between the sensors that detect, the command centers that process information, and the vectors that execute the attack. Technology compresses decision cycles and favors premature reactions or those based on an incomplete reading of the situation. A well-coordinated attack can not only destroy physical targets: it can degrade command and control, disrupt communications, degrade radar coverage, or hinder target detection and tracking. To all this must be added AI, which accelerates data fusion, target prioritization, and the pace of decision-making, as well as hypersonic weapons, which, due to their speed, maneuverability, and shorter warning times, can further reduce the margin for interpreting signals and calibrating responses. The strategic problem is evident: as time shortens, the risk of reacting not so much to what is known as to what is feared increases.

There are things that don't change. Like the change of time. It doesn't matter that the seasons are distorted by climate change and that we're on the time of Nazi Germany because Franco had to align himself with the prevailing fascism. Let's see who's brave enough to change it. And even less so now that fascism is trending again and there's so much nostalgia for the eagle that if you're very distracted by the world and see all those people with expired flags, you might think they're an environmental group defending an endangered animal. Of course, in Spain, the eagle on the Francoist coat of arms has never fallen into disuse. And if you confuse an environmental group with a fascist one, it means you're more lost in aesthetics than Lamine Yamal's hairstyle. But we were talking about the time. About change. About things that don't change. Like the collateral damage of a war. As if the main damage, which also doesn't change, wasn't enough. Bombs that destroy. Bombs that kill. Bombs to make more bombs. Bombs to send more bombs. Although it's logical that if your goal is to cause harm and the only human life that matters to you is your own, the more harm you do, the better. The extent of harm for an evil person is infinite. The more people suffer to survive, the better. And with this bunch of psychopaths who are constantly measuring their trumpets to see who has the longest, suffering seems assured. For everyone. Because there are things that don't change. Like resolving conflicts by creating new and worse ones. It also doesn't change that you are rewarded for peace after generating a war. Perhaps the newest thing is that since you're not rewarded by those you expected, you're rewarded by some who believe that football promotes peace. I won't be the one to question that. Because anyone can face a hooligan, a synonym for pacifist. I'm just saying that good taste certainly isn't promoted. And since so many people follow them, they could at least have houses that didn't look like a funeral home. Inside and out.

The generation of the boomers The United States, including Donald Trump, maintains a complex relationship with oil, deeply marked by the energy crises of the 1970s. Endless lines at gas stations are an image etched in their minds. For them, that shock marked the end of the economic romance experienced during the postwar period, and since then, the price of gasoline has become their barometer of the country's economic health, even though it often isn't.

Politics shouldn't be all about pronouncements and grand gestures. Pragmatism is also essential. In short, it's about being practical so that citizens, those governed, feel they aren't being abandoned when times get tough. And this seems to be the path the Spanish government has taken with the package of measures designed to mitigate the effects of the war in the Middle East. The conflict, whose end appears far off, has driven up gas and oil prices and, consequently, the prices of everything related to them, such as fuel and electricity. That's why the measures announced by Pedro Sánchez will amount to around 5 billion euros, far less than the more than 20 billion mobilized in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine—but we are still in the early stages and don't know how long the war might last. The first decree focuses on reducing energy taxes, one of the services most affected by the impact of the Middle East crisis, and one that could have ripple effects throughout the economy. In addition to lowering the VAT on electricity and gas from the current 21% to 10%, as well as on biomass raw materials such as pellets and firewood, the energy production tax, currently at 7%, is temporarily eliminated and reduced from 5.5% to a special rate of 0.5%. Maximum retail prices for butane and propane are also frozen. The VAT on gasoline and diesel is also reduced, which, according to the Prime Minister's office, will result in a savings of approximately 30 cents per liter when filling up. Consumer organizations estimate that the reduction will be around 17 cents for diesel, which has seen the largest price increase. A key point, also included in the decree, is granting the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) new supervisory and sanctioning powers to prevent operators from exploiting the tax cut to increase their profit margins and enrich themselves. This is essential to prevent the tax reduction from benefiting certain companies more than citizens and, therefore, taxpayers.

Thursday's session saw a further surge in oil and gas prices following the Israeli bombing of the South Pars gas facilities (the largest in the world). The price of Brent crude – the European benchmark – has risen by more than 3%, climbing back above $110. In fact, it reached a high of $119 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude – the US benchmark – is up nearly 1.50%, to $97 per barrel. Meanwhile, the price of natural gas on the Dutch TTF market – the European benchmark – is around €62 per megawatt-hour (MWh), representing an increase of more than 13% during the session and nearly doubling its price since the start of the war.

The death of Jürgen Habermas (1929-2026), one of the most important thinkers of his generation, has coincided with a particularly delicate moment: a war whose underlying cause—oil—affects the entire world. What can Habermas's ideas contribute to such a grim scenario? His theory of communicative action extends far beyond the Strait of Hormuz, to put it simply: it allows us to interpret contemporary international politics globally, a world marked by deep-seated and very old geopolitical tensions, as well as by newly unleashed, all-out wars.

Whenever we try to understand complex situations, we try to find a reason that justifies how someone acts, or why something happens a certain way. Lately, even experts in politics, particularly international politics, are completely baffled as to the reasons behind this particular figure: any reasonable prediction based on the rules we previously knew has been shattered. Some, even with immense effort, have lined up all the facts, like an Excel spreadsheet, and tried to find a common thread. In Trump's case, at this point, we have to accept that everyone who has tried has failed.

The United States, in the midst of its war with Iran, is running short on air defense systems. This is demonstrated by this week's announcement to relocate these systems from South Korea to the Middle East. Seoul's conservative government has protested the decision, which exposes it to an attack from North Korea and raises serious questions about Donald Trump's commitment to his long-standing ally. Specifically, the Pentagon is moving the two most advanced types of air defense systems in the world: the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missile system and the Patriot missile batteries. The Pentagon has seven THAAD systems, two of them in Asia: one on the island of Guam in the Western Pacific, serving as a deterrent against China, and the one previously located in South Korea, to prevent a North Korean attack. The remaining systems are currently distributed among five air defense regiments, one of them in Israel.

The Spanish government wants to approve a package of measures "as soon as possible" to mitigate the economic impact of the war in the Middle East, which is already putting pressure on energy prices, particularly diesel and gasoline. Although the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, stated this Thursday morning that some measures will be approved at next week's cabinet meeting, a more cautious approach prevails at the Moncloa Palace. "We are working to make it happen as soon as possible," government sources indicate. And the Minister of Economy himself, Carlos Cuerpo, publicly addressed the issue after a meeting with unions and employers' associations to discuss, precisely, the economic impact of the conflict: "The priority is to finalize the text, and I cannot give a date for its approval," Cuerpo said at a press conference.

The Strait of Hormuz has become one of the most volatile areas in the Middle East since the start of the Iran-Iraq War, but the events of the last few hours, with four cargo ships attacked, threaten a further escalation of hostilities at a strategic point for global hydrocarbon trade. Tehran warned that the bombing in this area will increase, while the United States also intensified its attacks on Iranian warships and threatened to use more force. On Wednesday, four ships were reported to have been hit by projectiles while in or near the Strait of Hormuz. They are Greek, Japanese, Thai, and Israeli-owned. These attacks bring the total number of commercial vessels targeted in the region since the United States and Israel launched their joint military operation against Iran on February 28 to 17, according to the UK Maritime Commercial Operations Agency (UKMTO), which oversees the safety of ships and seafarers worldwide.