The brain of Jeanette Winterson (Manchester, 1959) is so privileged that he is able to connect the stories of Arabian Nights with the dangers of artificial intelligence, the importance of libraries, and a still-valid lesson from psychoanalysis. "Without imagination there is no future," he argues from one of the rooms at the Open University of Catalonia, shortly before receiving his doctorate. honorary cause Throughout her career—everything we have built and all the solutions to overcome obstacles have come from the imagination. The most important thing we can offer young people is the superpower of imagination.” We must “protect, honor, and respect it,” just as Aladdin does with the magic lamp he finds inside a cave, which is the starting point of the author’s new book.Written on the body (1994) and Why be happy when you could be something normal? (2011).

After a very sudden peak, the curve flattens and normalizes. This is the behavior of teleworking in Catalonia, a work modality that has become established in our country and is now stable after the strong boost caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. This is reflected in the Skills and Occupations Barometer A report presented this Tuesday by the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and the Catalan employers' association Pimec focuses on this new way of organizing work. The report analyzes more than two million job vacancies published between 2018 and 2024 and shows that, although in-person work remains the norm, remote work—especially in a hybrid format—is a structural element of the Catalan labor market. Even so, only 10% of the job offers filtered by this study offer the possibility of working remotely. According to the data collected by this research, teleworking went from appearing in 0.9% of job vacancies in 2019 to 10.2% in 2024, after reaching a peak of 12.9% in 2022. This growth has been driven by other factors such as improvements in high-speed internet, the need for a better work-life balance, and the demand to reduce commuting to avoid deficiencies in public transportation. For workers, the fact that companies are offering this option is increasingly common. "The trend is towards a hybrid model," explains Paula Pedro, a researcher at the UOC's Labor Market Research and Analysis Unit. The combination of in-person and remote work is gaining ground on the 100% remote format, which has already fallen slightly below 8%. However, hybrid teleworking still lags behind, appearing in about 4% of job openings. While the percentage of companies that do not allow working from home is decreasing, it remains higher – above 4%. Another conclusion of the barometer is that the option to telework is a Barcelona privilege. Of all the job openings that mention this modality, 92.3% are concentrated in the Barcelona area. In this region, 12.3% of job offers allow remote work; while in Lleida only 1.6% facilitate it; in Girona, 1.7%; And in Tarragona, 2.8%. "It's a matter of the productive sector, but also of mobility difficulties. Deficiencies in public transport contribute to a greater demand for teleworking days," argued the Secretary General of Pimec, Josep Ginesta, during the presentation of the report.

One of the outstanding issues facing the Catalan education system is the shortage of teachers in certain disciplines in Catalonia's secondary schools. To address this, the decision was made six years ago. allowing one to enter to teach in a high school even if one did not have the teaching master's degree that qualifies one to practice. Of course, with the commitment to remove it. This measure allowed the pool of temporary teachers to be swelled, but all this has resulted in teachers now having been teaching for years without having obtained a master's degree. Last year, the previous Government closed the tap on this practice and established that, in order to continue in the teacher pool, After three years you had to be enrolled in the master's degreeThis has led to the demand for the enabling master's degree, that was already high, has grown even further.