It cannot be said of Antoni Gaudí that he would have imagined in his dreams that, a century after his death, the Pope would come expressly from Rome to bless the tallest tower of the Sagrada Família. Because if Gaudí had one thing, it was that he dreamed big. Very big, the biggest, what they told him seemed impossible, to be exact. As in the first reading, Gaudí saw "a new heaven and a new earth." Today there is no temple in the contemporary world that can be compared to the Sagrada Família. And for this reason, today, at the foot of his tomb, all the authorities have gathered, the Catalan, the Spanish, and the Roman ones, led by the Holy Father who kneels there and lights a lamp. It has been a hundred years since he was buried under the title of the architect of God.

The tower of Jesus of the Sagrada Família and Catalonia are blessed as a beacon of Christianity. Pope Leo XIV, predominantly using Catalan in his homily and blessing, crowned Antoni Gaudí's masterpiece this Wednesday with the blessing of the tower of Jesus, coinciding with the centenary of the death of the "architect of God," as the pontiff defined him.

What impact will the Pope's visit leave? Undoubtedly, Leo XIV, from his position as head of state and religious leader, has impacted political and civic life. Both the right and the left have wanted to claim him. But his clear discourse of a purely social nature, in favor of welcoming immigrants, peace, and an economy at the service of people, and therefore antithetical to Trumpism and the Catalan and Spanish far-right, has especially given a boost to Pedro Sánchez's party.

This country has extraordinary strength. I feel it as I solemnly watch Pope Leo XIV advance down the main nave of the Sagrada Familia, whose cross he will bless shortly before the cameras that will send the signal to all corners of the world.

The visit of Pope Leo XIV to Madrid and Catalonia has turned public television into Vatican TV. And not only because of the hours they are dedicating to covering the event, but because of a treatment more akin to catechists than journalists, dragged uncritically by the show. The level of inflammation became grotesque in the pontiff's meeting with the diocesan community of Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu. Any religious act practiced en masse in a stadium (it also applies to Barcelona's Lluís Companys) is of a disturbing industrialism that exposes the most fragile gears. The supposed recollection becomes a cathartic act of indoctrination through offerings of dubious results. In Madrid, the production brought the camera to the throat of David Bustamante, who sang with ecstatic shrieks that caused bewilderment. The most regrettable came with a kind of football choreography narrated by Manolo Lama and Paco González with a traditional passion that caused secondhand embarrassment. Through a ridiculous metaphor, they sang the supposed goals of the Church: “An open parish! Perfect attendance against loneliness! Goal! Goal! Goal! Goooal! [...] Next play, Paquito! Full dining room! No one asks where it comes from! They welcome you with a smile and make you feel at home! [...] Impeccable finish! Goal against inequality!” It is a disturbing infantilism.At Montjuïc it was not much different. The only thing that marked cultural differences were the Castellers de Vilafranca, with a tower so far from the Pope that the visual and emotional impact of this tradition was lost.It is understandable that the visit to Montserrat, perfectly carried out, was as it was. It is what befits the institution and television is limited to showing it. But the television wrapping of Tot es mou, with views of the Sagrada Família, was cloying. At TV3, broadcasts have forgotten the non-believing spectator or one disconnected from the Church. An audience, incidentally, for whom they have left few alternatives. On Wednesday morning, Helena Garcia Melero's program, imbued with a kind of celestial spirit, gradually lost its tone until it deflated. Public television should not force this transcendence. That is the job of the Church, not journalists. Even the program's team seemed dressed to go to a baptism. Melero, moved and excited, interviewed some experts with a discourse more suited to evangelization and indoctrination than to the desire to disseminate to the general public. They subjected us to an intensive and soporific course in catechism, but also very revealing. "The person who is visiting Catalonia and Barcelona, who need it so much these days, is precisely Jesus," they even told us. The banality and emptiness of the messages, typical of the most basic self-help, connect only with those who are already convinced. For the rest, good luck. There's less to go.

“You can connect to Movistar Papa2, Movistar Papa3, or Montserrat Wifi,” a journalist from Regió 7 explains to me. It's almost eleven, all the faithful who have managed to get a spot, after the paperwork, to see the Pope in Montserrat have been in their assigned place for hours. Cordoned off – if you'll allow me the strong word that has been used, all these days of red tape – by fences in different enclosures. We, the reporters, are in a press room, in the majordomo's building, with an imposing balcony overlooking the square, with the mountain in the background. Impossible to maintain atheism here.

The Pope has reserved the two small-format, more intimate events for the second and last day of his visit to Barcelona to meet with vulnerable groups. In the morning, he met with about eighty inmates at the Brians 1 prison, in Sant Esteve Sesrovires, before heading to the monastery of Montserrat. In the afternoon, he chose the modest church of Sant Agustí, in the heart of Barcelona's Raval, on his way to the central event of the blessing of the Sagrada Família's tower of Jesus. It was, therefore, a day marked, on the one hand, by two great symbols of Catalan spirituality and, on the other, by two points where current social problems are felt.

In Montserrat, the spiritual heart of Catalonia, Saint Ignatius of Loyola examined his sins to begin leading a life in God's service, abandoning the sword that had always accompanied him as a knight. With this reference and commending himself to La Moreneta, Pope Leo XIV made a strong plea for peace this Wednesday in a turbulent world. "May hatred give way to hope and peace," he stated from inside the basilica after the rosary prayer presided over by himself. But he also had a message in favor of immigration when he finished his speech: "Thank you, Catalonia, for having welcomed so many people from other countries, because you teach how to integrate everyone into a single family," he said from the outside, in line with what he had defended on Tuesday at the Lluís Companys Stadium.

In this chapter we talk about Primavera Sound and the most recent 'Papa Sound'. "And is this news?" is the question we often see in the comments of news about gossip magazines and pop culture. And, obviously, they are not news that occupy the front pages of newspapers, but they are issues that we often discuss with friends or family around a table or at the bar counter. And this is what we do in this podcast: move to a venue to review some social chronicle news that serve not only to keep up with the most outstanding gossip, but also to talk about love, friendship or breakups.

Miriam Nogueras, from Junts, took advantage of the greeting, as a politician, to the Pope, to urge him to use Catalan in the events at the Sagrada Família. Then, Gabriel Rufián, from Esquerra, sent a tweet, in Spanish, which said: “Turra is coming. An absolutely bland and content-free event will fill the digital media and Catalan media circuit for days. Trivial but effective nationalism. Then to vote with PP and Vox, of course. Pure convergent mental hijacking”. And here comes the spokesperson for the Popular Party in Parliament, Juan Fernández, “has attacked the independence movement for demanding that the pontiff defend Catalan and has blamed it for the «failure of linguistic policies»" (the independence movement, not the Pope, poor man).

With that gift of opportunity that has always characterized him, Adif has made an offering to the Holy Father of a gift that allows him to grasp the reality of Catalan land as soon as he steps off the plane. Exactly at the same time that Leo XIV was landing at El Prat airport, an incident at Adif's Traffic Control Center in Barcelona left the entire country without commuter trains: R1, R2, R3, R4, R8, R11, R14, R15, R16, R17, RG1, RL3, RL4, RT1, RT2. The service was interrupted for more than half an hour, until it was gradually recovered. And it fell again. Your Holiness, welcome to Catalonia.

With his unusual address to the Congress of Deputies, Leo XIV, or Robert Prevost, personified one of those paradoxes that define our times: that a supposedly infallible religious leader, who even allows himself to speak out against rights as fragile and evidently noble as euthanasia or abortion, can at the same time be a better defender of democracy than many of the elected representatives who applauded him with the same cynicism with which they carry out their lamentable daily work. The current Pope of Rome said valuable words in Congress, he has said them at different times during his trip to the country called Madrid, and it is foreseeable that he will continue to say them during his stay in Barcelona. Furthermore, he has just published an encyclical in which he positions himself on an issue—abuses of power in the age of artificial intelligence—that will literally determine the future of the world: Leo XIV has not wanted to shirk the duty of speaking out on it, and he has done so with a speech that challenges the powerful far-right groups in the West. That in Spain, and in Catalonia, some solemn patriots call him a woke pope, or a sanchista pope or (these days we will hear it) a Spanish nationalist pope also indicates that he is not mistaken. In Madrid, Leo XIV received enthusiastic and uncritical mass adoration, because it is a city accustomed to living under the customs and ways of Spanish nationalism, and this predisposes favorably towards any pontiff, even if he is progressive. In Barcelona he will find more opposition, but not so much—unfortunately—as a result of the city's progressive tradition, but as a consequence of the patriotic and essentialist mess that pollutes the Catalan public debate and which, precisely, advances by leaps and bounds this far-right against which Prevost positions himself.

Today at half past twelve Pope Leo XIV lands at El Prat airport and begins a stay of 36 hours in our country, packed with events: the crowd at Lluís Companys stadium this afternoon, the symbolism of the climb to Montserrat, the message of meeting with prisoners at Can Brians, and the highlight, tomorrow around 9 pm, of the blessing of the Jesus tower of the Sagrada Família, which for a few weeks has crowned the basilica at 172.5 meters above the city of Barcelona. And on Thursday morning, Leo XIV will depart for the Canary Islands.

At the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, foreign players, the most important in the squad, have long been cheered. Vinícius, Rodrygo, Valverde, and Mbappé arrived in Madrid as professional athletes and, despite some racist episodes inherent in the world of football, the integration of privileged people has never been a major problem. But this Monday at the Bernabéu, a different kind of foreigner was being cheered, those who had to leave their homeland to find "better opportunities".

Pope Leo XIV has not yet set foot in Catalonia and we are already saturated with religious events thanks to an extraordinarily devout television. TVE's La 1 is assuming the broadcast of all ceremonies with unprecedented faith and joy. To top it off, in some television slots (for example, Monday afternoon), it offered triple coverage: La 1, La 2, and the 24h channel in unison offering the same religious content.Beyond the bows and kisses on the hand at the airport, of all the experts praising the Pope with devotion and of the teenagers singing mass songs in front of the public TV microphone, the profile of the parishioner that has been shown to us in the mass events in Madrid stands out. The same way of dressing, with shared color tones, a certain social class, a very similar family style, and medals hanging from the neck that seem mass-produced. In this era of religious fervor that we have to endure and that transcends the Church itself, television shows us a believer of a certain homogeneity in appearance and conduct that distorts the idea of faith and confuses it with status and an ideological temperament.With the Pope's visit to the Congress of Deputies, television showed us another type of uniformity that is very unusual in the broadcasts that normally reach us from there. In recent years, in the hemicycle we have seen shouts, grimaces, aggressive confrontations, contempt, and unpleasant gesticulations that the deputies directed at each other. On Monday morning, beyond the red carpet and the pomp to receive the Vatican authority, in the seat of legislative power we discovered docile and quiet deputies lining up to greet the pontiff. In the hemicycle, all together in their seats, very elegant and polite. Full to the brim, even to the visitors' balconies. In some programs, they even revealed that the authorities had only spent two minutes in the stands to go through the motions. All attentive to the Pope's words and, to conclude the speech, La 1 emphasized that the seven minutes of applause the deputies had dedicated to him were a record for a parliamentary ovation. In times of polarization and maximum political tension, it turns out that the audience, from their homes, observes that the one who holds conciliation power in the State, believe it or not, is the Church. A Church that does not precisely have very democratic values. Not only because of its convictions regarding abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, or equality between men and women, but also because it is an institution that has inflicted much pain with sexual abuse and has remained silent about its crimes. What message does a Pope give to citizens, giving a sermon from the presidential lectern of Congress with all the deputies acting as obedient altar boys? An ultraconservative one, with the Church and faith as the only possible unifier, which does not correspond to that of a non-confessional state nor to the values of a large part of the citizenry.

Pope Leo XIV delivered this Monday in the Congress of Deputies a speech that contains the main message of his visit to Spain, where, as a reminder, in addition to Madrid and Catalonia, he plans to visit the Canary Islands. This message has to do with the drama of immigration and how governments and societies manage it, and it is based on a fundamental principle: the defense of human dignity. "Many men, women, and children are forced, by circumstances often dramatic, to abandon their communities and leave behind their loved ones, stories, and ties. This reality transcends any purely demographic or economic reading: it constitutes an eminently moral and legal issue. Wherever a person is discriminated against because of their national, ethnic, religious, or linguistic origin, or because of their economic or social status, the universal principle of the equal dignity of all human beings is gravely violated," stated the Holy Father.

Admired Rosa Romà, president of the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals, which everyone knows as the Corpo:

At the headquarters of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, in front of all the bishops, who were wearing the zucchetto, Pope Leo XIV called this Monday for decisive action against the "pederasty" perpetrated by priests and religious of the Catholic Church: "Justice and reparation," he summarized. The pontiff defended a zero-tolerance policy against what he described as a "plague." "The ecclesial community is called to respond with listening, truth, justice, reparation, and an ever more determined commitment to prevention and a culture of care," he insisted. In this regard, the Pope also admitted that "hurt people must be able to find sincere listening, warmth, protection, and real paths to healing.

At eight in the morning, twenty PP deputies were already queuing to enter the Congress of Deputies. On days when there is a joint session with the Senate, the hemicycle becomes small and it is difficult to fit. And this Monday, which was a historic day in Madrid, some were afraid of not finding a seat. The Pope's visit is an exceptional mobilization of resources and organization, even for those accustomed to dealing with state and international authorities. To give the reader an idea: while Leo XIV arrived at 10:30 at the Carrera de San Jerónimo, Congress opened its doors at 7:30 so that both parliamentarians and journalists could enter and have the necessary credentials (to reach today, considerable paperwork has been required). In addition, although the press normally moves up and down with some freedom around the hemicycle and the courtyard of Congress, this Monday the place to follow the event had to be chosen: the courtyard to see the arrival accompanied by music; the tribune inside the hemicycle or from the usual press facilities. What's more: at the end of the event, the deputies had to wait a few minutes inside the plenary until the Pope's entourage dispersed and they could circulate normally.

In his essay The artistic and religious vision of Gaudí –in Quaderns Crema–, Francesc Pujols maintains that the Sagrada Família is, in reality, the tomb of Catholicism. Pujols writes: “Instead of being [Gaudí] the builder of the first cathedral of the True Religion, he had the misfortune of being the builder who began, without finishing it, the last cathedral of the greatest of false religions, and even sadder for a Catalanist like him who loved Catalonia so much, the builder of the last temple of the religion of the Jews, he, who could have been the builder of the first temple of the religion of the Catalans [...]”. When he speaks of the True Religion, thus, in capital letters, Pujols refers to this Catalan religion, or that of the Catalans, of which he himself is the founder, publicist and, if necessary, prophet. It is simultaneous and parallel to Catalan science, which Pujols also made known, with identical enthusiasm.Pujols found parallels between the Sagrada Família and the Carlist Wars, and between Gaudí and the feared General Cabrera. Even more: Pujols claims to have heard Gaudí say that the distance separating classical art from Gothic or Romantic art is the same as that from Aeschylus' Orestes to Shakespeare's Hamlet. What Shakespeare would have done with Hamlet was not to create a new character, but to deform an ancient one. Gaudí, with the Sagrada Família, would have achieved a syncretic prodigy that fuses Hellenic art with Baroque, and with Gothic, and even (I quote Pujols) "with the great architectural conceptions of India, to which Gaudí did not want to have any kind of kinship, despite having it, because, as the universal genius he was, he not only had relatives everywhere and at all times, but he inherited them, accumulating inheritances and bringing them to the streets of Barcelona". Dalí said that the best that could be written about Gaudí had already been written, and it was Pujols' text.Perhaps Leo XIV and his entourage should take into account the observations of Francesc Pujols, who also prophesied that the day will come when Catalans, when traveling the world, will have everything paid for. Speaking of paying, papal trips, with their exorbitant cost (this one now amounts to 25 million euros) recall the evangelical passage of the merchants in the temple, when Jesus gets angry.In return, it is clearly better to receive a pope who defends the poor, immigrants, and the helpless than one who aligns with the powerful and exploiters. It is good to receive a brave pope who issues an encyclical against technofascism instead of a calculating and cynical one who would favor it or remain neutral. It is good to receive an anti-Trump and anti-MAGA pope who, when in Spain, does not hesitate to stand before Congress to make a proclamation in favor of democracy and against the far-right. Such a pope is not so far, depending on how you look at it, from Pujols' True Religion. And it contributes to the Sagrada Família being the tomb, not of Catholicism, but perhaps of national Catholicism and its ideological heirs.