There has always been talk with pride about the library service, especially if we look at the data: 95.9% of the population has a public library service in their municipality. In 2024, the centers received 22.6 million visits, registered 14.9 million loans, and there are already more than 3.3 million citizens with library cards. The other good news has to do with language: there has been a notable increase in the percentage of Catalan loans, which went from 38% in 2021 to 52% in 2024.

We have teachers on strike – and this weekend they are demonstrating – but there is another group (and you will understand me if I say it is quieter) that is also doing so: librarians. In principle, the strike was only in Barcelona, but it has spread throughout Catalonia. They denounce the lack of labor recognition and the consequences of the new agreement.

They first started in the network of Libraries of Barcelona and the Diputació, but now the staff stoppages of the Public Reading System have spread throughout Catalonia. As of this Friday, public libraries in Catalonia will go on an indefinite strike – called by the CGT – which includes stoppages every Friday and Saturday until the labor dispute, which they claim affects the sector, is resolved. They are demanding better working and salary conditions, and denounce a lack of staff, work-life balance problems, and a "precariousness" of the service.

The yellow, the green, and the red are bursting all over the country. The pledge we had to pay this foggy and rainy winter had a reward: the colors are vivid, saturated, and the sun, which is already organizing the first summer drills, makes everything shine as if visitors were to come. With the white background that still holds in the Pyrenees, one has the impression of walking through the awakened and rich country of the poet.

Populism, as we know, is a quagmire, and for that very reason those who play in it often slip. That's what happened to Gabriel Rufián at his rally in Barcelona with Irene Montero and Xavier Domènech when he stated that he prefers “to fill TikToks than libraries”, with the argument that his son “mirrors TikTok”. Measuring public policies based on what relatives do puts us close to Rajoy and his denier cousin.In any case, Rufián's statement (which he must consider valid, as he has neither apologized nor qualified it, despite the understandable discomfort it has caused) is a mess for several reasons. The first is that it poses a false dilemma between public libraries and social networks, a choice that is not presented to anyone from the outset. On the other hand, it is true that many politicians tend to want to burden libraries, or public schools, with responsibilities they should not bear (in Palma, to mention a case right now, PP and Vox want to inspect libraries to see if they find “too many books in Catalan”).Public libraries offer a fundamental service for any society that wants to be advanced and offer equal opportunities to citizens, especially to the children of families who most certainly do not have (because they cannot) books or other means of access to culture and knowledge. They are also excellent spaces for socialization, not virtual, but in person. Their audience is usually local, but not precisely a minority, as demonstrated by the very high numbers of users and loans. Catalonia is a country with a magnificent library network and, therefore, Rufián should know all this. He should also know that what a progressive politician (any politician, but one more so than any other, and without excuse) should do is defend the public library. Not to belittle it because it does not have the audience figures of a social network with an algorithm designed to create addictive behaviors among its users.Perhaps the greatest paradox is that public libraries are one of the most important tools a society has in the fight against fascism, which is what Rufián says he cares about. Public libraries are essential for building critical thinking and more cultured societies, and more cultured means better informed: on the other hand, what is promoted from TikTok and other large social networks is precisely disinformation, or information poisoning. Rufián, I have said it before, is right when he warns that Spanish politics (and this directly affects Catalan politics) is once again clearly confrontational. But it is not clear that the way to stop the anti-democratic front is to play within its field, with its rules and its tools. More libraries, better funded and equipped, and greater recognition and prestige for the people who work there would surely help us more than a thousand viral videos of people challenging each other to idiotic stunts.

Dolors Lamarca, a key figure in the modernization of the Catalan library system with the advent of democracy, died this Wednesday in Barcelona at the age of 82 from pneumonia. Born in Granollers in 1943, she had lived in Castellterçol in recent years. Widowed for decades after the death of Antoni Comas (1931-1981), who in the late post-war period was the first professor of Catalan language and literature at the University of Barcelona, ​​they had three daughters: Eulàlia, Núria, and Mercè. In fact, Comas's premature death at the age of 50 came when Lamarca had assumed the directorship of the new Library Service (1980-1983) within the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia under the first Pujol government, with Max Cahner as minister, where she laid the foundations for the current library system (1981). However, she did not achieve the integration of the Barcelona Provincial Council's network into a global Catalan network.

Jorge Luis Borges, in his Poem of the WomenHe wrote: "I always imagined Paradise would be some kind of library." Now, however, in a must-see documentary on Movistar+, you'll discover that libraries in the United States have become a hellhole, especially those in public schools and colleges.

"It hurts me that no one has contacted me or informed me, and I also don't understand why they want to change the name, because my grandfather hasn't done anything wrong. It's absurd," says Adela Alòs-Moner, librarian and cleaner at the Ramon d'Alòs-Moner Library. Adela laments that the city council wants to change the name of the library that bears her grandfather's name. The residents' association of the Besòs i el Maresme neighborhood in Barcelona also disagrees, having issued a statement expressing their incomprehension: "We do not agree that the Ramon de Alòs-Moner Library should change its name when it is moved to the new building on Alfonso el Magnánimo Street. Rather, we believe that this change is motivated by a unilateral decision on the part of the Sant Martí district and the Memory and Gender Commission," they assert. The name of Ana María Matute came up at a meeting of the Consell de Barris (Neighborhood Council). "We were told this was the proposed name and that the residents hadn't been consulted. We fought hard to make the history known, and in 1970, it was very difficult to name a library after a Republican," says José Manuel López, president of the residents' association.

When World War I broke out, a group of women traveled to France to join the American Committee for Devastated Regions (CARD), founded by Anne Morgan (1873–1952), daughter of banker J.P. Morgan. Among these women was the American librarian Jesse Kit Carson (1876–1959), who revolutionized French libraries amidst the devastation of war. Among many other things, she founded five permanent libraries and created fifty mobile libraries in the north. “She refused to be defeated by the French bureaucracy, where many men were entrenched, sexist, and elitist, and she worked to ensure that libraries had children’s literature sections and open-access systems, both unheard of in France at that time,” explains the writer Janet Skeslien Charles (Conrad, 1971). The librarians on the front linesTranslated into Catalan by Mar Vidal and published by Navona.