We already know what these people want, as we know from Maria del Mar Bonet's great song denouncing fascism, which in these times resonates in our heads too often. Now they want the photograph of a young woman with a hijab to weigh more than an academic record, for prejudice to prevail over merit, and to turn a university graduation into an identity battleground, because that is where they feel most comfortable, stirring up fears even if they are the most unfounded.

I grew up with the beach in front of me. Before I knew almost anything about the world, I already knew how to hold a crab net from my grandfather, how the wet sand clung to my feet (also the varnish) and how the castles we built with my mother and my brother, with a bucket or just with our hands, had minutes counted before the sea took them away. Later came the long summers of adolescence: hours and hours with friends sitting on the sand doing nothing more than chatting, laughing and jumping again from that rock we saw from our house. Mornings, afternoons and evenings. The beach was our natural place. We didn't go there, we lived there.

The Mariantònia Oliver Company has just received the Toni Catany ARA Balears Culture award, but the person it is named after has been paving the way through dance for over three decades, in the Balearics and abroad. Mariantònia Oliver, an essential choreographer and dancer, has turned the body into a language and dance into a tool for thought and social transformation.

I like Joan Cortés because he is an artist who doesn't need to speak loudly to be heard. At a time when art often seems to compete for attention at any cost, he continues to work with discretion, with an honesty that is not a strategy or a pose, but a way of being. Those who know him know that the man and the artist share attributes such as serenity, coherence, neatness, and fidelity to what he believes in.

The linguist Joan Veny i Clar (Campos, 1932) has received the highest academic and civil distinctions. Among other recognitions, he is Doctor Honoris Causa by the universities of Valencia and the Balearic Islands; he has received the Medal of Honor from the Xarxa Vives d’Universitats, the Creu de Sant Jordi, the prize of Honor of Catalan Letters, the Pompeu Fabra prize, the Gold Medal of the Balearic Islands. He is also an Illustrious Son of Campos (where the Infant and Primary school also bears his name). Now that the great work for the Catalan language, the Linguistic Atlas of the Catalan Domain, has been completed, the dialectologist has received the Special ARA Balears prize.

If they don't explain to me what it means, what advantages it has, and what it can mean to live in a large metropolitan area of Palma, right off the bat, I don't want to live there. I don't want to be part of it.

ARCA has publicly clarified that it is not responsible for the ultras having turned the fascist monument of La Feixina into their sentimental altar. And the truth is that it is difficult to decide whether it is more extraordinary that a heritage entity considers it necessary to justify itself or that it states –as it has done in ARA Balears– that “preserving La Feixina has not contributed to it becoming the ‘ultra’ meeting point”. Perhaps the extreme part of the extreme right would continue for centuries and centuries celebrating in front of nothing. I don't see it.

Marga Prohens' Government will create a Baccalaureate of Excellence –a name chosen by themselves, with all the ideological baggage it implies– and will establish a specific institute to gather the “excellent” students there. It is hard to find a more anti-pedagogical initiative. Or worse still, a more profoundly reactionary one.

The history of the art trade in Mallorca cannot be understood without the emergence, at the end of the 19th century, of a society that turned painting into an object of desire and a business capable of moving significant capital. We are talking about the Foment de la Pintura i Escultura, a social entity active in the city between 1876 and 1904, but about which little has been said until now. The restorer of works of art José María Pardo Falcón now reconstructs that collective adventure in the essay-book "La sociedad del Fomento de la Pintura y Escultura. Palma 1876-1904", edited by Ensiola and with a prologue by professor Catalina Cantarellas. The volume will be presented on May 7 at the Quars bookstore, in a conversation between the author and Cantarellas herself.

40 years ago, the Balearic Parliament approved the Law of Linguistic Normalization. Forty years later, while it is true that the situation of Catalan as the native and co-official language of the Islands has not been normalized, it is also true that too often abnormality is accompanied by apocalyptic diagnoses. There are reasons for concern: Catalan is losing presence in many areas and young people, especially in informal relationships, are increasingly communicating in Spanish. However, if we only look at the glass half empty, we fail to see a part of the reality that is equally significant.

It has always been said that chocolates are a safe gift, that they never fail, that everyone likes them and that they are not very compromising. Except, of course, when inside the box there are not chocolates but banknotes. Then it is no longer a detail, it is a declaration of intentions. And quite vintage, by the way.

“Some people say it is possible to become truly Spanish if one makes an effort. Others, on the contrary, think that to be truly Spanish one must have been born Spanish. Which of these opinions do you agree with more?”.