At a time when armed conflicts dominate the news, it's important to remember that children are also aware of them and interested in what's happening in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere, and all that stems from it: the violence and death, the hunger and poverty, the power and vulnerability, the disrupted daily lives, and the fear. We can avoid these topics altogether, or we can find sensitive ways to address them, and literature can be one of those paths. This was the starting point of the 10th Publishing-Education Symposium, held on October 28th at the Faculty of Education and Psychology of the University of Girona, with the participation of Pablo Larraguibel, editor at Ekaré, and Blanca Andelic, a technician from the Pla de l'Estany-Banyoles Social Welfare Consortium.

In a context of military escalation and in a world that hasn't seen so many armed conflicts since World War II, how can we talk about peace and war in schools? Toni Álvarez, a special education teacher and member of Demilitarize Education and CGT Ensenyament, proposes listening, dialogue, and denunciation for an education for peace and global justice, but also advocates addressing conflict. Although more and more time is being given to students' small, personal conflicts, he believes we focus on relationships with others and the question is how this affects the community, thus recovering the concept of security. "We understand security through weapons, through armies, and, in the end, what gives us security is having a roof over our heads, having food to eat, being surrounded by those we love, being able to relate harmoniously, and resolving conflicts through listening and dialogue," says Álvarez.

2024 was the year with the most active wars in the last twelve years and the year with the most displaced people in history. These are the conclusions of the Alert 2025 report! These are high-intensity wars, meaning they cause more than a thousand deaths per year. Furthermore, there are 116 tension scenarios, contexts in which armed conflict could easily break out, a figure that is the highest since 2010.

Military spending is the typical topic exploited by the commentators of the day—that is, those who must make a comment anywhere and under any circumstance—to criticize anti-militarists and, above all, to accuse the belief that we can live in a world without armies and in peace as naive. However, for now, the only thing that is certain is that we live in a world with armies that is not at peace. A world under the permanent threat of world war, with conflicts breaking out in different parts of the planet. A world that suffers from stratospheric social inequalities and allocates an equally disproportionate amount of money to so-called defense services that only defend the interests of egomaniacs incompetent in diplomacy. Democratically elected megalomaniacs, some more than others, who receive the votes, paradoxically, of those who will suffer the most from the consequences of their policies and who will be the jailers of their own prisons. We live in a land that constantly revolves around the same mistakes without resolving them and falls again and again, as if it were an inevitable physical fact. A land full of graves of lives that were full and have suddenly been emptied by these weapons and bombs that we must buy and must have to defend ourselves against our enemies. A defense that must also be acquired under threat, because if you don't buy it, they coerce you into not buying it. From the outset, they already put the gun to your chest. It can't be said that they aren't consistent. But that's what security is all about: constantly threatening you. So the question is obvious: What should we really defend ourselves against? Are we safe in a world where bombs don't fall on us directly but we see them annihilating other human beings? Will we be much more at ease if we rearm and allocate taxes to camouflage uniforms and supersonic aircraft, which are equally susceptible to being shot down but will die killing? Who do we want to enrich the most, apart from the corrupt? Who, as always, is benefiting from so much killing, so much destruction, and so much threat? Is it really naive to start standing up to all this? Maybe it's impossible to do, but isn't that what everyone should really be thinking?

Ukraine's rare earths could be the key to unlocking a future peace agreement, following the agreement signed this week by the Donald Trump administration and Volodymyr Zelensky's administration. The United States' hunger for these metals and other critical minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and tantalum, is at the heart of its involvement in the war in Ukraine, but also the reason why Donald Trump is threatening to annex Greenland and Canada. But the United States is not the only power immersed in the rush for critical minerals. The European Union has also defined as a strategic priority "achieving a secure and sustainable supply chain" for 34 critical raw materials, which include these and other minerals. essential for green technology and digital, but also, and now more than ever, for the growing military industry.

This Sunday's dossier is dedicated to rare earths. We've talked a lot about this these past few days, because the United States and Ukraine have finally signed an agreement to exploit them. These critical materials are now the new oil, and the global race to control them has begun. Let's review the conflicts around the world caused precisely by these materials, from Africa to Greenland. We'll also explain exactly what materials we're talking about from a geological perspective and what they're used for.