<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - Identity]]> 10 <![CDATA[10 things I love and hate about being from Palma, apart from San Sebastián]]>

Being from Palma doesn't It's not easy at all. The worst part is that I spent half my life I used to think that being from Palma was the easiest thing in the world behind closed doors and the most complicated outside (if your world is Mallorca, of course). Until, luckily, a moment came when I grew up and, above all, started surrounding myself with people who weren't from Palma. Then they showed me that 1) I was living in a parallel reality, and 2) Being from Palma is only easy if you never leave Palma.

]]> <![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[Everything that doesn't move, breaks]]> In the spring of 2022, I had the opportunity to interview Oriol Junqueras. He had been released from prison just under a year before. I began the interview by addressing the division among pro-independence individuals and groups concerned with preserving the unique identity of Catalan culture. Junqueras suddenly alerted me: in Europe, discussing identity issues is frowned upon, especially now with the rise of the far right and the fear that we are regressing to the situation before the Second World War.

]]> <![CDATA[New men, women of the same old]]> Perhaps one of the defining features of the 21st-century human experience is the discomfort many people feel (or we feel) in relation to our bodies and the anxieties that arise in the realm of identity. It is the "sufficiency of having a name, / the filth of having skin, / the filth of a womb struggling / with all the children they will not have," as Maria Sevilla says to Pulp teeth, and which rests on centuries of virtually unquestioned cisheteropatriarchal system, extremely rigid gender norms and a paradigm that has only just begun to change in decades.

]]> <![CDATA[Christmas is impersonated using AI to commit investment scams]]>

Former tennis player Rafel Nadal warned this Tuesday about the use of his image and voice generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) on some platforms to carry out misleading advertising or financial investment proposals.

]]> <![CDATA[Of days and diads]]> On September 12th, the Consell de Mallorca celebrated "its" national day. Once again, the institutions have changed the official date on which they prescribe we should celebrate our Mallorcan identity. However, beyond the debate on the historical basis of the chosen anniversary or its observance by the population, in this article I would like to discuss the major problem that not having deep-rooted, agreed-upon symbols poses for us as a people. I mean, this is not "just" a problem for historians; it's also a political problem. I say "political" because it affects how we regulate our society, and I say "problem" because, on the one hand, without symbols, there is no space for all members of a political community to meet. There are no minimum emotional elements that keep us united. This makes any differences insurmountable. And, on the other hand, without symbols, it's impossible to articulate any movement that appeals to this people, since this is embodied in the will to be, which, in turn, is supported by the different elements that individuals consider to represent them as a collective.

]]> <![CDATA[The islanders who hid Catalan from their children]]>

In the 1960s, some islanders were hid by their parents. This is the case of 60-year-old inquero Jaume Payeras Alzina. "My three siblings and I were spoken to in Spanish as children. Both my father and mother are very Mallorcan. The decision not to teach us Catalan was largely his own doing. He came from a shoemaking industrial family and thought that Spanish was more dignified. My mother, who was the daughter of a dentist, was a bit strange, but not at that time. It was a matter of social status."

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