Andrés Hinajeros's national identity card is atypical in two ways. First, it's permanent—without an expiration date—having been issued twenty years before he turned 70. Second, it doesn't bear his signature. This is a strange concession from the administration to Hinajeros, who has been paralyzed from strength to mobility in his arms and hands since May 1974, when, as a young man in his twenties, he became a paraplegic. He endured four grueling years of hospitalization during which he confesses his only desire was to die. But he has recovered and today says he feels content with life, to the point that he celebrates both his biological birthday and May 17th—which, as he says, "is the day I was reborn." "I'm happy," he says, "I live with quadriplegia, but I've accepted it." In this second phase of his life, he has married, had a son, and owned an orthopedics shop until his retirement. Retirement has led him to focus on obtaining official recognition of his fingerprint. He complains that banks and notaries do not allow him to use his fingertip to sign documents, offering him only the option of bringing two witnesses or appointing a guardian—requirements that make him feel like "a slave who needs masters," even though each fingerprint is unique. This has happened to him recently when making his will. "Many times they tell me to have my wife come and sign, but I am fully capable and they won't let me be free," he laments. The procedure he requests is simple, and he performs it with the help of his wife or the personal assistant who accompanies him for daily tasks: pressing the pad of his thumb into a small box with a pad moistened with blue ink until it is imprinted, and then stamping the fingerprint onto a sheet of paper. He has complained to several organizations, but always receives a negative response. "They tell me they're doing it to protect me, but the bottom line is that if you have a disability, you cease to be a person. They don't see me, they see my wheelchair." Sources at the Notarial Association justify this by citing Article 195 of the Spanish Notarial Regulations, which states that if a person is unable to sign a document, they can delegate their signature to another person or appoint a witness to verify their identity. Hinarejos finds this argument absurd and points out that the imposition of witnesses represents a loss of privacy and autonomy.

Once a week, seventy preschool and primary school children at the Betània-Patmos school in Barcelona's Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district participate in a midday chess session. This activity has been offered as an extracurricular activity by the school to students from the fourth grade onward since 2011. "Parents really like it because it helps clear their minds and concentrate. But the children are also drawn to it," says Uriel Jiménez, the school's extracurricular coordinator. He adds that this is because the instructors teach chess using a playful methodology. For this reason, he says, it's one of the extracurricular activities with a higher enrollment rate than dropout rate throughout the school year. The Betània-Patmos school is one of 150 educational centers in the metropolitan area where the Catalan Chess School (ECADE) teaches chess. In most schools, chess is offered as an extracurricular activity, although some centers also hold regular classes during school hours and others offer occasional workshops. ECADE was founded in 2022 through the merger of two existing chess schools: the Barcelona Chess School and the Miguel Illescas Chess School. It also functions as an academy, with around 80 children attending afternoon classes at its premises, and as a club, with 40 members. In addition, they organize chess, board game, and strategy camps during Christmas, Easter, and summer breaks. In total, they have 38 instructors on staff who teach chess to 4,000 students each year.

The year was 1008. Ermengol, Count of Urgell, was putting his life in order by making his will. And one of the belongings he decided to give to a convent was a pair of chess pieces. For a long time, this was considered the oldest text mentioning chess in Europe, although years later, some Latin texts on chess would be found in the Benedictine Abbey of Einsiedeln, Switzerland, which could be some 50 years older. Be that as it may, the will shows that chess had already arrived in the territories of present-day Catalonia from Arab lands. A thousand-year-old tradition. And a centuries-old federation.

It is not usual for an internationally renowned personality such as Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion and expert in artificial intelligence, to give a lecture in Barcelona open to the public. That is why this Monday afternoon at the Montjuïc venue of Fira de Barcelona, ​​​​where the Talent Arena organized by Mobile World Capital is being held within the framework of the MWC, not a single step could be taken. Hundreds of people have come to listen to the guru and his presentation. The nexus of human creativity and machine intelligence, in which an optimistic message predominated: "They are not replacing us, they are promoting us!".