The Guardian

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del periódico incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de diciembre de 2006.

Nota informativa: The Guardian es un diario británico fundado en 1821. Es necesario registrarse para poder acceder a todos sus contenidos y también se puede apoyar su trabajo con una contribución económica.

Bars and restaurants in Barcelona, Spain. Photograph: Kumar Sriskandan/Alamy

Spain’s employment minister and deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz, described the late opening hours of restaurants and bars, earlier this month, as “madness”. “A country that has its restaurants open at one o’clock in the morning is not reasonable”, she said. Hospitality industry figures and conservative politicians responded with outrage. “The deputy prime minister thinks she lives in Sweden instead of Spain”, a furious restaurant owner in Barcelona told El País, pointing out the late sunset in her city. That day, 6 March, the sun set in Stockholm at 5.29pm, and in Barcelona at 6.48pm. In Stockholm, restaurants typically close at 11pm; in Barcelona, restaurants and bars are allowed to open until 2.30am on weekdays, and until 3am at weekends.…  Seguir leyendo »

André Ventura, leader and founder of Chega, in Lisbon, Portugal, 11 March. Photograph: Paulo Spranger/Global Imagens/Atlntico Press/REX/Shutterstock

If the westernmost nation of mainland Europe was once seen as a paragon of sensible governance, it is now set for months or even years of political instability. Neither Portugal’s outgoing Socialists (PS) nor the centre-right Social Democratic party (PSD) were able to garner a majority in Sunday’s elections, ending the night barely one point apart and with a two-seat difference in the Assembleia da República. All eyes are now on the third force, the far-right party Chega (“Enough”), which quadrupled its parliamentarians from 12 to 48. Here is the real headline: an unprecedented victory for the far right in Portugal’s democratic history.…  Seguir leyendo »

Crowds in Paris celebrate the French parliament voting to enshrine the right to abortion into the country’s constitution, 4 March 2024. Photograph: Adnan Farzat/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

There was little doubt that the French parliament would reach a majority on Monday, when it gathered in a special session to enshrine the right to abortion into its constitution. But even so, it was an electric moment. At the Palace of Versailles, big enough to host the 925 MPs and senators eligible to vote, the scene was set to the solemn drumming of the republican guard.

Broadcast live on every news channel and beamed on to a giant screen at the Paris Trocadéro, opposite the Eiffel Tower, French citizens watched as the national assembly’s first female president, Yaël Braun-Pivet, looking calm and focused, walked towards the packed chamber to declare the hearing open.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘Without directly affecting the outcome of an election like it did in Bush v Gore back in 2000, today’s court still could swing a Trump win.’ Photograph: Alon Skuy/Getty Images

On Monday, the US supreme court unanimously overturned the Colorado supreme court’s decision to remove Trump from the Republican primary ballot. The highest court in the land predictably concluded that the “insurrection clause” of the 14th amendment did not authorize state enforcement “with respect to federal offices, especially the presidency”.

A contrary ruling would have been a recipe for chaos, and, worse still, would have done nothing to safeguard the nation from a potential Trump victory in November. I say this because presumably the only states that might have barred Trump from their ballot would have been those of the solidly blue variety – states Trump was going to lose anyway.…  Seguir leyendo »

A pro-Palestinian demonstration outside the EU Commission building in Brussels on 19 February 2024. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Europe is flanked by two grotesque wars involving mass slaughter (Gaza is, after all, just 578km away from Cyprus), waged by far-right fanatics harbouring either imperial or colonial intentions, and for whom war has become inextricably tied up with holding on to political power. One war implicates European security directly; the other is a shot at projecting its voice in the world. On both, the EU must start acting like a foreign policy superpower – not just independent of the US but also capable of nudging its hand.

It’s striking how much images of Gaza and Mariupol look similar. Bombed-out and destroyed, as broken as the bodies of the thousands of civilians killed beneath Russian bombs in one place, and Israeli bombs in the other.…  Seguir leyendo »

Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson watches a military demonstration on 20 February 2024 at Berga naval base. Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 came as a rude awakening for Sweden. Across the country people suddenly realised that national security vulnerabilities were everywhere. The entire public transit rail network in Stockholm, for example, is operated by MTR, a Hong Kong-based company with ties to the Chinese Communist party.

In the event of Stockholm being attacked by foreign forces, most of the detail about critical infrastructure and tunnels running under the city centre – home to the Swedish parliament, the prime minister’s residence, the state department, the royal castle – could be shared with enemies.

“We have to assume that everything MTR knows about tunnels and infrastructure in Stockholm is also known in Beijing”, says Patrik Oksanen, an expert on national security.…  Seguir leyendo »

People lay flowers for Alexei Navalny in St Petersburg, Russia, 17 February 2024. Photograph: Anatoly Maltsev/EPA

Alexei Navalny was one of the first to come out in support of Pussy Riot after our arrest in 2012. His birthday congratulations telegram arrived at my prison faster than anyone else’s. Laughing at enemies, loving life, he was full of vitality. On 16 February, he was killed in the Polar Wolf penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.

The loudest, clearest and brightest voice against Vladimir Putin’s regime has been murdered, despicably, out of sight. Before his murder, he was tortured for three years; a third of this time was spent in solitary confinement without proper food and clothing. Navalny was killed a month before the so-called “elections”.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘Remove the threat of a Russian invasion, and the real argument for European rearmament is that it is necessary to make peace with Russia.’ Photograph: Darko Vojinović/AP

Two years into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, warnings of war between Russia and the west have reached fever pitch in Europe and Britain. The explicit intention of these warnings is to create public support for massive spending on rearmament, on the old principle of “scare the hell out of them”.

The goal of European rearmament is laudable; the arguments being used to bring it about are not. As long as the war in Ukraine continues, there is a real risk that Nato and Russia will stumble into war as the result of some unintended clash. But the chances that this will come about as the result of a premeditated Russian invasion of a Nato country are minimal.…  Seguir leyendo »

A portrait of Alexei Navalny at a monument in Saint Petersburg, Russia, 16 February 2024. Photograph: Reuters

Tyrants and dictators are accustomed to criticism, to being condemned and reviled. The cries of their victims are nothing to them. The curses and tears of families and friends whose loved ones have been taken, jailed, tortured, killed are accepted as a kind of sick, validating tribute to their power, cruelty and inhumanity.

What your average thuggish tyrant simply cannot stand is ridicule. And Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia and indicted, mass-murdering war criminal, is no exception to this unfunny rule. Putin takes himself very seriously indeed. He appears totally lacking in any sense of humour. Self-deprecation is as foreign to him as mercy is to a wolf.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘Candidates loyal to Imran Khan stunned outside observers – and even Pakistan’s political elite – by winning the most seats in last week’s election.’ Photograph: Abdul Majeed/AFP/Getty Images

Since the founding of Pakistan in 1947, not a single prime minister has served the full five-year term. If this fact betokens a country marked by instability and sudden changes in the political mood then last week’s remarkable elections have done little to change that reputation. The electoral analysts were proved wrong, as candidates loyal to the imprisoned former prime minister, Imran Khan, stunned outside observers – and even the country’s political elite – by winning the most seats. One thing can now be predicted with confidence: a new period of political turmoil.

Nearly 60 million people turned out to vote on 8 February.…  Seguir leyendo »

Plainclothes police arrest suspects in Guayaquil, Ecuador, amid surging gang violence in the South American country. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

What happened in Ecuador a few weeks ago, when the country descended into gang violence and TV journalists were seen by millions cowering in front of people pointing high-powered weapons at their heads, was described in many ways. With the benefit of hindsight, though, it can be defined as a “drug coup”. It had never happened in this form, on this scale, anywhere else. It was not comparable to the uprisings that came before. It did not resemble Gen Augosto Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, and it had nothing to do with the rule of the Argentine colonels or the coup in Venezuela in 1992, because it did not aim to take power, or to occupy the government with ministers, or to replace formal control.…  Seguir leyendo »

A protest against the AfD and rightwing extremism in Berlin, Germany, 3 February 2024. Photograph: KM Krause/Rex/Shutterstock

The AfD may have some electoral success. But the protests against it are stronger still

The idea of banning the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party seems to me a lot like magical thinking. Outlaw them – poof, they’re gone! But the case that the entire party (rather than individual statements) represents a clear and present danger to our democracy is far from watertight. Imagine losing! And in some regions of Germany the AfD represents a third of the electorate. Excluding all of them from participating? Not a good idea.

Only a few weeks ago, the prospects for combating the far right looked pretty dismal.…  Seguir leyendo »

Chair of the African Union Azali Assoumani with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni at the Italy-Africa summit in Rome, 29 January 2024. Photograph: Fabio Frustaci/EPA

Not so long ago, Giorgia Meloni was calling for naval blockades along the African coastline and regaling her millions of supporters with white-nationalist conspiracy theories. Now, just over a year into her mandate, Italy’s far-right prime minister has radically sanitised her discourse. Last week, at a summit in Rome, Meloni declared that Europe’s “paternalistic” approach to Africa had failed. From now on, she promised, Italy would be pursuing a “mutually beneficial” cooperation “among equals”, free from the “predatory impositions” of the past.

As a gesture towards this new approach, the government has pledged more than €5.5bn (£4.7bn) to fund energy, education, healthcare and agriculture initiatives in Morocco, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Mozambique, Egypt, the Republic of the Congo and others.…  Seguir leyendo »

A still taken from footage released on 25 January shows what Russian investigators say is the IL-76 crash site in the Belgorod region. Photograph: Russian investigative committee/AFP/Getty

On 24 January, an IL-76 Russian strategic airlifter crashed 44 miles from the Russian city of Belgorod, close to the Ukrainian border. Many questions surround the circumstances of the crash, as well as the identities of those who perished. Russia claims that 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war (PoWs) were on board. Neither Ukraine nor any national or international body have been able to confirm or deny this.

Vladimir Putin has since claimed to have evidence that an American Patriot anti-aircraft missile downed the plane. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian SBU (security service) has opened an investigation into a “violation of the laws and customs of war”.…  Seguir leyendo »

Posters showing candidates in the presidential election in Helsinki, Finland, 17 January 2024. Photograph: Mauri Ratilainen/EPA

In 1905, in the Finnish city of Tampere, Vladimir Lenin met Joseph Stalin for the first time. They and two dozen or so revolutionaries began to map out plans to overthrow the tsar and bring down the Russian empire. The story is vividly chronicled in Tampere’s Lenin Museum, a venue that thousands of Soviet citizens used to descend on each year, in official groups; in these different times, it is seen as something of an embarrassment by the city authorities.

Since the collapse of Soviet communism in 1991, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Finland’s accession to Nato in 2023, the museum has successively changed its exhibits.…  Seguir leyendo »

A protest against the Israeli government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary in Tel Aviv, Israel, July 2023. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

The will of the people expressed in free elections and the rule of law upheld by independent courts are two of the pillars of a liberal democracy, or so we were taught at school. Yet these two core principles keep colliding in increasingly polarised societies from Washington to London, Paris to Berlin and Warsaw to Jerusalem, with populist politicians demanding that “the will of the people” override the constitution, treaties or the separation of powers.

It is vital for the long-term health of democracy that the judges prevail. If politicians are able to break or bend fundamental legal principles to suit the mood of the moment, the future of freedom and human rights is in danger.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘My father is frail, but his determination for the world to learn from the past is as powerful as ever.’ Photograph: Graham Chweidan

My dad is a hero. That’s a term thrown around a lot, and it is not surprising to hear a daughter call their dad a hero. But what makes my dad different is that tens of thousands of other people think my dad, Harry, is a hero too.

Harry Spiro was born in 1929 in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland. He was 10 years old when the Nazis invaded, and it would not be long before he and his family were forced out of their homes and into the first ghetto established by the Nazis in Poland. He is now 94 years old, and he is a Holocaust survivor.…  Seguir leyendo »

People watching an eruption at the Fagradalsfjall volcano 40km west of Reykjavík, Iceland, March 2021. Photograph: Jeremie Richard/AFP/Getty Images

In July 2023, I followed a parade of people to what felt like a carnival on the Reykjanes peninsula, where three eruptions have taken place in the past three years. On the hill overlooking the volcano there was a photoshoot for a skin product, on the other side someone was making a music video and next to them two Chinese women were posing in evening gowns. Another couple had set up a table with a white cloth and were enjoying a romantic dinner. The air was buzzing with drones and helicopters and a leading tourist operator hoped the eruption would last into the autumn so he could offer volcanic northern lights tours.…  Seguir leyendo »

Rubber boots and candles in front of the Brandenburg Gate during a nationwide farmers' strike, in Berlin, Germany, 9 January 2024. Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA

In my local area in rural Brandenburg, every village signpost offers the same harrowing sight: a pair of wellingtons dangling from the metal frame, often marked with a cross sprayed on to the green rubber. The boots started appearing just before Christmas after the German government, a coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals, announced that tax exemptions for farm vehicles and diesel would be scrapped. The boots are supposed to express the farmers’ current campaign of resistance as well as their longstanding grievances. The raw symbolism of the empty boots gets to me every time, no matter how politically wary I am of the protests.…  Seguir leyendo »

Angela Merkel, Jacques Delors and Helmut Kohl with a piece of the Berlin Wall, 2005. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

With two wars raging on its borders, a world retreating from free trade and globalisation, strong migratory pressure on its southern shores, rising rightwing populist movements clamouring for national, not European, solutions and Donald Trump looming on the horizon, Europe is facing an extraordinary set of global challenges.

At the start of an election year that could also propel Eurosceptic nationalists into a strong position in the European parliament, the death of Jacques Delors, the most effective president the European Commission has ever had, reminds us of the era when EU integration made its greatest strides, delivering peace and increased prosperity for hundreds of millions of people.…  Seguir leyendo »