Santiago Abascal was the first to react with a tweet to the announcement of the agreement to regularize half a million undocumented immigrants. "500,000 illegals! The tyrant Sánchez hates the Spanish people. He wants to replace them. That's why he intends to promote a pull factor by decree, to accelerate the invasion. We must stop him. Repatriations, deportations, and re-emigration." From that moment on, Abascal and the entire party took to social media to lead the opposition to the measure, facing a hesitant People's Party (PP) with little credibility on this issue, given that José María Aznar had carried out two mass regularizations. Abascal, who is currently immersed in the Aragon campaign, quickly adapted his message. While until that day the main slogan was "Corruption kills," in reference to the Adamuz accident, on Tuesday he added the coda, "And the invasion, too."

While on Sunday, October 12th, my wife and I were taking a brisk Sunday walk (not a stroll at all) we bumped into several couples wearing Latin American folklore dresses in the streets of Eixample. In front of La Pedrera, two Japanese girls were carrying little Spanish flags they had been given at the stall set up by Vox there. We also saw people wearing traditional clothes. baturra, and a greyhound with a handkerchief where the face of General Franco could be seen. At night, while reading the chronicle by Roger Palós in the ARA newspaper, I understood why there was gauchos on the street: it was a group of dancers who joined, perhaps without knowing where they were standing, the grotesque and ridiculous brawl starring some 1,200 militants of the Spanish far right, according to data from the Guardia Urbana. 127 years of resentment: since 1898. If you haven't already, I wholeheartedly recommend you read Palós' article: you'll laugh your head off, or cry your eyes out.

Fights, moments of tension and violence due to surreal disputes in a demonstration formed mainly by Vox, which has made some chants directly racist. "No Moors, Spain is not a zoo" is a dehumanizing stretch previously only reduced to marginal xenophobic groups. But the far-right party continues its in crescendo and chanted it loudly from the party's official PA system, and the two hundred protesters behind the Vox banner echoed it. All of this was part of a lackluster march that wound its way down Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia this Sunday, lacking in traction and filled with internal clashes. In addition to Vox, the PP (People's Party)—with Daniel Sirera and Nacho Martín Blanco—and the remnants of Ciutadans (Citizens) were also present. In total, it brought together 1,200 protesters, according to the Guardia Urbana (Urban Police), as well as two thousand dancers unrelated to the march.

Hispanic heritage has sparked a fundamental debate on the Spanish right. In the fight over immigration, the People's Party (PP) wants to prioritize Latin America to welcome newcomers, to the detriment of African nations or those with an Islamic origin. It has devised the points-based visa, which rewards "cultural proximity", and has done so claimed Alberto Núñez Feijóo and the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who has said that "Hispanic immigration is not immigration"The offensive raises questions such as what Hispanic heritage entails and how it can impact the demos. That is, what does it mean to be Spanish? Spanish nationalism looks toward the 48 million inhabitants of Spain or the 600 million it claims to include. Hispanic heritageImmigration policies are just the first link in a rumor that hides linguistic and religious reasons behind the product of colonization. Thus, the Spanish intelligentsia is speaking out, as is the case of an academic with a long career in Latin America: the philosopher and educator Gregorio Luri supported Ayuso's approach and, in conversation with ARA, maintains that "Hispanic immigration is not immigration." He says he has lived in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, etc. and that he has "never" felt "foreign," but "much closer than with France." Hispanic identity, with the Castilian cultural and linguistic thread, has consequences, which is why history has placed "in the hands" of Spain "a tool" and it can be "used as a throwing weapon or as a tool to build the future."

"Long live Spain and long live the king." With timpani, trumpets blasting, and eighty soldiers, the swearing-in ceremony of the Spanish flag was held this Saturday in Calonge and Sant Antoni, a municipality governed by a Junts mayor, Jordi Soler. The "Thank you, Mayor" said by the army commander in the province of Girona, Colonel Javier Gómez Yagüe, however, did not refer to Soler. He was referring to Alberto Mas Vilà, a PP councilor and member of the governing team, who was acting mayor this Saturday and the highest civil authority present. He organized the swearing-in ceremony, pulling all the strings to secure permission from the City Council to use the Palau Firal for the occasion, the eve of Hispanic Heritage Day. That's why the City Council seal appeared on the posters announcing the event.

As support for Catalan independence has waned in the polls, the same surveys have detected an increase in the percentage of people who feel as much Catalan as Spanish (43% in the latest poll by the Center for Opinion Studies) and a decrease in those who consider themselves solely Catalan (15.5%). In certain circles, identity and territorial preferences are often linked, especially to support positions in favor of Spanish unity.

Ciudadanos is a party that has disappeared from the institutions, but remains organically alive. Or so it attempts. With the state leadership renewed at the end of last October under the Leadership of Navarrese Carlos Pérez-Nievas, and with the presence of Catalans such as Mariana BoadellaThe orange party was also expected to push through the leadership renewal in Catalonia, which is being run by a management team headed by former MP Joan Garcia. The regional primaries were due to be held in February, and in fact, in January, ARA already explained that there was only one candidate to lead the project in the Principality. Hector Amelló, former MP and councilor of Figueres originally from the Franja de Ponent region. However, the process has been very tortuous, as party sources admit, and so far it has not been possible to ratify it: there has been no vote among members; it has only been ratified by the party's Guarantees Committee. This has been the case because no one else has put themselves forward to challenge him for leadership: the deadline for submitting candidacies opened on Friday and ended this Monday, and once it was confirmed that there were no other candidates, it wasn't even necessary to open the primaries and vote.

The pro-Spanish entity Sociedad Civil Catalana (SCC) is in the midst of a transition process. After the resignation of its president, Elda Mata, at the beginning of MayThe members' meeting took place this Friday, consolidating the financial drain of the entity, which continues to fall in spending and has lost relevance since the post-process. Furthermore, the entity has also undergone a slight shift in management. The new president is a former Socialist who was on Miquel Iceta's list in the 2017 Catalan elections and who has always had a very close profile to the PSC: Álex Ramos, who until now was the organization's vice president. He was elected by 99.1% of the vote to lead a board that will have the jurist and expert in constitutional law Teresa Freixes as vice president. The meeting, held this Friday night, was attended by 103 members.

The Catalan Alliance boasts of being the only pro-independence party and labels other pro-independence forces as "pro-independence." The arrival of people from unionist parties or those who have professed their Spanish nationalism into the party, however, calls this into question. The most significant case is that of Jordi Rierola, the new councilor for Sílvia Orriols's party in Manlleu. Ribeiro, who replaced Roger Saborit in Tuesday's plenary session, is a well-known pro-Spanish nationalist in the town of Osona, according to several residents consulted by this newspaper, who claim he has deleted some "compromising" photographs he had on social media, such as photos of Spanish national team celebrations in his town. "He's changed his tune and now acts like an independentist, when before he was pro-Spanish, but he's always been racist and xenophobic," they assert.

Two of the questions poet Mario Obrero is often asked are: how come you're only 21 (and have six published books) and why a kid from Getafe speaks Galician and Catalan so well. He has no answer to the first—"you should ask my mother," he says—but he does to the second: "I realized a void I had as a Madrilenian and a Spaniard. There's no problem if I eat a pan of bread or an ensaimada or some Padrón peppers, but getting to the point of saying 'good morning' or 'good morning» It seemed like it was a heresy. Coming from such a monolingual background, I discovered that I have accent mallet and this curiously also brought me closer to other languages. Just like Virginia Woolf I demanded my own room centuries ago, because I was interested in my own language because it allowed me to participate in an identity that isn't far from me. After all, I studied at a public school called Concepción Arenal, a Galician feminist school, and the town on the Getafe side is called Parla," she explains in Barcelona, ​​where she presented the poetry collection. Magical times (Beautiful Warsaw) at the Poetry Festival.

The Spanish right and far right have revived what became a weekend habit during the negotiation and processing of the amnesty law. "Here we are, back to Colón," proclaimed the organizers of this Saturday's rally, organized by more than a hundred pro-Espanyol organizations, to demand the resignation of Pedro Sánchez. The PP and Vox joined the rally, which filled the Madrid square—but not overflowed—despite the threat of rain that soaked the attendees as soon as the speeches began. "We must get wet for Spain," they encouraged from the stage, where no party representatives appeared. According to the Spanish government delegation in Madrid, 25,000 people responded to the call. A figure far from the number recorded at the largest rally against the judicial neglect of the Process more than a year and a half ago at the same location. According to the same sources, 100,000 gathered.

Salvador Illa took over this week Christopher Person, the current director general of the Generalitat in PerpignanThe dismissal, which the executive presented as a "personal" decision by Person himself, came after the controversy surrounding his refusal to speak about Northern Catalonia during his appearance before the Parliament. A position that angered the pro-independence groups, who demanded his dismissal. This has been the first fire with the independence movement that Isla has had to put out. But the president's balancing act with the independence movement has been a constant since taking over the reins of the Generalitat: he has been direct with the Catalan language—not without criticism from the pro-independence groups—but has left in standby Issues that seek to bring the political conflict back to the forefront.

First it was in Catalonia, but now the Spanish-speaking organizations that fight Catalan in schools are expanding their borders and are operating in both the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands. The latest chapter has been the consultation about the language in the Valencian Country, in which Escuela de Todos was seen appearing before the Valencian Ombudsman. Last Monday, it was made public that the platform of entities born in Catalonia to defend Spanish in schools had reported 78 Valencian town councils to the regional ombudsman for "violating the rules of institutional neutrality by publicly requesting families choose Valencian as the primary language of education." Eight of these town councils are PP-affiliated—such as Xàbia and Sueca—two of them in coalition with Vox. According to the organization, they did not find any council that requested a vote for Spanish.

There are no parties more openly opposed to the Catalan Countries than the PP and Vox. Especially belligerent in the Valencian Region, where they even oppose the unity of the Catalan language and the cultural ties between the different territories that speak it, they are the most critical of this concept popularized by the Valencian writer Joan Fuster, which includes Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Northern Catalonia, and the Franja de Ponent. Fate—and some ironic internet users—has meant, however, that precisely the PP and Vox are the only Catalan parties that Google Maps literally locates within the Catalan Countries.

During the independence process, the independence movement relied on the slogan, "Europe is watching us," which gained popularity and was ridiculed by Spanish nationalism. Now, civil Spanish nationalism is also catching on to this European hope, in this case seeking justice to overturn the amnesty in cases of embezzlement and, consequently, prevent the return of exiles—among them former President Carles Puigdemont—who simultaneously have a criminal case open in the Supreme Court. Paradoxically, those who had sanctified the rulings of the Constitutional Court have now lost faith in them because there is a progressive majority.

The far right is experiencing a period of growth at all levels. This is evident in politics, with formations such as Vox or Aliança Catalana as examples in Catalonia and the State. Surveys indicate that young people are its main market niche and communication strategies are often aimed at attracting people in this age group. Now also in the university, with unions such as Estudiants pel Canvi (EPC), which has gone from one to five representatives on the faculty of the University of Barcelona.