The same morning that her loyal aide from the start of the legislature –María Jesús Montero– handed over the baton to her successor –Carlos Cuerpo–, Pedro Sánchez met with Imanol Pradales to satisfy the demands that the PNB has been making for some time and to inject some oxygen into the legislature through advances in the Gernika Statute. "As you know, the Statute is still not fully complied with. There is a political agreement, and we have insisted on the need to do so quickly," the lehendakari stated upon leaving. The meeting, accompanied by a new meeting of the State-Euskadi Cooperation Bilateral Commission, comes exactly two months after the last meeting and fulfills the requirement to be held before Holy Week. On that occasion, despite having secured the transfer of five powers, Pradales left frustrated with the "non-compliance" of the Spanish government. But now he returns to Bilbao "reasonably satisfied" after having signed a "political agreement" for the transfer of seven new matters. The transfer of pensions, among other things, remains pending. The most significant thing is that the door has been opened for the Basque Country to participate in the management of airports "for the first time in history".

Spain doesn't just have a problem with regional funding. It has a problem with its model. And as long as the fundamental debate continues to be avoided, any reform will be just another band-aid on a structure that has been showing cracks for years.

"After what happened in Scotland and the United Kingdom, the Catalan Process continues and moves forward. We feel strengthened by the good example of a European democracy that has allowed voting. This is the way forward." These were the words of Artur Mas in November 2014, a few days after the November 9th referendum, the prelude to the referendum that Carles Puigdemont would lead three years later. Since then, and throughout the peak years of the Process, Catalonia has repeatedly reflected the Scottish case. Eleven years after that moment, the reality of the country and the issues occupying the Catalan political agenda distance him from the man who was a role model.

The words of Podemos leader Ione Belarra in the ARA His opposition to the transfer of immigration powers because he believes the Mossos d'Esquadra would carry out "racist raids based on ethnic profiling" has provoked criticism from several pro-independence leaders, but also from the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa. "I will not allow anyone to question the professionalism of the Mossos d'Esquadra," he stated in a message to X. Hours earlier, the Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, had also replied to the leader of Podemos, who demanded that she apologize for "inciting hate crimes" against the Mossos d'Esquadra, saying in statements to TV3: "However, Belarra maintained her initial statements and stated that Isla "does not know the country and the reality that she governs," pointing to institutional racism.

I have decided to leave teaching after approximately 27 years of dedication to it. This decision stems from a deep reflection on my career as a student and teacher.

Once again, recent education headlines have raised the serious problem of student proficiency in Catalonia. Specifically, the math level in sixth grade is the lowest in history, and the difficulties in English in fourth year of compulsory secondary education, although Catalan seems to be on the rise. The Generalitat (Catalan government) also makes headlines by announcing the implementation of additional measures to improve students' science proficiency. Among other measures, it aims to expand teacher training in science teaching to improve the quality of teaching. But what is the cause of the problem of students' low proficiency? It is surely multifactorial. Investing in additional measures means that what has been done so far is not enough. That these measures include teaching methods to help teachers improve their proficiency also presupposes that they are not doing well. This is debatable, because these same teachers have been validated by the same administration that now proposes teaching them more method. However, no one proposes a different perspective that would allow us to turn things around. If the problem is knowledge, why reinforce teaching methods? Here I go. The key to all this is the lack of reflection on content due to an over-emphasis on skills. The logic of skills, this idea of what content is for, this obsession with know-how, ends up being detrimental to knowledge—not all knowledge, but the most important things for being able to navigate in a world where intelligence has been hijacked by machines. What's the point of knowing how to perform an internet search without knowing if what we've found is correct because we lack the knowledge? The difficulty today is figuring out what fundamental knowledge must be acquired to navigate socially without being fooled. The children really enjoyed one activity, but what did they learn? It's not about raising competent children, capable of applying knowledge, but rather educated, cultured children, curious to know things—not precisely the things that circulate on the networks, but those that have shaped culture. Instead of teaching how to use AI from the outset, we should be taught the background of AI, how it was invented, who invented it, how it was invented, and, above all, why. Instead of teaching English by playing a video game, we should teach the English that Virginia Woolf wrote. Precisely because it has no application, none at all, other than to make English say things we wouldn't have imagined in other languages.

A good friend, a teacher, sent me one of the math questions from the basic skills tests. These tests are given in the fourth year of compulsory secondary education to assess whether students have "achieved" the minimum knowledge required for their age. One of the questions begins with this statement: "Mario is 7 years old. On Saturday at 9:00 p.m., his parents detected that he had a fever. Since then, they have taken his temperature several times. The following graph shows the times they did so and the temperature obtained."

The Catalan Institute of Statistics (Idescat) has just published "demographic projections" for the next decade in the form of three scenarios (it also makes projections up to 2074, but I don't find them interesting).

Now it turns out that not only the AVE (High Speed Train) is radial. The Cercanías (Commuter Trains) also have a departure and arrival point at km 0 of Puerta del Sol, if we take into account the refusal of Renfe's workers' unions to comply with the transfer agreement between the Generalitat (Catalan Government) and the State. This is yet another example of the defense of a Jacobin model of public service disguised as a demand for social rights that have never been in question. The Spain of the autonomous state does not resonate with the polycentric mentality that prevails in other composite states or in the EU itself. The centripetal drive of the political and economic elites of Spain with a Castilian-Andalusian matrix, and the definitive consolidation of Madrid, do not allow even Barcelona to be the Frankfurt or Milan of Spain. The dream of many federalists is buried, as is the tacit pact referred to by Antoni de Capmany in the Cortes of Cádiz, whereby Castile had to conduct politics while Catalonia was allowed to conduct business.