What should we do about death? We experience it intensely. It's a constant presence in the news. Ukraine, Gaza... and closer to home. It has a tragic face—wars and climate disasters—and an everyday face—old age, illness. It will come to us all. It's something natural, intertwined with the mystery of life. I ponder this as, having moved past the noise of the millennium celebrations, I climb Montserrat, where this three-way connection—nature, life, and death—becomes even more apparent. A thousand years of history, of intertwined human stories, as if we were passing the torch, with the whimsical and imposing rock formations as witnesses.

The creature writing this must confess that she is left-wing and arrhythmic. An atypical variant of those of us who use our left hand like an existential mouse. We have no sense of rhythm. And this makes it difficult for us to dance, to follow feet, fingers, and even neurons. It's okay: it's not contagious. I can listen to music, although it doesn't make me get up from my chair. Right now I'm listening to Rosalía's latest album and I've sent her a WhatsApp To God.

The Montserrat Abbey's invitation to King Felipe VI to participate in a millennium event sparked protests and unrest among the independence movement and Catholic Catalans. The visit, that occurred After the Royal House expressed that it wanted to take part, according to some voices consulted by this newspaper, it represents a further step in a political shift by Montserrat aligned with thestatus quo, while others, like the abbey, flatly deny it. Has there been a shift?

The king visits Catalonia. Does he want forgiveness? No. His speech of October 3, 2017, would do so again. The unity of Spain was in danger. The referendum had violated the Constitution. The rest—the beating of half of Catalonia that went to vote enthusiastically—was a secondary issue. He didn't refer to it then, nor will he refer to it now. But he does want to "normalize" his image in Catalonia. He wants to be the king of all Spaniards, including those Catalans who were once unredeemed.

"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.