A.J. Alfafara is 47 years old and has a life rebuilt on the ashes of a past that civil law refuses to bury. Although she hasn't heard from her husband in over a decade, the Philippine state still considers her his wife. This activist encountered the cruelty of the system when trying to buy a home: a routine procedure became a wall when the notary informed her that, without the signature of a man who had been missing for ten years, she had no legal standing to acquire her own roof over her head. Her case is not an anecdote, but a reflection of a legal structure that keeps tens of thousands of women in the Philippines – one of only two countries in the world, along with the Vatican, where divorce is illegal – trapped in marriages that now only exist on the republic's stamped paper.

When Marilyn Monroe died on August 4, 1962, her belongings went to Lee Strasberg, who had been her teacher at the legendary Actor's Studio and had become her confidant. Among the actress's possessions were a handful of manuscripts, letters, and some of her own poems, texts that Monroe often scribbled on hotel stationery wherever she stayed. All these personal writings were first edited in 2010, under the title Fragments" (Spanish edition published by Seix Barral), and they offer a privileged glimpse into the inner world, expressed in the first person, of this actress who was born a century ago, on June 1, 1926. They also give us a lesser-known image of the star: that of the avid reader; that of the actress who feels secure in front of photographers but not when she has to speak with journalists; that of the woman who connects with the progressive political concerns of the time; that of the performer who finds in New York a territory for artistic enrichment at the antipodes of Hollywood glamour.

In 1874, Jules Duruof and his wife got lost while trying to cross the Atlantic in a balloon. At that time, balloons – and airships too – had no maneuverability and were often at the mercy of the wind. They fell into the water, but a fishing boat was able to pick them up. Other aeronautical adventurers were not so lucky. All this led Baldomer Oller, an aeronautics enthusiast born in Calaf and exiled in Paris, to want to devise a device that would allow the balloon to be directed wherever its crew wished, and from this came the patent for the airship Catalunya. But the story of this Catalan exiled in Paris is much more interesting and goes beyond technological entrepreneurship. It is a story of unionism, anarchism, imprisonment and torture, exile and return, with the culmination of a surprising invention that was never built.

I am 56 years old and have three grown children: one 26, one 24, and one 20. Right now, I'm thrilled that it's like this. I like that they've grown up and that I can maintain a different relationship with them; and even though two of them haven't left home yet, I can already do my own thing. It sounds selfish. And it is. On everyone's part. They have immense desires to live their own lives, and so do I. They no longer need me to survive, and I live this absence of vital need with joy. Does this mean we don't want to share together? Absolutely not, but the dependence of small children has faded and has freed us. That sweetness of a child has also gone. But I didn't have children like someone raises bonsais, and that they have grown up seems logical, fantastic, wonderful to me.To begin with, she no longer lives at home and the relationship is a pleasure. From time to time I bribe her with a lunchbox, or by going for a set menu when I don't have time to cook. She has also invited me to dinner at her place a few times. We talk often on the phone or WhatsApp, we see each other, but the terms of our mother-daughter contract have changed. I will always be her mother, but from a different perspective. Freer, more equal, more adult.Is everything ideal? No, of course not. Especially with the two children remaining, because living together is never easy. Obviously we get annoyed. Obviously they would like to leave but they can't yet. Obviously sometimes they are fed up with me and I with them. But we can talk about everything in a different way, and when I get nervous about the chronic mess or whatever, I can tell them one of my favorite phrases: "I'm not scolding you like a mother to a small child anymore, I'm telling you, you who are already an adult." Because I am truly happy with my life, with three adult children. Young, but adults, and I can't help but see advantages. Such as, for example, them actively worrying about me.A great advantage

Not long ago I had a serious personal problem and I explained it to one of my children, and he explained it to his siblings so that they would all know. When I realized it, I felt strange. I imagined them sharing my sadness and conspiring to be attentive, just as I am with them. And what can I tell you, I was moved in an extra-magdalena mode.But the great advantage is that it all catches me in the mature stage, because it makes me live everything in a different way. How to learn that the chickens to be resolved in their lives are above all their own. With me by their side, but their own. My work is done and my role is another: to be there, to accompany them and to allow them to move forward. Yes, I am lucky that menopause has not caught me with teenage children. But, even so, when I see women my age who are facing their children's adolescence, I compare it to when I lived it a few years ago and I think that now they have this superpower. Because maturity is that, and you just have to be aware of it and enjoy it.

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Hidden among the rugged peaks and ancient gorges of eastern Anatolia, in Turkey, lies Dersim – officially known as Tunceli – a land where memory clings like mist to the mountains and where resistance and reverence flow together like the waters of the Munzur River. It is a place where faith is not housed in structures, but is etched in stone, sung through generations, and whispered to the trees. For centuries, the Zaza Alevi communities of Dersim have existed in sacred communion with their environment. Their belief system – Alevism – is not confined by minarets or scriptures. It lives in the murmur of rivers, in the smoke of ritual fires, and in the whisper among the pines. Here, the divine is found in the experience of nature. It is tangible: found in the grain of wood, in the shimmer of a mountain spring, and in the careful steps of goats on the cliffs.

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There are houses that are born from a dream and others that are born from a problem. Can Pizzeta has a bit of a dream, but above all it has a lot of having to overcome real difficulties. In fact, it started with a geometry as real as it was impossible: a triangular plot, narrow and sloped, wedged between the street, a neighboring property, and a stream, on the edge of the Collserola Natural Park. The project did not disguise the constraints, but rather turned them into the very shape of the house. That's why it's triangular, almost like a slice of pizza. And that's why the name suits it so well.

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Where do they go? What do they learn? What do they gain from it? Each person's favorite place – to get lost in, spend time in, work in, or even live in – is explained by intimate and profound reasons. Experiences that, possibly, take root in childhood; others are born from impressions awakened by certain landscapes, silences, mysteries, or subtleties that reveal the reason for an attraction. A person's connection with a space they feel is their own activates an inner pulse. An office where ideas turn into realities, a sea that evokes pirate stories, rocks bathed in colored water, depths and sea distances that revitalize, a street steeped in history, and that first place that sparked a vocation that became much more than a profession: these are six life stories shared by well-known personalities from the country, revealing the extent to which the place they return to is important to them, the lessons they draw from it when they are there, and what they take with them simply for being there.Lluís Llach, singer-songwriter

“I am from here and I have it very clear”

“This is where I learned to swim with my mother”, recalls the singer-songwriter Lluís Llach. With towels in a basket, that woman ahead of her time – she had studied to be a teacher during the Republic and, at a time when almost no one had a car, she even knew how to drive – often accompanied her son to the beach of l’Estartit, with the Medes Islands in the background. A corner of the Empordà coast with a sea full of pirate stories that fueled the outings of that child and where he would continue to go, also, as an adolescent. His friends beat him at swimming, but he always surpassed them underwater. “I knew how to relax submerged, which is very important”, he assures. With his father, on the other hand, he didn't come as much. “He was a doctor and couldn't afford to go to the beach”, comments Llach as he admires this “curious” place that appears before his eyes as a “living horizon” of geometries and contrasts.

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Dear Regi, I should be angry, envious, and resentful of you for many reasons. Your book Les calces al sol (La campana) and my Un cor de neu (La Magrana) were released together in September 2022, and yours, slowly but surely, succeeded, and mine, well, it didn't. And this is despite yours being the first book you published, not like me who has published a few. On top of that, you're quite a bit younger than me. And a good person. And talented and wonderful and hardworking and persistent. And stylish! According to the manual for a good follower of the patriarchal cliché, I should choke every time I read something about you. But the opposite happens to me.

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Zara has done it again. Without any shame or embarrassment, it has strolled through the supermarket of social struggles, underground cultures, and symbolic identities with its cart wide open: a bit of marginality to give it pedigree, some uncomfortable figure of those who were a nuisance in life, and, above all, a good dose of rebellion. That's right: all nicely domesticated. Everything, passed through the quick boil of fast fashion, shrink-wrapped and ready to be consumed in the form of a prefabricated identity. And this time, who got to enter the shredder of turbocapitalism? Camarón de la Isla.And this in the full Camarón year, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the birth of the iconic cantaor, a figure who was not only an exceptional voice of flamenco, but also one of its great renovators. From La leyenda del tiempo, he opened the genre to new sounds and sensibilities, and moved it from an almost fossilized space to a living territory in tension with the present. But, furthermore, he contributed to overflowing the social image of gypsy culture beyond the cliché to which it had been subjected during Francoism, trapped between folklorism and marginality. Together with key figures like Paco de Lucía, he broadened the imaginaries around gypsy identity, both from within and in its public projection.

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An omnipresent element in Rosalía's concert is a large white canvas that serves as the backdrop for the stage, as if it were stretched over a wooden frame. It is the reverse of an immense cloth, as if you were seeing the back of an imposing painting. With a Palau Sant Jordi still with its lights on and the audience filling the stands in a hurry, the back of this canvas patiently awaits the start of the show until, when everything goes dark, it opens in half, as if we were entering the interior of the work of art. It is a way of telling us that what we are seeing is not just a musical performance, but also an artistic process that will unfold before us. It is much more than a concert, it is a total work of art, in motion, full of life, of references, and in constant evolution and transformation. Rosalía is the artist who completes her work during the two hours of the show.

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“Salvador Espriu Castelló, writer, single, sixty years old, a native of Santa Coloma de Farners [...]. He declares that he in no way wishes to be buried in the cemetery of Arenys de Mar. He further declares his express wish that his body be cremated, if the laws permit”. These are verbatim words, handwritten by Salvador Espriu in what is a document of last wishes, a draft of a will, written at some point between the summer of 1973 and that of 1974 – he was born on July 10, 1913 –, drafted in Spanish – the law did not provide for any other option – and addressed to his great friend and lawyer Josep Ferrer i Rius.

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A sign that says "Welcome to the Gross Happiness CountryIt welcomes you to Paro International Airport in Bhutan. Next to it is a large portrait of the king and queen and a sign reminding you that smoking is prohibited throughout the country and that the speed limit is 50 kilometers per hour.

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In recent days, the image of Chinese actress Zhang Jingyi on the red carpet at the Beijing International Film Festival has spread like wildfire across social media and various trending outlets. The actress puts on the photocall Dressed in an elegant black dress. So far, nothing out of the ordinary. The reason for the viral video is something else: in her hand she's carrying a simple yellow plastic bag, the kind used for grocery shopping or taking out the trash at home.

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In the early afternoon, the Hikawa Bridge transforms into a small, impromptu film set. A group of young women, dressed in soft-hued kimonos, take photographs while laughing and trying to capture with their eyes the gentle rain of petals falling on the river. Below them, small boats glide calmly along the Shingashi River, amidst white and pink freckles floating on the surface. On the banks, cherry blossoms create an ephemeral tunnel, making Kawagoe a living postcard of Japan's most evocative side.

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In one of the approximately one hundred thousand WhatsApp groups of friends I belong to (and which have so many women, especially those in their later years), we spent quite a while discussing an Instagram post announcing that youth is no longer an age, but an energy. The headline is brilliant, and at first glance, I bought it wholeheartedly. I myself am fifty-six years old and I feel energetically young. And I think about it every Monday, because I like to start the week with a little madness: going to the gym for the seven o'clock weightlifting class. I've always been told I have a lot of energy, and as you can see, it hasn't diminished with age. My hands hurt more (osteoarthritis), I complain from time to time about my hip (that's the trochanteric bursitis trying to come back), I need a mouthguard to avoid straining my jaw at night, I take five hundred supplements to prevent it... However, I feel full of life. And I told myself that perhaps the post was right, and I do belong to what they now call the new young, he midlife expanding.

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Behind the stone walls of the Pedralbes Monastery, countless generations of women have lived for seven centuries. Each corridor holds many stories, not only of prayer and introspective silence, but also of struggles, conspiracies, survival, and creativity. It is a rare and ancient place because neither the confiscations of church property, nor revolutions, nor dictatorships, nor even the voracious appetite for real estate, have been able to swallow it up. Those who entered were required to take vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, but for a long time it was a space where patriarchal power could be transcended. This year it celebrates its 700th anniversary with exhibitions, panel discussions, and the revelation of many of the secrets hidden within the tombs of a queen and the ladies who accompanied her. We invite you to explore all the spaces of the monastery through the lives of seven women, some powerful, others very humble.

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His father and grandfather were pilots, and from a young age, he experienced a passion for aviation at home. Over the years, his fascination with airplanes became a vocation; he became a pilot, and now, with more than twenty years of experience soaring through the skies, he tries to help people overcome their fear of flying. He does this from his Instagram account where she has thousands of followers and has just published a book –Fly without fear (Planet) – where he compiles practical advice and the best tricks he's learned to overcome the anxiety many people feel when boarding a plane.

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I recently experienced a shocking situation with a fellow panelist on a television talk show. A woman had come into the studio and explained that she belongs to an association of mothers with children with disabilities. I was surprised that it was an association only for mothers, and during a break, I approached her to find out why. When this colleague realized my intentions, he uttered an ironic, "Go ahead and harass her," which left me speechless.

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Last week, actor Ryan Gosling, famous for his role as Ken in Barbie, was a guest at The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to promote his new film. The interview paused when Gosling mentioned that it was his wife's birthday that day and that she was there at the television studios. The host and the actor wanted to surprise actress Eva Mendes, who was discreetly waiting for her husband in the guest room. An assistant escorted her to the set, and a band was brought out to play for her. Happy birthday With all the fanfare. Eva Mendes, who hasn't participated in film projects since marrying Gosling, was very grateful and affectionate with her partner. The next day, the American media rushed to retrieve the image and announced in headlines something they found unusual: it had been more than ten years since the couple had appeared together in public, not even at red carpet events. Of course, preserving the privacy of the family and their two daughters must be a major reason for this decision. It's a way of trying to protect the marriage and the children as much as possible from the pitfalls of fame. But Hollywood, no matter how many feminist Barbies it creates, hasn't changed that much. The film industry really likes to manage the public's desires. After all, it's an industry that thrives on illusions and the ability to fascinate. Great seducers have always had to appear available to the public, even if only symbolically. It's not that their real lives have to be hidden, but they prefer not to project their own personalities onto the greats. sex symbols The emotional and affective responsibilities of a father committed to domestic routines.

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Those of us who are a bit older will remember one of the iconic couples of the nineties: Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr. A relationship that is being revisited these days, with a marked hyperglycemia, by the Disney+ series Love StoryShe worked at Calvin Klein, the brand that best embodied the minimalist spirit of the late 20th century, in tune with the moderation and introspection imposed by the economic crisis of the time. He was the heir to one of the most powerful surnames in American politics, with an almost mythical allure that opened doors for him, but also forced him to constantly prove his worth.

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