10 Although Robert Prevost was elected pope just over a year ago, the public presence of Leo XIV has been a surprise to many. His start was discreet and his demeanor, prudent, very different from the spontaneous and somewhat excessive character of Francis, led many to believe he would be a transitional pontiff who would diminish the political and media weight of the Church. However, after a few months, this perception began to change and, in part, it was thanks to a compatriot of his: Donald Trump.

]]> In the book Four Internets, researchers from the University of Southampton Kieron O’Hara and Wendy Hall analyze the different models we can find today regarding Internet governance. One of the most curious aspects they explain is the use of social networks in China. The first thing that surprises is that there is no direct supervision by the Chinese government on what is published, but rather the users themselves self-regulate. In order to avoid problems, users censor what directly attacks the regime, but also behaviors such as the dissemination of rumors or fake news. On the other hand, it is common to find complaints against the malfunction of public services or against corrupt behavior by local authorities.This internal criticism is not only tolerated, but it is a vital source of information for the Chinese regime. It is well known that one of the main problems of any authoritarian state is the lack of incentives for authorities to highlight and correct problems and dysfunctions. If a local organization has a corrupt leader, the supervisor of the area knows that if they report it, they will have to give multiple explanations that could jeopardize their own position. In the end, it is always much simpler to hide it and transmit an immaculate image of what is happening to the superior authorities, even if it is unreal. But this, repeated over and over again, ends up being the worst nightmare of any ruler: having to make decisions with a false image of the country. The Beijing regime has long known that tolerating criticism in these daily aspects and at the local level is the best antidote to this.This tolerance does not equate to recognizing a full exercise of freedom of expression in the country, but it shows us how social networks have a public function that works both for the regime and for the people. In our environment, this function is not so common, for other reasons, because complaints can go through official channels without many problems. What is indeed, unfortunately, common on our networks, in addition to photos of the neighbor's trip or the video of someone charging their phone with a potato, are rumors, bad news, and a lot of aggressiveness. Contents that are what generate the most profit for the owning companies because, unlike in China, social networks here do not have a public function. They are simply a big business.Both models have some positive aspects, but their orientation is perverse: to maintain the authoritarian regime, in the Chinese case, and to maintain a consumerist and hyper-accelerated society in ours. In the literature on this subject, the European Union has long been discussed as a third model that seeks to prioritize the general interest over the business interest, as it has done, for example, with the protection of personal data, which leads to constant confrontations with large North American tech companies. Despite resistance, the European protective model is gradually consolidating, it is imitated by other countries, and it would be good if it were strengthened in other matters, such as the use of AI. Taking advantage of the fact that May 9th is Europe Day, and seeing how the internal enemies of the EU are becoming increasingly vocal, it is not in vain to remember the values and strengths of our continent and, even, to show a certain pride in it.

]]> “Do not hold me” is the request that Jesus of Nazareth makes to Mary Magdalene, which we can read at the end of the Gospel according to John. It is one of the most captivating and mysterious moments in the entire Bible. Two days after Jesus’ crucifixion, the news of the empty tomb spreads as much among his followers as among his executioners. The death of the Galilean preacher has been extremely cruel. The cross was a Roman torture device meant for enemies of the Empire and a curse for a Jew, to die exposed like a wild beast. The account of Jesus’ Passion is of extreme violence exercised from the most ingrained masculinity. The betrayal of Jesus, the reaction of the followers with the sword, the trial, the mockery and torture, gambling for the tunic with dice... all of it paints a ruthless world in which women are silent witnesses. 

]]> Artificial intelligence is opening up a horizon of possibilities and challenges for many people, while others see it as a threat. Taking this debate seriously involves, first and foremost, trying to understand what this technology is and how it works in order to know what risks it poses and how we can minimize them. This is clearly seen in one of its most attractive uses: its predictive capacity.

]]> It seems like more time has passed, but in 2026 we've only just entered the first quarter of the 21st century. Twenty-five years ago, there was euphoria. Ten years earlier, the Cold War had ended, and there was talk of the Pax Americana and a new world order in which Western values ​​of democracy and human rights would eventually prevail everywhere. But the optimism was short-lived.

]]> The start of a new year is usually accompanied by numerous analyses and predictions about what will happen. In some cases, guessing is easy; in others, the uncertainty is almost absolute, especially regarding things beyond human control, like an earthquake. On the other hand, what depends on our will is easier to predict, and when something is going wrong, it should be avoidable, at least in theory. But not everyone understands this because there are events or processes that depend on our decisions and yet are perceived as inevitable.

]]> For many people, Christmas is a cherished family celebration. For Christians, however, it commemorates the birth of Jesus, but the profound significance of this event—the extraordinary intrusion of God into human time—is often overlooked. Humans live marked by the passage of time, as indicated by nature's cycles of days, months, and years. The biblical tradition breaks with this cyclical view and presents a linear narrative in which God promises his people dominion over other nations. But while in biblical stories God addressed the patriarchs or Moses, over the centuries the Hebrews witnessed God's withdrawal, leaving them alone to face the hostility of other peoples. Christianity continues this history of salvation, yet even today many believers perceive God as a distant and inaccessible being. God is not a "someone," as in the time of Moses, but a "what," an idea or a force that can inspire or encourage us. However, we maintain the idea of ​​the linearity of time in history, although instead of leading us to divine glory, we now think more about technical and social progress. The future depends on us, and God, at most, acts as a spectator.

]]> These days mark the fiftieth anniversary of Franco's death, one of the darkest moments in Spain's recent history because, when you think about it, it's undeniably sad when a dictator dies. Don't misunderstand me: I'm not advocating for the immortality of dictators, but rather the fact that none of them should die as a dictator, or, at the very least, that their death should bring an end to the dictatorship. Because unlike Hitler, Mussolini, or the dictatorships of Portugal or Greece, Franco was never defeated, and for that very reason, we can say that he died undefeated. This circumstance is not merely anecdotal; it has had many implications. The first is that Franco's death never meant the end of the regime. The next day, Spain was still a dictatorship, although this didn't prevent the process toward the democracy we have today. But the end of the dictatorship, which we can date to around 1977 or 1978, didn't imply the disappearance of Francoism either.

]]> On November 1, 1755, two hundred and seventy years ago, Lisbon was nearly wiped off the map by a powerful earthquake. This seismic shock had a significant aftershock in the European intellectual world. No thinker, starting with Rousseau, Kant, or Voltaire, did not speak of this event and its consequences. In the previous century, Leibniz had established that, nevertheless, we lived in the best of all possible worlds, exonerating God from the problem of the existence of evil. But after witnessing the destruction of Lisbon, Leibniz's thesis seemed ridiculous, and some wondered, ironically, if God could not have tried a little harder.

]]> Christianity, the religion that has shaped Western civilization for two millennia, suffered a severe setback a little over five hundred years ago with the Protestant Reformation. In many places, the Reformation was seen as a liberating moment and an affirmation of the value of human conscience, although in others it met with violent reactions. But the Reformation has many shadowy areas, and one of the darkest was the theocratic regime imposed by Calvin in the city of Geneva, brilliantly recounted by Stefan Zweig in his book Castellio vs. Calvin (The Second Periphery, 2025).

]]> A recent book worth reading is Poverty Made in the USA, by American sociologist Matthew Desmond (Capitán Swing, 2024). It paints a well-documented portrait of the problem of poverty in the richest country in the world and proposes some quite imaginative possible solutions, although not always applicable to other places. But, in my opinion, the book's great virtue is its successful attempt to give visibility to a group as numerous as it is hidden: the poor.

]]> Hypocrisy is a common vice that may initially seem harmless; after all, hypocrisy doesn't hurt anyone but themselves. The Puritan glued to a pornographic video is punished in the very act of being exposed. However, it's true that sometimes hypocrisy scandalizes and, therefore, harms others. This is the case with people from whom exemplary behavior is expected. That's why the most reprehensible hypocrisy has always been religious hypocrisy, to which today we could add that of politicians.

]]> In his essay On freedom (1859), John Stuart Mill emphasized the importance of freedom of expression to combat an attitude as widespread as it is pernicious: the belief in the infallibility of the world. Broadly speaking, what Mill meant was that people normally doubt their own opinions, but we have very little trouble accepting what everyone else thinks. For example, most of us wouldn't dare claim that the immigrants we know are troubled people, but we uncritically accept the message that most of them are. Therefore, Mill tells us, it's always important to question even what everyone takes for granted, because the world is not infallible.

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