Original in Spanish: 2026-10-04 - En qué ando
A woman covered from head to toe, standing between an archbishop and a cleric who is getting a prize for tolerance. She got nothing. Not even a name.
Seriously.
Tolerance, respect and peace
Lambeth Palace, 11 September 2026. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, gives a Pakistani cleric an award for interfaith reconciliation, and in the middle of the photo stands his wife, in a niqab. She received no award, and nobody, not the press, not Lambeth, says what her name is: Receives prize about tolerance, respect and peace through his wife in niqab. Six days later they withdrew the award. Not because of the photo.
Zeus of strangers
I went to see The Odyssey, by Nolan: almost three hours shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, and his biggest hit ever. It made me think hard about Circe, the witch who turned Ulysses’ sailors into pigs. What I loved most is xenia, the sacred hospitality Zeus protected: whoever knocks at your door gets a bath, food and a seat before you ask who they are, and whoever arrives has to respect the house and not take advantage. Then you look at Ceuta and it feels like nobody here has learned a thing.
Yellow noses
I went to the circus. A circus with no animals and a plot: that was Cirque du Soleil’s whole bet in 1984, and it worked. I love the look of Kurios, the theme, everything: an inventor who breaks time, and out of his machine comes a parade of the strangest characters. I’m keeping my yellow nose.
If this isn’t climate change, it looks a hell of a lot like it
Monday 20 July, half past six in the evening: a downburst wrecks 500 metres of Avinguda del Carrilet, in L’Hospitalet. Trees, streetlights and motorbikes on the ground, and nobody hurt: The L’Hospitalet downburst. On 29 September the same avenue flooded, and this weekend Protecció Civil had all three rain thresholds at maximum at once, for the first time ever: Catalonia’s storms, autumn 2026.
And war, the opposite
Los Javis take a play Lorca left unfinished and stitch it together with three men in 1932, 1937 and 2017: La bola negra. In the middle is Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, Lorca’s last love, who went to the front after Lorca was murdered and died a year later, almost to the day. There’s a cameo by Alana S. Portero.
El transformismo es la fantasía de la posibilidad… Y la guerra, todo lo contrario.
I’m keeping that one: La fantasía de la posibilidad.
I’m fine and all that…