Everyone is clear that reading is good and having the habit of reading is even better. For years we have been trying to do this from high schools, especially language teachers. I say we try because we don't always succeed. In a few high schools in Catalonia, half an hour is dedicated to reading every day. Where I work, this is done in all courses, from first year of ESO to second year of baccalaureate. Sometimes, on guard duty or walking through the corridors, you see that the youngest ones, those in the first cycle, still maintain the desire to read. The key word is "still", because I fear that with adolescence, a good part of the students lose the reading habit. Some, unfortunately, forever.

Adolescence is a very complicated stage of development to accompany with serenity and empathy because it requires adults a combination of patience, listening, and constant understanding. The adolescent, submerged in a web of physical, cognitive, psychological, emotional, and social changes, often appears at home irritable and with little desire to share everything that worries or bothers them. An attitude that, far from being a personal rejection, usually reflects the need to protect oneself, to understand oneself, and to find one's own place in the world. In this context, the adult perspective becomes key: interpreting these behaviors calmly and without judgment can make the difference between raising walls or keeping communication bridges open.A family moment when talking to children stops being easy: what arose spontaneously in childhood – explaining how the day at school went, sharing worries, or asking curious questions – progressively transforms into a true odyssey, where managing to exchange more than four words without tension, argument, or anger appearing becomes a challenge that often bewilders and exhausts adults. And it is precisely in these difficult moments when parents' patience and calm can make the difference between building walls or keeping communication bridges open.

I have always thought that in our profession it is very important to value the meaning of the words we use both to address children and young people and to relate to each other, teachers and families.

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran that has disrupted global energy markets. For many, the conflict may seem distant, but the prices at any gas station are enough to understand that it is not. In twelve days, the price of commercial diesel rose by 26%, from €1.45 per liter to €1.82. This is not a projection or a theoretical scenario. It is what thousands of Catalan companies are paying today every time they fill up their tanks.

Those of us who work with children in the early stages of education celebrate and applaud the fact that the latest curriculum reform of 2023 affirmed from the outset that "the early childhood education curriculum integrates the first and second cycles into a single educational stage with its own identity." This is a demand that has been made by the educational reform movements, with the journal CHILDHOOD As a keynote speaker, he has championed and defended his position for decades. The problem is that these good intentions, when they come down to earth, end up being just wishful thinking, because the reality is that we have a completely fragmented political landscape.

It's probably the most repetitive format. We can find it in the morning, at noon, and at night, on the radio and on television. Antonio Villarreal has decided to analyze it in Tertulianos (Peninsula), a journey through 40 years of the opinion industry in Spain, and a photograph, at the same time, of a sector that moves between precariousness and power.

This year, one of the research projects I served on as a panel for reached a fascinating conclusion, which I'll reveal at the end of this article. The project analyzed the range of leisure activities in Catalan aimed at young people. There was something for all tastes and ages. For the youngest children, there were musical and theatrical activities. These, of course, were chosen by their parents.

I have borrowed the title of the book written by the educator Philippe Meirieu to write these reflections on the complexity of introducing children to the world of writing. It is a short book, included in the new Minerva collection published by the Rosa Sensat Teachers' Association, reviving the name of the collection offered at the beginning of the 20th century by the Barcelona Provincial Council and later by the Commonwealth of Catalonia.

I've often wondered where my ideas come from and what happens if I change them. I'm always open to doing so: give me a solid reason why, and I'll hesitate. Let me think about it for a while, and maybe I'll take your advice, or maybe I'll end up right back where I started. Over the years, I've realized that my way of understanding the world has deep roots, stemming from a thread of thought that predates me and will outlive me: tradition, history, and the language that verbalizes it all.

At a time when armed conflicts dominate the news, it's important to remember that children are also aware of them and interested in what's happening in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere, and all that stems from it: the violence and death, the hunger and poverty, the power and vulnerability, the disrupted daily lives, and the fear. We can avoid these topics altogether, or we can find sensitive ways to address them, and literature can be one of those paths. This was the starting point of the 10th Publishing-Education Symposium, held on October 28th at the Faculty of Education and Psychology of the University of Girona, with the participation of Pablo Larraguibel, editor at Ekaré, and Blanca Andelic, a technician from the Pla de l'Estany-Banyoles Social Welfare Consortium.

I remember perfectly when, during recess four years ago, a colleague showed us artificial intelligence on his phone. Apparently, he'd heard about it on the radio and, out of curiosity, had tried it out. In front of us, he asked it to compare Modernism and Noucentisme and even to generate a poem in the style of Maragall. Before we'd even finished our coffee, a long and exhaustive piece of work, just as he'd asked, started appearing on the phone screen. The poem too. It was like something out of a magic trick. What was the catch? Who was writing all this? We immediately saw that the tool was fantastic, but also dangerous for the world of education.

1. Under the guise of combating drugs, you seize our oil. In 2012, when Trump was presenting reality showsHugo Chávez, even at that time, made two predictions. The Venezuelan president said: "When the world runs out of oil, there will still be five countries with significant reserves: Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Venezuela. All the presidents who have come and gone in the last hundred years, who have tried to control the oil business, have believed that oil is essential because the powerful Western countries need it." Months later, Chávez elaborated further: "There's an operation brewing, one they've been preparing for some time. They warned me about it years ago. They told me: 'They'll end up accusing you of being a drug trafficker. Not that the government supports it, or that the government allows it... No, no, no. You, Chávez. Chávez. The United States is preparing it. They're directly linking Chávez to drug trafficking, and then anything goes against a drug trafficker. The script was written, and fourteen years later, it's been followed to the letter."

If you're looking for a beautiful song that touches your soul, here's a suggestion you might not hear on the radio or on any TV talent show. When you discover the story behind it, you'll be moved. Go to Spotify or another streaming platform. streaming and look for an album titled Too much signed by a group of friends, Los de la Mesa Redonda (The Round Table Group). One of the six songs is titled Out of friendThe author is Adhara Ventura. She is a bassist, but for this very special occasion she has also lent her voice, because she needed to send a message to a friend:Give me a sign, just to know that you're at peace.(Give me a sign, just so I know you're at peace). It's a mature song, with a rhythm of new bag and jazz. When you're told that Ventura is only sixteen years old, the sensitivity and sincerity that the song exudes deeply move you.

My indispensable friend Imma Sust posted a video on Instagram explaining that she wasn't having a good time due to some of the symptoms of menopause. The video received a lot of comments, and what surprised us most was the number of women who had been suffering from certain health issues for years and years and the resignation with which they lived with them. Both Sust and I sought good medical advice to navigate menopause well, and it was shocking to read so many women who normalized feeling unwell. But I recently realized that no matter what I do or say, I'm not immune to a certain normalization of physical pain either.

In recent weeks, messages have appeared attached to street furniture on my street. Handwritten notes on post-it notes A yellow note where someone declares their love for another and begs for mercy. "No matter how much you left me here, I'll come back every day I can, hoping we'll meet again someday," reads a small piece of paper stuck to a temporary construction fence. As a final note, a poorly drawn heart is sketched. The street must have been a regular haunt for a couple who had broken up. One of them, refusing to accept reality, warns that they will return to the scene of the crime, hoping for a second chance. "I have loved you, I love you, and I will always love you," says another. post-it Further down, on another fence, it reads: "No matter how much time passes, I won't forget you. You taught me what love was and is. And, because of my immaturity, I lost. I'm in the process of changing, leaving behind the boy who thought he was a man." The masculine adjective now tells us that the mysterious figure is a man regretting something that caused the breakup.

The Düsseldorf Art Palace Museum, which houses collections of paintings, photographs, and graphic arts, has implemented a strategy to boost visitor numbers: it has created the figure of a very peculiar guide, Joseph Langelinck, who is not characterized by patient and meticulous explanation, but quite the opposite. He conducts an explanatory tour of the museum in a deliberately sour and condescending tone. He seeks to humiliate visitors, highlighting their lack of culture and making them feel, in his own words, "as ignorant as possible." He demands answers to his questions, reprimands them for looking at their phones, boos them if they stray from the group, and scolds them if they sit on any of the benches along the route. Of course, this is an actor, Carl Brandi, who plays this rigid and aggressive character who also questions the museum's criteria and the value of the works. He mocks some of the exhibited pieces and the artists, rejects certain stylistic movements, and criticizes the fact that some rooms resemble department stores. The Palau d'Art has named the experience the Grumpy GuideThe grumpy guide has been an unprecedented success. It began last May, and the show is so in demand that every weekly session sells out immediately. According to the museum, the public readily accepts Joseph Langelinck's outbursts.

1. Last summer, 2,763 Catalan adults answered an online survey for twenty minutes. The questions posed by the research firm Soluciones Netquest were the same in both Catalan and Spanish. Commissioned by the Catalan International Institute for Peace (ICIP), the study aimed to quantify a reality we all perceive: that young people, including young Catalans, are turning towards right-wing ideologies, both politically and socially. And you only have to listen—on the street, in bars, or in the locker rooms of a sports club—to realize that young men are becoming more radicalized, and at a faster rate, than young women. The study's data, of course, confirms the initial hypothesis. No surprise there.

This week, I heard an analyst explain that food inflation has been higher than it seems. The official figure, according to the INE (National Institute of Statistics and Census), was 2.4%. But if we eliminate the effect of olive oil—which has dropped more than 40% in the last year—the shopping basket would actually have increased by more than 4.5%. This is no small fact.

1. I'm warning you from the start that this article will have a twist that might put you in a bad mood. As much as it put me this Saturday. For work reasons, I spent thirty hours in Ciutadella. The twentieth edition of the Catalan Book Fair was being held, and I was invited to give a talk at Saturday's Literary Vermouth. In the open-plan Plaça des Born, perhaps one of the most luminous squares in the entire Mediterranean, there was a tent, necessary to protect us from the October rains or the sunburns that would have burned our shells. Inside, seven of the eight bookstores in Menorca had a stall with books in Catalan on display, draped in the flag, a custom we've normalized without realizing how absurd it is to use a country's flag as a large sheet over our legs. On an island with one hundred thousand registered residents—roughly the size of Sant Cugat—there are eight bookstores. The ratio isn't bad. Even better is the crowds that have passed through this fair, which only lasts two days. On Friday, there were lots of schoolchildren. On Saturday, a crowd of families shuffling books and leisurely wandering from stall to stall.

It's October 2025. We're in the 21st century, and at this point in life, there are still those who aren't clear on what feminism is. I get asked this often. The other day at lunch, someone who had just met me, knowing about my career, asked me the question as if to say, "Let's see how you do it." I was surprised by the tone, but it wasn't the first time I'd found myself in a similar situation, and I know it won't be the last. And in some Instagram posts, I'm also asked to explain, like in this video Imma Sust and I shared about the feminist section we do on Wednesdays at The afternoons of Catalunya Ràdio ("The proper ladies' tutorial") and in the comments they wrote: "It needs to be explained so it's understood!" And from time to time they also ask me with genuine curiosity: "But what do you consider feminism to be?" And, honestly, I'm amazed.