<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - Melcior Comes]]> 10 <![CDATA[The million]]> The endowment of a new literary prize in the Spanish state has caused some controversy. In theory, according to the rules, the books that can be awarded one million euros by Aena have been published the previous year in one of the official languages of the State, although, now that we know who the five finalists were (all will receive 30,000 euros, except the winner, Samanta Schweblin, who will take the million) they are in Spanish. Catalan authors could opt for it, provided that the work has a Spanish translation, since it seems that juries do not necessarily have to know how to read in Catalan, Basque or Galician. I don't know what happens with works written in other official languages that are published in Spanish but not in the same year as their original publication: we can assume that they are no longer eligible for prizes. This enormously hinders any author in Catalan, for example, from ever being able to aspire to this award, even being a finalist is already a pipe dream. In this first call, which could be programmatic, all the books have been in Spanish. When an author wins the Planeta prize, now endowed with a million, they don't really win any prize: they receive an advance on sales, so that if the book sold more than a million copies, money would still have to be added (which I don't think has ever happened…). The Planeta is for an unpublished work, for a typescript that authors submit to the award; but not this new Aena prize, which recognizes a work that is already published, and which, as we can see, has a more literary profile, or more of a personal and 'risky' literature, beyond formulaic novels or more or less successful successful strategies that sell well and tend to feed the publishing business. But the endowment of this prize –so large– is raising a certain controversy, for its nouveau riche character, for the brutal ostentation of power (the company Aena is half public) and for the imbalance, I would like to add, with the finalists, or with what has been done –ignoring them– with other books published in also official languages. It is very likely that none of the current finalists will ever sniff such a sum of money again (not even by winning the Nobel, as Vila-Matas, another finalist, is said to be able to do). Such an award can put an end to a writer's literary career, needless to say: it can professionalize them, if that is what they desire, but it will also draw a spotlight on their work that can be counterproductive, or even unnecessary. Because one thing is to make a living selling books to readers who appreciate you, and another is to be able to retire because an institution – an airport one – has chosen you more for the benefit of its cultural prestige than for yours. And all in a week in which we have learned that a lot of Catalan publishing houses see their survival in danger because it turns out they don't have I don't know what seal that certifies the environmentalism of the paper they print with… And when newspapers publish less serious literary criticism than ever in their history, criticism that should arbitrate taste much better and much sooner than the juries of writers who judge other writers (who will judge them in the future).  

]]> <![CDATA[To die when you want]]>

The obsession with death that exists from certain interpretations of religious creeds and now from the so-called ultra-agenda – more or less stale conservatism – is indeed worrying and revealing. According to Christian religion, we would be told that our life does not belong to us, and therefore it is not right to want to die or end it when we sensibly wish. Life is a kind of divine gift, of which we are only custodians, like a wonderful book that is not ours and which we must return more or less intact to the Librarian Above. This may be so, or it could be, but the truth is that we have no certainty that things respond to these parameters. In the end, God does not manifest himself, but priests do. 

]]> <![CDATA[Dining rooms]]> It would not be wrong to say that, in principle, the initiative is worthy of praise… That a web portal wants to inform us about how public money is spent is just another step towards democratic transparency, the one that pushes us not to hide anything about matters that concern us all. We pay taxes so that these satisfy collective needs, but in what way money goes to certain things and not to others is debatable, that is, pure politics. A gentleman may consider that museums are full of irrelevancies, and that money should all go to healthcare and education, and not to things as ethereal as art, be it in a museum or a theatre. It is debatable, but collectively we have decided that public money should also go to things like these: paying musicians at local festivals, the 'capgrossos' (big heads), the 'colles castelleres' (human tower groups), popular culture, and not just the aid received by industry or subsidies to agriculture. Not to mention military spending. Judging who should receive public money, and who should not, is not so simple. Designing a fair tax system is the work of specialists —it is extremely complicated—, not a bar or social media debate. The citizen without much political training or knowledge may feel compelled to be outraged just because they see that they pay taxes, or don't make ends meet, and then a man receives half a million euros for making a film that, moreover, is bad or hardly anyone ends up watching it. Or that the minister in charge goes to see the Oscars live and in person in Los Angeles at the public expense. To the website that seeks to scrutinize all this in the Catalan sphere, they have christened it 'menjòmetre', meaning that there are 'feeders' to which too many people are clinging. The disposition with which these things are to be evaluated is already a form of politics, of course; and above all, it must be known that the objective is not so much to rethink where the money goes as to mock and put—famous—heads on the block. As if discovering that a writer, for example, takes thousands of euros in contracts with the media, or at reading clubs, or in grants for creation, would somehow discredit them. Public media also cost us a whole lot of money, but it's good that they exist (but if you want to rethink their size or expenditure, they already consider you 'right-wing'). Without them, the search for objectivity would be even more complicated, but they also shouldn't be afraid to be transparent with themselves. Very often these figures are published for demagogic purposes, to make the electorate feel that we are governed by manipulators, cronies, and engineers of trickery, but it is not explained that behind these contracts and subsidies there are also families, salaries, jobs, and money that do not disappear into a void, but rather are later transformed into consumption in the economy of all. It seems that money that does not go directly into our pockets is always wasted.   

]]> <![CDATA[Art and parity]]> Following the recent awarding of the prize for best novel of the year, the controversy surrounding the underrepresentation of women in the shortlist of ten nominated novels has resurfaced. Although the winner was a woman, Antònia Carré-Pons, she made sure to point out in her acceptance speech that there were only two novels written by women on the list of ten finalists (which included a novel by the author of this piece). Did it include me, or did it include my novel? Those who seem to have a certain notion of parity are the very juries that compile these lists. If women publish four out of every ten books, at least this proportion should be reflected in the awards and distinctions, unless we are being told that they do a worse job—which we perhaps cannot deduce if they are ultimately the ones honored…

]]> <![CDATA[Foreign women]]>

Men, generally speaking, care very little about feminism. Some are outright opposed, saying that women are exaggerating, or that the grievances and inequalities they claim are no longer justified in an egalitarian and democratic society, or that it's all just a charade to look good or to collect subsidies by playing the victim. Others try to understand it beyond International Women's Day and attempt to bring some sense to a set of demands that, in my opinion, make perfect sense, especially when we see the statistics on domestic and sexual violence, or the glaring economic inequalities. However, it's difficult for a man to feel directly involved in these demands. It's as if the women around us were a foreign country with its own wars, miseries, and injustices, which we can understand, but we're not expected to do more than sympathize from afar and not show ourselves to be too supportive—or complicit—with the oppressors. Even among younger generations, this issue seems to have a bad reputation, as if it were a settled debate, or as if women don't need any help or support, or as if feminism itself creates the problem by highlighting a set of inequalities that should already be invisible. There are also some women who feel more comfortable thinking of the battle as already won, or as unnecessary or awkwardly framed. Or who find the traditionally domestic role of women liberating and wonderful, a promised land lost. However, even if we were to approach the solution from a left-wing perspective, it's often unclear what kind of policies could be implemented.

]]> <![CDATA[Pumps]]> In the extraordinary series Tehran (Apple TV) we see all the horrific machinations the Israelis engage in to overthrow Iran's theocratic regime. The fiction is Israeli, and we might think it's a politically charged message aimed at the Iranian regime or people, exposing the immense failings of their government, which it largely is. But at the same time, what's revealed is the unscrupulousness of Israeli intelligence itself, the Mossad, the way it uses and abuses its agents, and the horrific and tragic excess of its methods to destroy a regime that wants to arm itself not only to dominate the region but also to devastate it.

]]> <![CDATA[Like dogs]]> Perhaps the only thing we can say about the phenomenon therian It's a phenomenon. That people go out dressed as animals, that they identify with them to the point of confusing their personality with that of a beast, or that they go around on all fours making animalistic noises, is no small matter. But that it's being discussed all over the world as if it were something to be concerned about, or a danger, or a sign of collective madness, or yet another piece of evidence that we live in 'the decline of the West,' is even more revealing.

]]> <![CDATA[Artificial fiction]]> Things seem to be moving very fast. In the field of AI, the devastating impact of technology on employment is becoming increasingly apparent, especially among the tech companies' own workers. It's within the companies that are driving AI development that AI itself is usurping the jobs of programmers, who realize that what they were helping to create was a competitor that would do the same thing they do, but much faster, better, and cheaper. I don't know what might happen to these professionals, although we know that certain technical profiles are highly sought after within tech companies. But all the experts are predicting it, some apocalyptic, others fully integrated into a system they now lament not knowing how to rein in: AI will be a revolution that will turn everything upside down.

]]> <![CDATA[Bad Rabbit]]>

Obviously, the worst part hasn't been the music, but the reactions it's provoked. Bad Bunny sings in Spanish at the Super Bowl, and Spanish nationalism is choking on its own drool, all because this happened right in front of Trump.

]]> <![CDATA[Prohibition]]> The idea that access to social networks should be restricted to those over sixteen years of age, as is being discussed in our country, or as is already being legislated in other countries in the area, raises a whole set of questions about why these tools have come to be considered so harmful, or whether what should be done is to regulate their content and not their users.

]]> <![CDATA[American]]> "I believe in America!" said the gravedigger Bonasera in Vito Corleone at the beginning ofThe Godfather (both in the novel and the film). However, the scene seemed to suggest that America, the United States, had disappointed this man; its justice system had failed him when it hadn't been able to punish his daughter's attackers. That's why he was now asking the head of the Mafia family to deliver 'justice,' to punish the violent young men because the legal system hadn't been able to (one of the young men was from a 'good family').

]]> <![CDATA[In Praise of the Baton]]> Movistar premiered a series about the repressive state police. It's called Riot police And it's quite good; Rodrigo Sorogoyen is a very good director and screenwriter; with this series, he did an excellent job. He portrayed a whole group of individuals who work for the Spanish state security forces and who, when necessary, must put down their batons and attend to whomever the command tells them to. These men weren't extraordinary: they were fallible, weak, sometimes exhibiting all the tendencies of that 'toxic masculinity' that the director had already portrayed in other works of fiction. But thanks to the cinematic vision, you connected with them, you ended up liking them, and you followed the hypothetical story of their corruptibility; ultimately, it validated Hannah Arendt's idea of ​​the 'banality of evil,' which perhaps wasn't applicable to the Nazis, but certainly to 'democratic' security forces that simply enforce the law without asking too many questions, however much this might mean infuriating the public.

]]> <![CDATA[In a bikini]]> For the past few weeks, social network X has had new interaction options. There's a form of artificial intelligence that can search for information about what's posted there, telling you if it's factual or not, or helping users provide context or question the veracity of what's being said. But the algorithm also has another application: undressing young women.

]]> <![CDATA[Automatic]]> When I was a child, ATMs arrived at banks. The idea was to make it so fun and simple that they even installed one for children—they called it the Diver Caixer—so you could keep a savings account and deposit money, even 100-peseta coins, just like in a piggy bank on the street. And the ATM (which was a Sa Nostra brand) gave you trading cards, in addition to updating your passbook. It's also true that there was talk back then—in the mid-nineties—that ATMs would take jobs away from human bank tellers. But at the same time, people were already starting to talk about how the jobs lost in the banking sector (and there were mass early retirements in those years…) would be gained in the field of IT, which, obviously, was filled by younger generations.

]]> <![CDATA[Ecce moneyot]]> Things got so bad that Christ was called Ecce MonoBecause it had an obvious, round, ape-like face. I'm talking about the Christ of Borja, Zaragoza, which went viral around 2012 because of a botched restoration that resulted in that round, incomprehensible, vaguely Munchi-esque face, which made the person responsible for the botched job a worldwide celebrity.

]]> <![CDATA[Enlisted]]> During these Christmas and New Year's days, the media tends to fill itself with lists: the books of the year, the films of the year, the exhibitions of the year, and so on. It's as if, suddenly, when we find ourselves at the end of the year, it's time to take stock, or even somehow 'clean house,' because these lists not only highlight some things, but also silence or forget others, causing them to disappear from the assessments, however provisional they may be.

]]> <![CDATA[Psycholeaders]]> There must be something strange about political power when it's so prone to fostering corruption. It would seem that any sensible person is sufficiently aware, or that, given everything we've seen in Spanish, Catalan, and island democracies in recent decades—with imprisoned politicians, investigations, raids, recordings, accounting documents proving bribes, etc.—any reasonably sane person would know that things can go very wrong, and that one can end up not only in prison but also disgraced. And it's not just the history in all political parties that should make everyone more astute, but also the numerous examples provided by fiction, whether based on 'real events' or not, or that form of fiction that international corruption cases ultimately become; for example, when an American politician—or French, or from wherever—ends up in prison because of their malpractice, and now also because of their sexual misconduct.

]]> <![CDATA[Ideology and truth]]> Lately, especially in recent years with the rise of global Trumpism, it has come to seem that facts, simple facts, have become a form of ideology. We have become so confused that stating certain truths now seems like a political option, as if politics didn't have to start from truths, but could even be imposed upon them.

]]> <![CDATA[80,000 of the wing]]> All countries with a degree of culture establish a system of grants for their writers. If we believe in culture, language, and literature, it is considered beneficial to have public funds subsidizing literary creation—a form of patronage that aims to promote excellence, creativity, and art forms that the market may not be able to sustain on its own.

]]> <![CDATA[Fold]]> Many are now wondering what could have happened to cause the rise of right-wing national populism, which is currently jeopardizing the normal functioning of democratic institutions. There are fears that the triumph of these options will lead to an erosion of democracy, the rise of repressive and regressive policies, clearly anti-progressive, like those that propelled Donald Trump, or those currently being implemented in countries such as Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, etc., or, I would add, Cyprus, Scotland, or even Israel.

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