October. Elections are called in Spain, and in Catalonia, it rains buckets with lightning and thunder and a lot of water and a lot of lightning and thunder. October. Elections are called in Spain, and in Catalonia, it rains buckets with thunder and lightning and a lot of lightning and a lot of thunder and a lot of water and Llarena lifts the arrest warrant for Puigdemont. Not because of the Llarena of the Supreme Court but because of the Constitutional Court and not because of the Constitutional Court but because of the CJEU. The rain continues and the campaign begins before the elections have even been called because the campaign is always underway. The rain has the advantage that, at some point, it stops raining. The campaign, on the other hand, always overwhelms us. Nothing is so much for the country as it is for the survival of the parties. Oh, the parties. For personal survival itself. Oh, the egos. There are those who, without us knowing how, always manage to stay on the surface and not drown. Mazón. There is, above all, a déjà-vu, a kind of stalled commuter train, or a commuter train, it doesn't need the adjective, carrying the same passengers from one election to the next. The motivation has to do with the fear of those who might come and the lack of motivation with the fact that there is no one to excite us. No one told us that voting was easy. They only told us to vote. And they will put up posters and banners as if we were walking down the street today looking up and not looking at our mobile phones, which is what we do with our necks bent. We don't see the clouds. We only turn off the ES-Alert. October. Elections are called in Spain, and in Catalonia, it rains buckets with lightning and thunder. October. It stops raining and a longed-for coolness arrives. So that we don't get too excited, since we are Catalans, they already warn that the coolness is temporary. A taste of autumn. Honey on the lips. I sweat just thinking that the heat of the summer that made us sweat through everything might return.

When mobile phones ring with the strident tone of ES-Alert alarms it is impossible not to hear them, and in these last few days we have heard them often. But when they ring often there is also criticism from citizens who believe they arrive late or, conversely, that they are sent in places where they would not be needed. Now an online game devised by programmer and meteorology enthusiast Xavier Garcia invites you to try it yourself, if you think you would do it better. It is called ES-Alert Simulator and, when you play it, you will put yourself in the shoes of a Civil Protection duty officer in Catalonia during a rain episode.

The defense of the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, has presented a document this Tuesday to the investigating judge, stating that there is no "causal relationship between the deaths that occurred and the actions or omissions attributed to the investigated parties," referring to the decisions made at Cecopi and the delay in sending the ES-Alert. In other words, Mazón attacks the main hypothesis of Judge Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, which is that a large part of the 231 deaths caused by the flood on October 29, 2024, could have been avoided if the population had been warned in advance.

It is the first multi-operator vehicle in the Spanish state and its main function will be for people to receive ES-Alert messages and have coverage in places where telecommunications have been lost due to fires or other emergencies, as in the case of last year's blackout. This is the premise with which the Government launched a new mobile unit this Wednesday, a vehicle prepared to travel to rural environments and act in the face of serious incidents.

Civil Protection will send an ES-Alert message to mobile phones this afternoon in the Alt Empordà, Berguedà, Ripollès, and the northern half of Cerdanya regions due to the risk of strong winds. The event, with gusts that could exceed 140 km/h, will begin at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday and is expected to end at 4:00 p.m. This was confirmed by the Deputy Director of Civil Protection, Imma Solé, who asked residents to avoid travel and outdoor activities in these areas, and to exercise extreme caution. Rough seas, with waves exceeding four meters, are also expected in the Alt and Baix Empordà regions.

The regulars at the bar and those in the WhatsApp group were saying the same thing: that stopping the world today because of the wind was an exaggeration. That it was being done because of the DANA storm and Mazón, and that it would become clear as the hours passed that it hadn't been necessary. We don't know what would have happened if our phone alarms hadn't gone off. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Maybe we really do live in an overprotected society. But today's wind isn't typical, just as the extreme weather events that are coming and for which we aren't prepared aren't typical.