On November 19, 1957, Albert Camus took up his pen to write to the man who had been his primary school teacher, Louis Germain. A few weeks earlier, the writer had been informed of the awarding of the Nobel Prize. Camus reveals to his teacher and friend: “When I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you”. Camus also reminds his teacher of the debt of gratitude he owes him: “Without you, without that affectionate hand you reached out to the poor boy that I was, without your teaching and your example, none of this would have happened”.The relationship with his teacher is captured by Camus in his autobiographical novel The First Man. The writer, coming from a family of Menorcan descent, was born in 1913 in Algeria, in a very humble context. Germain knew how to see in that child exceptional qualities and did everything in his power for him to obtain a scholarship to study at the lyceum. So much so that the teacher visited his mother and grandmother, with whom Albert lived –his father had died in the First World War–, to convince them to allow him to continue studying. His mother and grandmother counted on Albert starting to work, which was by no means trivial given the poverty in which they lived. Germain achieved both things: that Camus passed the tests and won the scholarship, and that the family accepted that he enter the lyceum, which he did when he was about to turn eleven years old.Camus, Mr. Germain, and The First Man came to mind while thinking about the serious –very serious– problem we have with education. This school year has started with a strike, and nothing indicates that the conflict will be resolved in the short term. Beyond the confrontation between teachers and professors and the Generalitat, however, and the possible agreements they may reach, the underlying problem, that of quality –in the global, integral sense–, will take a long time to be resolved, assuming it is ever achieved.We have all had teachers and professors for whom we feel enormous affection and gratitude. The quote by Camus that I wanted to include above explains, or comes close to explaining, why we remember them this way. The writer expresses to his teacher his gratitude for the learning he received from him and also for his "example". Teachers must teach, and they must teach well. But those who remain in our memory are those who, in addition, manage to connect and be admired, to move us beyond the subject matter they deal with. There are teaching professionals who have this extraordinary capacity, this gift, to reach their students.

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?