In relation to a large truck, a moped is small; in relation to a child's tricycle, large. In relation to a luxury car it is cheap; in relation to a bicycle bell, expensive. Etc. To understand why it is so problematic to characterize the notion of political center one must consider the example I have just given. The center seems to be defined in light of two poles that can be extremely opposite in some aspects and that are much more complex than notions like large or small. Furthermore, there is a relevant historical issue. Unlike the concepts of "right" and "left", the political center was not born in the French Revolution. Within the Constituent Assembly there was no explicit “center”, in the modern sense. There were more moderate people and more ardent people, of course, but not a political center. The hemicycle of 1789 only defined, in terms of physical location, the right (defenders of the Ancien Régime, to put it simply) and the left (reformists and revolutionaries, simplifying a bit). The center is a concept that came much later. It emerges when parliamentary systems of the mid-19th and early 20th centuries encounter situations that recommend new spaces for moderation and ideological transaction between confronting ideological blocs, which, out of sheer inertia, prevented any area of consensus.The then-called centre gauche was a key piece of French politics in the late 19th century and is often cited as one of the first parliamentary spaces to explicitly use the label "centre" in a modern sense. Note: it was not a centrist party, but a parliamentary group in the context of the Third Republic. What exactly was this centre gauche around the 1870s and 1880s in France? A grouping formed by moderate republican deputies, heirs of the liberalism of 1830, situated between the centre droit (moderate monarchists, that is, not in favour of reinstating the Ancien Régime) and the radical republicans. To get by, we could say they had a centrist sensibility, but that would be a recursive definition, besides an attempt to dodge the question. Let's be a bit more specific. How did they approach things? They accepted the Republic, but rejected anti-clerical radicalism; they defended a strong executive and a stable Parliament, but not hard Jacobinism; they wanted to reconcile public liberties with social stability and a free market with occasional state interventions. They were not anti-clerical, but they were in favour of limiting the political power of the Church. Here we could easily arrive at a wrong conclusion: they were centrist because they were moderate in relation to the two ideological extremes of that moment.

The growth of the Catalan and Spanish economy is undeniable. And future estimates, despite a slowdown, confirm that we will continue to be the champions of GDP growth. The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, did not fail to mention this during his speech at the annual meeting of the Cercle d'Economia in Barcelona, where he surprised the audience by announcing the steps to present the State budgets for 2027, which sound more like an electoral program than a real possibility.

The writer Llucia Ramis says she is “acollonada” because despite having been able to afford a mortgage for an apartment, after years of going from one rental to another, who knows if one day she won't be able to pay the installment. We thank the writer and the interviewer, Laura Serra, for having contributed to popularizing this Mallorcan way of being “acollonida” in Catalonia and, at the same time, we regret that this opportunity to enrich vocabulary arises from the harsh reality of real estate. Because if anyone wants to read a very well-explained summary of the great contemporary unease that affording a place to live has become, they should read the interview.

Data on the impoverishment of Catalans worsens statistic after statistic, with women, children, and immigrants falling deepest into the pit of social vulnerability. The latest demonstration that macroeconomic recovery has not reached people's pockets comes from the recent report published by ECAS (Catalan Entities for Social Action), which highlights that the social exclusion rate is worsening and now affects nearly one in four people, far above the European average.

Ending the "culture of dependency" and "rewarding a culture of hard work" is one of the proposals in Junts' plan to rebuild the middle class, which it believes is on the verge of disappearing. The party proposed the special plenary session that began this Tuesday, where it outlined a complete overhaul of the current subsidy model, reformulating and significantly limiting the guaranteed minimum income, which was approved in July 2017 by the government led by Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras. This also indirectly represents an amendment to the Spanish minimum living income model. Junts members demand that a "culture of work" prevail in the definition of public policies and, therefore, call for a "reorganization of the system of aid and subsidies." The way to do this is to directly link the guaranteed minimum income to labor market activation, that is, to job seeking. "Benefits for people capable of working should be temporary and linked to training and effective job placement," they emphasize in their proposals. In this regard, they advocate "strengthening active employment policies connected to the productive sector so that aid becomes an instrument of autonomy and not dependency." Thus, coordination between the Catalan Public Employment Service (SOC) and the guaranteed minimum income benefit would become an absolute necessity. This, according to Junts sources, is a "complete change" to move from benefits for barely surviving to a labor-focused approach aimed at guiding people towards "decent work." Junts' idea is that unconditional guaranteed minimum income benefits should be exclusively for people unable to work, such as those with disabilities, while the vast majority should have a work-oriented approach. This proposal is reminiscent of unemployment benefits received when one is entitled to unemployment benefits, although these are the exclusive responsibility of the State.