What do we do with monuments, especially unjust ones? This was the question being asked this Tuesday in the last session of the season of the Pedralbes Dialogues, organized at the Pedralbes Monastery with the collaboration of ARA, moderated by Antoni Bassas, and under the intellectual direction of the philosopher Daniel Gamper. To answer the question, a historian with a torrential discourse and forceful affirmations, Daniel Rico, professor of art history at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and author of an essay on the subject: ¿Quién teme a Francisco Franco? (Anagrama, 2024). For Rico, the issue is not simple: "Hiding monuments in a warehouse or leaving them as they are without doing anything are, in fact, two extreme expressions of the same problem: not wanting to settle accounts with the past. Removing them means getting rid of the past; and doing nothing is turning your back on it. But if you have a trauma, what you need to do is analyze it and confront it."

When a newspaper organizes a debate on moral philosophy, such as the Dialogues held by the ARA in Pedralbes, there is a sharp contrast in speed. The newspaper moves quickly, while the dialogue takes time. Current events take us from here to there, while the debate dwells deeply on an idea. Readers arrive with information and leave having transformed it into knowledge.

To create or to imagine, you need time, but where is that time? How do we find it in an age of precariousness and in which more and more bureaucratic tasks accumulate, which new technologies do not facilitate but rather increase even more? "Those of us who dedicate ourselves to cultural work have less and less time to do creative work, because we have to dedicate many hours to bureaucracy, and there is a growing disaffection with our work," reflects the writer and essayist Remedios Zafra (Zuheros, Córdoba, 1973). "AI does the most beautiful work, like writing poems, and I have to dedicate myself to making invoices," adds the author of'Enthusiasm. Precariousness and creative work in the digital age' and Fragile. Letter on Anxiety and Hope in the New Culture, both published by Anagrama. Zafra, who participated in the cycle What is a good life?, organized in collaboration with the ARA (Argentine Association of Cultural Heritage), under the intellectual direction of philosopher Daniel Gamper and moderated by Antoni Bassas, reflected on bureaucratic burdens, lack of time, and precariousness among those dedicated to culture and creativity. Zafra not only spoke of problems, but proposed possible solutions. She offered hope.

There is not a day when we are not given a dose of hatred like that of Hamas with the kidnapped Israelis and displayed, dead or alive, as trophies; or when we are not subjected to insolent provocations like the video of Gaza devastated by Netanyahu and turned into a Riviera by Trump, or when we are not struck by closer scenes like that of the hundred or so people sleeping in El Prat airport who have beenGueststo march, which are just a sample of the hundreds of settlements that every day seek shelter under the balcony of their home.

The good life and life are not the same thing. The latter is a philosophical expression that dates back to Aristotle and refers to "what is good in the behavior of people, what does it mean for a person to behave well, to be excellent, and therefore, what is the life that deserves the qualification of good." This is how the emeritus professor of moral and political philosophy at the UAB explained it. Victoria Camps in the first session of What is a good life? the cycle of Dialogues on Ethics and Moral Philosophy held at the Pedralbes monastery in collaboration with the ARA newspaper, under the intellectual direction of the UAB philosophy professor Daniel Gamper and moderated by the journalist Antoni Bassas.