In one of his plays, Camus explains that Saint Demetrius had an appointment with God himself in the steppe one day. On his way, he found a peasant whose cart had got stuck up to the axle in thick mud. He didn't think twice. He rolled up his sleeves and helped him. He had to work hard, but in the end, they managed to free the cart and Saint Demetrius ran to his appointment. But God was no longer there.I have thought a lot about this "he was no longer there". My theologian friends tell me that God was the farmer, but they don't convince me. My experience tells me that I am always late for appointments with God, even if for much less philanthropic reasons than those of Saint Demetrius. But I am not so late that I cannot see some trace of his evanescent presence. Thinking about it, when the mayor of Masnou invited me to give an intervention in public space, I responded by writing on a pedestrian crossing in the town that "The soul is the cage where the dandelion of the bird that has just escaped floats".The place where I most clearly feel the echo of the expanding wave of his presence is in the face of good Christians, of whom there are some, even if they don't care much for marketing. I can assure you: interacting closely with them is one of life's great experiences. It is possible to doubt God's existence. It is within anyone's reach. The Bible is full of doubters and the wary. But in the face of a good Christian, it is difficult not to believe that the light that illuminates their face is vicarious of another, greater light. It has been good Christians who have made me, a very mediocre Christian, understand the meaning of Nietzsche's words in Beyond Good and Evil: “To the homines religiosi one could include among artists as their supreme category.”I met Viqui Molins many years ago, at a bookstore stand on Sant Jordi's Day. I was struck by the number of neglected people, with evident existential wounds, who came to greet her. She knew their names and surnames, the history of their despair. She was interested in their problems with a welcoming and sincere normality. I asked her what exactly she did. "I am a Teresian nun," she told me. I already knew that, but there was something deeper in her than a mere charisma of label. She explained to me that she took care of the bad thief. "It's easy – she clarified – to take care of the good thief. He has stumbled, you help him up and from that moment on he walks straight and grateful; the bad thief, however, takes advantage of you helping him to vomit to steal your wallet." And at that moment I saw the light of her face.

No French filmmaker had dared to adapt a work into a film until now. The foreigner ofAlbert CamusPerhaps out of respect for this seminal work of modern literature, which is articulated from a subjectivity alienated from conventional forms of socialization, a perspective difficult to translate onto the big screen. François Ozon Ozon transports us to French-occupied Algeria through a stylized black and white that helps reconstruct an idealized image from the French imagination of that colonial period. It is within this image, as beautiful as it is false, that his protagonist, Meursault, is inscribed—the young man who destabilizes this appearance of normality when he murders an Arab boy for what he claims is sunstroke.

I discovered Joan Pons almost 35 years ago, with his narrative debut: the meeting of stories Don't believe what they say about me(Columna, 1991). I found it to be a more than promising literary baptism of fire. Since then, I've continued to follow him and have often commented on his work in the media: The Giraffe Maze(Proa, 1999), Single men(Proa, 2001), The Ice House(Bromera, 2009) or Heart disease(Univers, 2022) are some of his most outstanding books, vigorous novels. Pons excels in what could be called moral adventure novelHis stories always appeal to readers, but the underlying theme tends to probe, if not even accuse, us. As if he were the nephew of Baltasar Porcel or Jesús Moncada. He has experience, things to say. That's why I've never been able to explain why he enjoys so little attention. Why he is, in the country's literary scene, an almost invisible author. In 2016, he debuted as a poet with a commendable book: The Island of the Defeated Trees (AdiA). His titles are scattered across many publishing houses, too many. How is it that no publisher has seriously invested in him?