After a weekend of diverse popular emotions (the burial of Pope Francis, the Barça wins the Cup in the Seville final and the Montserrat procession), this morning the harsh reality returns in the form of three important decisions.

"The Black Madonna is something for everyone," she says, "whether religious or not." The rack railway carriage we're in, which is now moving to get to Montserrat before ten, is full of journalists. She, in fact, is Montserrat Esteve, the director of the religious program on 3Cat. Signs of the timesThis Montserrat (one of the few Montserrats that exist today) explains to us—to us, because everyone in the car, including the politician Jordi Turull, who sits in the back, already knows—what will happen today at the top of the mountain. "Today they're taking the Virgin out in procession, and it will be one of the three times she has been in procession, the first of the century." They'll take her out on a bayard, and she'll circle the square, near the devotees who've already reserved seats days ago. We arrive with the mountain covered in fog, only the spires visible.