10 One year exactly until the end of the term. At the end of March next year, Parliament will be dissolved and elections will be called, and the PProhens-Vox pact will have completed its (first?) cycle.Despite the usual excuses – the fateful previous eight years, the unsupportive state government, the very lengthy preliminary studies...– it is starting to be time to assess the rupture, in case one absurdity has been burying the previous one and now, in Trumpian style, we can only recall the latest massacre.The general stench of the legislature is exasperating. The 2025 budget pact, for example, included the refusal to host immigrant minors from other territories or opposition to the European Green Deal. “Two issues that at no time have been an obstacle to negotiation,” Prohens enthusiastically stressed.The legislature has not been very democratic – neither in dialogue nor social dialogue – nor very scrupulous with procedures, with the abuse of opaque processing, such as amendments to the law on strategic projects, which aim to modify up to 50 laws through the back door. The body of parliamentary lawyers has already unanimously warned about this repeated modus operandi and its possible unconstitutionality.Another attribute of the mandate is the dissonance between the music – freedom, efficiency, streamlining...– and the lyrics: urbanistic amnesty, construction on rustic land, increase in urbanistic development rights, construction in flood-prone areas, privatization of public space...Or between what is said – promoting access to housing, fighting against tourist saturation...– and what is done: failure of secure rental programs and the Anti-squatting Office, refusal to limit rental cars and to increase the eco-tax, permissiveness with illegal tourist rentals...It has also been the legislature of euphemisms. See the emergency glossary: ‘freeing up land’, ‘paving the outskirts’; ‘boosting the economy’, ‘benefiting speculators’; ‘freedom’, ‘privileges of the elites’; ‘simplifying’, ‘eliminating controls and guarantees’; ‘accelerating procedures’, ‘outsourcing the Administration’...The educational legislature has been marked by the fiasco of the pilot plan – a stratagem to inject 21 million euros annually into 19 subsidized centers in exchange for violating the spirit of the linguistic regulations – and by the contradiction between what is said – the improbable creation of 77 new educational centers and an aerostatic ‘City of Arts’ is announced – and what is done – dismantling of IES Politècnic and CEIP Felip Bauçà, 3rd line in CEIP de Pràctiques...The Conselleria has clearly opted for educational privatization: private vocational training, subsidized 0-3 year olds and baccalaureate programs, diversion of students to subsidized schools, new private universities, complicity with employers... And for school segregation with the introduction of a single school zone and points per former student, which secures family privileges, blurs the neighborhood school, attacks equity, and makes equal opportunities impossible.Above all, it will have been a legislature daily enlivened by spectacular – and ghostly – projects: a train to Llucmajor that goes underground through Palma, a train to Alcúdia that pierces two entire mountains, various underground works (Gesa, Plaza Mayor, Paseo Marítimo...), exhibition centers, botanical gardens...Just now a metro line has been announced that will start... in 2029! and that (they say) will cost 230 million euros. Does anyone keep track of so many unrealistic projects? It would be advisable, because it is not until this year that we will have finished paying for the Palma Arena (90 million euros) and the Ibiza highways (2003) will not be fully paid off until 2035!The render is smoking, yes. Reality, however, follows a different pace: maximum tension in the old prison; the Catalina Valls theater closed since 2022; none of the 26 announced parking lots in Palma will begin construction this term; paralysis at the s’Aigo Dolça swimming pools (under construction since 2022), at the Son Forteza bridge, at El Tirador...; two years without collecting the fee from the bars in Parque de la Mar, inability to close the two illegal gas stations in Palma...The situation is getting complicated: 90,000 people on the waiting list in public healthcare, loss of 180 hectares of rustic land annually, project to destroy the west flank of the port of Palma: large repair area, Ibiza waste treatment plant, 10 hectares of new concrete docks...And few qualms in ideological matters: dental tests for immigrant minors, repeal of the memory law, hearing in parliament of ‘National Uprising’ and ‘Crusade of Liberation’, abandonment of people in situations of social emergency, obsession against Catalan (discounts, regressions, bites, exceptions...), 895 healthcare professionals without knowledge of Catalan...I'm starting to feel like moving a bit. Aren't you?

]]> 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.

]]> Secularism is one of the most important achievements of Western democracies. Separating the state and laws from religious beliefs is a fundamental step forward in guaranteeing civil liberties (including freedom of worship) and ensuring internal cohesion and the pluralistic and convivial nature of democratic societies. Governance mixed with religion tends to generate authoritarian or outright totalitarian policies, which amounts to criminal governments. A theocratic state like Iran massacres its population under the direct orders of its clerics, who do not hesitate to label citizens as terrorists deserving of execution. A democracy like Israel, led by ultra-religious and far-right leaders, becomes a corrupt power machine, capable of perpetrating the countless crimes of the Gaza genocide (which, incidentally, continues, even though the media has shifted its focus). The current aspiring global dictator, the delusional Trump, and his shadowy lieutenants (Rubio, Vance, Sedgeth) often invoke God and declare themselves divinely called to a transcendent mission, to justify what are nothing more than abuses of power committed by a gang of thieves who, unfortunately, have access. One of their first victims, another dictator, Maduro, acted similarly, but on a domestic Venezuelan level.

]]> 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.

]]> When the Law of Democratic Memory and Recognition was passed in 2018, we said it was a law that, in and of itself, justified an entire legislative term, because it gave voice to silence and dignity to the names erased from history. Today, as the far-right conglomerate has decided to begin its repeal, strangely, I feel no sadness for the victims, nor for their children or descendants. Their memory is already written in the invisible, on the walls that heard their footsteps. The seed has been planted and has germinated. I feel sorry for my country, which, under the siege of political violence and hatred, has forgotten that democracy is also a form of tenderness.

]]>