Writer Sofia Andrukhovych (Ukraine, 1982) continues to try, despite the war, to write from Kyiv. These days she is in Barcelona to talk about memory, trauma, and creation in times of conflict at the Biennial of Thought, and to present The story of Romana and Uliana. Amadoca (Salamandra), translated into Spanish by Olga Korobenko. Originally conceived in three interconnected parts (the story of Romana, the story of Uliana, and the story of Sofia), the Spanish edition includes only the first two books. Through family memories and intense love stories, the author, daughter of the writer Yuri Andrukhovych, covers the Stalinist repression, the Holocaust, and the war in the Donbas.

I acknowledge that it is contradictory to go cover for work the Biennial of Thought debate about why we live only to work, especially at half past eight in the evening, the time to put the kids to sleep or meet up with friends. But the fact is that two of the young essayists who have thought most about work, the philosopher Juan Evaristo Valls Boix and the journalist Anna Pacheco, were debating this Wednesday about the dangers of identifying with your trade, the trap of personal fulfillment, how work structures our lives and colonizes all spaces, and how it conditions our physical and mental health, but does not always improve our status. I was going for a friend, ahem.

"Challenging the narrative of the far right". This was the title of the debate organized on Thursday by the Biennal de Pensament and the CRÍTIC School of Thought, at the former La Model prison. It is clear that the public is not indifferent to everything surrounding this issue: the venue was at full capacity with more than 200 people, and about thirty attendees—mostly young people—were left outside.

Architect Rafael Moneo spent ten very important years of his academic life at the UPC, and has built some of his most outstanding works in Barcelona, such as L'Illa Diagonal and L'Auditori. The esteem his Catalan colleagues hold for him is also profound, as could be seen in the full house at the presentation of the ambitious intellectual biography of Moneo, the work of fellow architect Carmen Díez, at the Pati de les Dones of the CCCB, within the Biennial of Thought. The editor of Acantilado, Sandra Ollo, pointed out that the event was not the presentation of Rafael Moneo, Building Ideas (1954-2024), but the "celebration" of the book. The list of established architects who did not want to miss it is also striking. Among the public were Beth Galí, Esteve Bonell, Elías Torres, Ramon Sanabria, Francesc Pernas, Lluís Domènech Girbau, Juli Capella, Jaume Bach and Joan Busquets. Also the filmmaker Poldo Pomés, author of a documentary about the Navarrese architect.

Angélica Liddell does not want to be buried, but devoured: "If I die right now, throw me out so they can quarter me and eat me," she said this evening in the conversation that closed the first day of the Biennial of Thought. "I would like to be a victim of cannibalism. Deep down, eroticism has a lot of cannibalism in it. That nothing would be left to bury, that it would remain in stomachs, that it would pass into the blood, into the cells," added Liddell, who spoke with writer Luna Miguel to present her first novel, Silk Road (Malas Tierras), and the poetry collection I ask for the end of life (La bella Varsovia). If not, she would like to end up in the Montparnasse cemetery, where she visits references like Marguerite Duras, Samuel Beckett, Baudelaire, and Cioran, "with a tombstone that says nothing." "Although it doesn't matter: even if my name is on it, no one will know who I am," she lets slip.

"What can we do? How can we act? How do we invite action?" These are some of the questions asked during the presentation of the Biennial of Thought, which for ten years now—this being its fifth edition—has turned Barcelona's public squares into a place for debate and reflection. In an increasingly dark world, ideas are more welcome than ever, and this year the reflections do not aim to be nostalgic or apocalyptic, but rather aspire to focus on the present with the motto "Unleashing the present".