Month: December 2020

Ricardo Gómez has grown, literally, in front of five million viewers on average. The actor, who was seven years old when he first played Carlitos in Cuéntame, appeared weekly for seventeen years in what is already the longest-running series on Spanish television.

The 26-year-old from Madrid confesses that being recognized is something that he has very internalized and that does not weigh on him. “The best thing that can happen to you is that they value your work,” he says. Although there are always some exceptions.

For example, once he was about to go into an operating room for appendicitis surgery, wearing a gown of those that almost left his ass in the air, and one of the hospital workers asked him for a photo. “I didn’t do that one,” he says amused.

“I was very nervous and I told him it was not the time. I remember he told me that his shift was over and that when I woke up he would not be there ”. There are situations, he explains, in which one prefers to go unnoticed,

Contrary to what has happened to other child stars such as Macaulay Culkin or Daniel Radcliffe—

The first has had problems with the courts for possession of drugs and large quantities of drugs, such as Xanax and Clonazepam; and the second confessed that he had problems with alcohol and that he drank to try not to feel uncomfortable when everyone watched him if he went out to have fun –

Ricardo has not suffered the dark face that is usually linked to success when he reaches such a young age . “I have the feeling that people think I have had a terrible time to spend my life filming, and I can understand it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My childhood and adolescence were great. I decided year after year to continue in the series because I was approving everything, I had my friends, I was federated in a soccer team … I had not signed any contract that would oblige me to continue for x years yes or yes.

In 2018 he decided to leave the series where he grew up and trained as an actor with Imanol Arias , Ana Duato and Juan Echanove, among others. It was not an easy decision, but I had been thinking about it for years and taking the step began to become a necessity.

His Goya nomination for his role in 1898: The Last of the Philippines and the support of his closest people helped him to trust his abilities as an actor. “I took it as a sign and showed myself that I was not crazy for thinking that I could do more than the role that had made me popular.”

Since then, the Madrilenian has done theater – Mammón , with Irene Escolar and which has also aired on HBO; Red, with Juan Echanove—, has had a supporting role in the series Vivir sin permission and has starred in several films – El substitute , Where two fit, and Mia and Moi – which will be released in 2021.

“When I left Cuéntame , a world opened to me that I did not know. On the one hand, there are many shadows and fears, to think what will be the next, but it allowed me to live ”, he confesses.

This 2020 fatal for the history of humanity has been one of the most productive years for the interpreter. “It is quite pleasant to stand up in December of this terrible year with so many new projects,” confirms the actor, who believes that the virus passed in March, but that since PCR tests were not done at that time, he is not certain.

“I was like twenty days without taste or smell and feeling terrible. But I had no way of knowing, I locked myself at home, period ”.

After leaving Cuéntame , the natural step for him was to get out of focus; from gathering millions of spectators to settling for 800 people in a theater. Continuing to learn about the tables has allowed him to make mistakes and get the idea that everything has to be perfect the first time.

“When you spend a lot of time with such a large exhibition it weighs down. In the theater things evolve, you are in continuous progress and you feel that what you do you do for yourself and a few. It is a journey to the roots of what this profession is ”.

In Mammón , Ricardo played several characters, and one of them is a transvestite who came on stage half-naked, painted and wearing heels. A stamp that breaks with his work in Cuéntame , but which, he affirms, has not been something premeditated.

“My goal is to participate in projects that fulfill me and with which I can connect, and if they can get away from the character for which I am known, much better. But I don’t need to wear heels to break this. ”

The actor acknowledges that in each new filming set he feels that he has to show that he knows how to do what is asked of him and that the feeling of “absolute fear” of not measuring up when he starts a project is always there. “And I hope to always have it, because it’s what makes you squeeze a little.”

Anxiety, he says, opens a lot of space in this profession in which it is so overwhelming not to work as to work hard, to be part of a project that is only done for money or one that you are passionate about in which the fear of not measuring up leads to blockade. “There is very little room to just be okay.

And telling this is very complicated because what you see of our work is the most beautiful part. I do not want to say that it is the toughest profession in the world, but not everything you see is the only thing “, the actor speaks knowingly, because on many occasions he has been forced to justify all the work behind a series, a movie or a play.

“I’ve heard things like, ‘You don’t do anything but go out there and say four sentences many times.’ What would you say is the most wrong idea they have about you? We asked him. “That my life is resolved, that I am a millionaire and a livelihood,” he answers.

Despite being publicly exposed for as long as he can remember, he has never felt overwhelmed by his circumstances. And when doubts and fears have lurked, he has managed to manage them without any professional help.

“I have ever considered it because I like to talk a lot, but I think that I have not yet had a situation in my life that says ‘it escapes me, I need help.’ Maybe it is not necessary to get there, but hey… Hopefully in a few years we will repeat this interview and I will tell you about my experience in therapy, ”he jokes, while defending the importance of destigmatizing all kinds of psychological help.

Shortly before this interview took place, Ricardo had been in his profession for twenty years. Two decades acting that have allowed him to draw this final reflection: “If I could chat with Ricardo right now who was considering a few years ago to leave Cuéntame to bet on the artistic, I would say:

‘Don’t worry, trust you’. You never don’t know how things are going to go, but to this day I can’t complain ”. And the fact that no filming has been canceled in the middle of the pandemic almost sounds like science fiction.

The Pfizer vaccine that will be administered from Sunday: baptized Comirnaty and at 15.5 euros per dose

The first group to be vaccinated will be the elderly in residences and health personnel

Brussels yesterday gave the green light to the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine against the coronavirus so that it can be administered from Sunday to the first European citizens. On December 27, the vaccination campaign will begin in the different countries.

The Spanish Government confirmed last week the distribution plan, which will take place between Saturday 26 and the early hours of Sunday 27, after Pfizer has ensured that it can deliver the first doses in a matter of hours after having the green light of the European Commission. The first group to be vaccinated will be the elderly in residences and health personnel.

Any pharmaceutical product has a provisional name until shortly before or after receiving authorization. The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine was known by the alphanumeric name BNT 162. Yesterday, the EMA revealed that in Europe the product will be called Comirnaty.

The European Union will pay 15.50 euros per dose of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, according to an internal EU document that Reuters has had access to.

The price, which is confidential and was negotiated for a total of 300 million doses and is slightly less than the $ 19.50 per injection that the United States agreed to pay for a first shipment of 100 million doses of the same vaccine. To achieve immunization, two injections of the product must be administered, so its price per treatment would reach 31 euros.

This amount from Comirnaty is much higher than in the case of AstraZeneca, 2.9 euros per dose (5.8 euros per person), according to the amount advanced by Minister Salvador Illa a few months ago. In the case of Moderna, estimates given by the company and European officials indicate that the cost could amount to slightly less than 21 euros.

Janssen, a company of the Johnson & Johnson group, recently offered an approximate estimate of 8.5 euros in the price of its product, which at the moment is the only single dose, compared to the two injections of the rest. For CureVac, estimates place the amount per dose at 10 euros.

Epic Games is going to give away several games for Christmas and, so that we can take advantage of these dates and the holidays – if we have one – they start offering Cities: Skylines for free, an authentic city management game. Here we tell you how to download Epic Games games for free and keep them forever.

Since its inception, Epic Games has been known for throwing the house out of the window when it comes to making offers and offering free games . The platform of the creators of games such as Fortnite, Gears of War or Unreal Tournament has quite a few shortcomings if we compare it with Steam, but in generosity and good work with developers and users, the truth is that little can be attributed.

These dates there are several companies and platforms that are giving away games , but Epic Games will go to a free game per day, good news for the most gamers because it is always good to get free games.

A few days ago we told you that a list of the games that Epic was going to give away had been leaked , with names like Borderlands 3 , Metal Gear Solid 5 or the impressive Horizon Zero Dawn . In the end, that was a rumor and the list seems to be different.

The first game they have given away is Cities Skylines, a city management game that is the true heir to the fantastic SimCity 2000 and SimCity 3000 from Electronic Arts. However, every day at 17:00 there will be a new game to download .

Here is the list of gifts from Epic Games that we will update every day so you do not miss anything:

December 17 – Cities Skylines
December 18 – Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty
December 19 – The Long Dark
December 20 – Defense Grid: The Awakening
December 21 – Alien Isolation
December 22 – Metro 2033 Redux
December 23 – Tropico 5
December 24 – Inside
December 25 – Darkest Dungeon
December 26 – My time at Portia

And, as I say, the best thing is that if you get the games you keep them forever. You simply have to go to the Epic Games website and download the game client.

Once you have the app on your PC and you have entered (you can do it with the Epic account, but also with the Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation, Apple, Google or Facebook account), you must go to the free games section , where you are notified of which ones are available and when the next gift goes into effect.

In addition to free games, remember that there are aggressive offers in the Epic Store . We leave you the link in case you want to take a look, since, for a first purchase of more than 10 euros, we have the option of claiming a coupon for another 10 euros.

Just a few weeks ago , the documentary Keith Haring: street art boy was premiered in Spain, within the framework of the Barcelona D’Art Festival .

The film is presented as the definitive portrait of an artist with a fulminating career. Because despite his omnipresence, his works barely cover 11 years.

Directed by Ben Anthony, produced by PBS and BBC and narrated by his parents, his closest friends and other artists who knew him, such as Fab 5 Freddy or Lee Quiñones, the feature film uses one of the last interviews that Keith Haring gave as a common thread before dying in 1990 from complications related to AIDS , just 11 months after visiting Spain.

Thirty years after his death, Haring’s artistic legacy lives on fully. His work continues to be very present in fashion, with collections underway in several large chains such as Benetton, Uniqlo or Asos, and in products of all kinds that use his designs, such as skateboards , watches, backpacks, sneakers and even board games. .

Apart from this presence, which could be more or less anecdotal, the thermometer to measure the relevance of an artist continues to be the number of exhibitions of his work that are held globally (whether for artistic or commercial interest) and prices that reach their works in the market.

Haring comes off very well on both counts. In July , one of the most important retrospectives dedicated to him in Europe was closed at the Bozar Museum in Brussels . The show, organized by Tate Liverpool, was a real success, with 180,000 visitors. A new record for the Belgian center despite the harsh impact that the coronavirus has had in that country.

On the other hand, the auction house Sotheby’s continues to sell its works at a very good rate and, almost always, exceeding the prices estimated before the bids. The most important sale that has been made in recent months was a collection of 23 of his drawings with black marker on paper that reached 1.9 million dollars.

We could venture to say that the appeal of Haring’s work comes fundamentally from two aspects. The first would be a fascination for a time and place, the New York 1980s, when, in a crumbling city ravaged by crime and bankruptcy, some of the cultural movements that would mark millions of young people flourished.

During the decades that followed: hip-hop , graffiti, punk and the entire Do it Yourself culture . Haring’s style seems to condense all that maelstrom that he found when he arrived in the city in 1978, simplifying it to the extreme and adding a layer of optimism and energy that over the years will evolve towards something deeper and more assertive.

Keith Haring, in 1987, on a ladder in front of the wall on which he is going to paint his famous mural ‘Crack is Wack’. At his feet, Stern, who was then responsible for parks and gardens in New York, holds an umbrella, wearing a T-shirt with Haring’s drawing.

Keith Haring, in 1987, on a ladder in front of the wall on which he is going to paint his famous mural ‘Crack is Wack’. At his feet, Stern, who was then responsible for parks and gardens in New York, holds an umbrella, wearing a T-shirt with Haring’s drawing.

On the other hand, many of the themes that Haring deals with in his work are, unfortunately, still very topical: racism, homophobia, violence, disease, nuclear danger or war. His images today also manage to draw our attention deeply, making us reflect and act accordingly.

Haring defined his style by painting on the street and especially on empty billboards in the New York subway, where he made thousands of chalk drawings in the late 1970s.

Little by little he was gaining notoriety in the artistic world of the city and in 1980 he exhibited at the Times Square Show , a self-managed alternative art collective, in which his drawings were projected on one of the huge illuminated screens in Times Square.

‘Times Square Spectacolor Animation’ (1982). The projection of one of his drawings on the panels of Times Square, in New York, was one of the first signs of the notoriety that the artist’s work would acquire in the following years.

But while Haring enjoyed his newfound fame, he never stopped worrying about his art reaching as many people as possible. That is why in 1986 he created the Pop Shop , a store that sold clothing and merchandise with his drawings, and also why he spent a lot of his time painting murals in public places.

It began in 1982, with the mythical mural on Houston Street in New York, but later it did the same on the Wall in Berlin, Paris, Pisa or Barcelona.

The visit to our country was made only 11 months before his death. The artist had known for years that he was HIV positive. He was one of the first celebrities to go public in an interview he gave to Rolling Stone .

In 1989, there were still no treatments that allow carriers of the virus not to develop the disease and live a normal life. The news was a very hard blow for Haring. Many of his friends had died and he was facing an uncertain future before he was even 30 years old.

She had no idea how much time she had left, but she decided to make the most of it and devoted all her energies to AIDS activism; to paint and to travel around the world.

The mural measures 35 meters. It took Haring five hours to complete, and the Macba’s conservation and restoration team required 100 days to reproduce it faithfully. To the difficulty of copying the artist’s line (it can only be recreated with a neutral line), the roughness of the new wall is added, with much more texture than the original one Haring painted on.

The mural measures 35 meters. It took Haring five hours to complete, and the Macba’s conservation and restoration team required 100 days to reproduce it faithfully. To the difficulty of copying the artist’s line (it can only be recreated with a neutral line), the roughness of the new wall is added, with much more texture than the original one Haring painted on.

He arrived in Spain via Madrid. In the capital, the first thing he did was visit the Prado Museum, where Bosco’s Garden of Delights struck him . He also visited ARCO where he got quite bored. At the Puente Aéreo he was recognized by a Catalan art critic who invited him to a vernissage that Frederic Amat organized that night at the Joan Prats gallery .

It is fun to imagine Keith Haring dressed in the archetypal uniform of the New Yorker of the eighties – baseball jacket with white sleeves, hoodie , jeans and Nike Air Force sneakers -, in the ultra-European environment of an art gallery in Barcelona from the late 1980s. eighty.

Guillén told in the documentary 30 anys positius , recently broadcast by TV3, that at that very moment he proposed to do some kind of intervention in the city taking advantage of his visit. The artist agreed on condition of being able to choose where to do it.

Montse pulled her contacts at the City Council to get the permits and Haring chose the place where she found the most syringes lying on the ground: the now-defunct Salvador Seguí Square, next to the current Filmoteca de Catalunya, which reminded her, as she said, to the dangerous streets of upstate New York where he had begun to paint.

The mural, completed in just five hours on February 27, is entitled Together we can stop AIDS . The work measures 35 meters, was painted with red acrylic and in it, apart from the phrase in Castilian that gives it its title, there is a syringe in which a snake is coiled that represents the threat of AIDS.

A pair of scissors cut the reptile, whose tail is transformed into a discreet penis that a figure has covered with a condom. To his right, three characters cover their eyes, ears and mouth respectively.

They are Haring’s version of Mizaru (not seeing evil), Kikazaru (not hearing evil) and Iwazaru (saying no evil), the three Japanese monkeys of wisdom with whom we now interact almost daily through emojis of WhatsApp.

“I wrote him the title of the mural”. The work, painted on a concrete buttress of a house destined for demolition, was traced prior to its destruction in 1992 and currently a reconstruction of it can be seen next to the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (Macba).

The creation of the mural was documented on video thanks to DJ César de Melero, who had met Haring the night before. “It was at the Arts Studio, a house clubfrom the upper area of ​​Barcelona where I was playing ”, De Melero tells ICON DESIGN.

“Someone came up to me and said, ‘Keith Haring is at the door and they won’t let him in.’ I could not believe it. I went to the door and there he was, unmistakable with his glasses and stuff. With the face that you have when they do not let you enter a disco. I pointed to him and said, ‘Hey you! Enters!’. We went to the bar, I bought him champagne and he spent the night in the booth with me ”.

The next night, Haring told De Melero that in the morning he was going to paint a mural in Chinatown and he decided to go over and record everything. “It’s funny, but I was the one who wrote him the phrase: ‘We can all stop AIDS together’ with which he closed and titled the mural,” César confesses.

In the final part of the recording, we can also see the artist painting another smaller work in the Arts Studio booth. “The last night he was in Barcelona he showed up with a pot of paint and made a small mural that is still preserved today. Now the place is a billiards club ”, the Catalan DJ tells us.

The gift of the child David, “the best of the two days I spent in Barcelona”. In the recording, we can see a world-renowned artist who speaks with the kids in the neighborhood and with the people who approach him.

Even, as he himself collected in his Diaries (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2001), he argued with the owner of a brothel in the area, angered by the theme of the work.

“He complained that the mural would only harm the neighborhood because people would think there were a lot of drugs there and the police would shut down the bars,” he wrote. “That is ridiculous because people already know how bad the situation in the neighborhood is.”

This book, fundamental to understanding Haring’s work and thought and nowadays completely out of print (second-hand copies are sold for around 600 euros), includes jewels from the intrahistory of this entire event such as the memory of David, a child del Raval who adopted Haring during the creation of the mural, preventing other kids from bothering him, and who decided to give the New York artist a farewell gift.

“The next day when we returned to photograph the mural, a neighbor came up to me with a pencil case and pencil that David had commissioned him to give me,” Haring recalled. “David was at school and he had worried that someone would give it to me if I came back while he was away. That was probably the best of the two days I spent in the city. “

These days there will be trips throughout the country and some autonomous communities will ask for documentation to enter and leave their territory.

At the same time that Christmas is approaching, we are experiencing multiple changes in our country to regulate the different national movements that are made. The Government has left the communities to manage these movements and there are some that have implemented different regulations and controls .

Removing the Valencian Community, the only one that already prevents any entry or exit from the autonomous community for non-residents, in the rest of the country citizens will be able to move, although there are some that require a safe conduct to enter or leave .

After yesterday’s announcements, the autonomous communities that will request a Model of Responsible Declaration will be Madrid, Navarra, Aragon, Catalonia, La Rioja and the Basque Country . Depending on each one, the documents vary, but in general it is requested that you fill in where you are going, the address, reason, as well as if you are going with a family member or close friend.

The different autonomous communities have marked the requirements to be able to enter and exit. Although they are still subject to change and depending on the numbers of infections we may experience more news .

As we have said, the case of the Valencian Community is special and requests to prove the registration for travel, according to ABC . As for the rest of the autonomous communities, this is the necessary documentation to be able to access or exit, with their respective links .

Aragon : safe conduct
Balearic Islands : PCR
Canary Islands : PCR
Catalonia : safe conduct
Galicia : PCR if you come from a risk area
La Rioja : safe conduct
Madrid : safe conduct
Navarra : safe conduct
Basque Country : safe conduct

At the moment, these are the autonomous communities that require some type of documentation, but it is not ruled out that soon there will be more that will take the same measure . Although it is remembered that if you are passing through to another destination it is not necessary to fill in any document.

More than goodbye, the end of Brexit will be goodbye. The trade agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom that must enter into force on January 1 will establish a surveillance and supervision structure that largely replicates, although on a smaller scale, the institutional framework that ensures the integrity of the community club.

The two parties have agreed to create a Board of Directors, with the presence of the European Commission and the British Government, and 18 specialized committees, with powers similar to the portfolios of the European Commissioners.

The agreement even contemplates the possibility of creating a joint Parliamentary Assembly, made up of members of the European Parliament and the British.

The agreement reached by the negotiators, still pending approval , is not as ambitious as the European Union intended and as the Government of Theresa May would probably have accepted.

The current British Prime Minister, the conservative Boris Johnson, opted after coming to power to drastically reduce the scope of the relationship with Brussels after the consummation of Brexit on January 31 and the end of the transitional period of departure on December 31.

The cut left out of the negotiations the chapters related to foreign policy, security and defense. And he reduced it to an agreement that guarantees, as far as possible, the fluidity of the commercial relationship and, specifically, in the exchange of goods, plus a chapter on police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters.

Even so, the agreement establishes a scheme of cooperation and coordination that, according to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, “can lay the foundations for a new beginning and a long-term friendship”.

For Johnson, “this agreement facilitates close and friendly cooperation with our neighbors in all the many areas where our values ​​and interests coincide.”

The two parties have agreed on a governance that, according to the preamble of the text closed last Thursday, aims to “guarantee efficient management and the correct interpretation and application of this Agreement.”

London has insisted during the 10 months of negotiations, to the point of exhaustion for Michel Barnier’s team, on the need to respect British sovereignty. But it has accepted the creation of a supervisory structure for the agreement that largely reproduces the institutional organization chart of the EU.

The great advantage of the United Kingdom is that in the new model the relationship becomes bilateral between the British Government and the Commission, with decision-making by mutual consensus that gives London the same weight as Brussels in matters related to the agreement.

With Brexit, the United Kingdom leaves behind multilateral institutions in which it felt increasingly minority and where its influence was declining in proportion to progress in European integration.

The new structure will be led by a Partnership Council, co-chaired by a European Commissioner and by a member of the British Government at ministerial level.

The Council, which will meet alternately in Brussels and London, may take decisions on all matters covered by the agreement (trade, air and road transport, energy, customs, intellectual property, public tender, VAT management, sanitary and phytosanitary products, fishing …), direct recommendations to one of the parties on the application of the agreement and create or dissolve the specialized committees that will supervise each area.

The Council’s work will be assisted by 18 specialized committees, each in charge of supervising the execution of the agreement in its different areas. Both parties undertake to appoint representatives “who have the necessary knowledge regarding the issues under discussion”, but without specifying the rank of the participants.

The distribution of tasks of the committees follows the areas of the agreement and coincide with the portfolio of one of the 27 members of the European Commission.

The most important, at least at the start of the new relationship, seem called to be the trade committee, the goods committee, and the customs and rules of origin committee.

But the one for regulatory cooperation and the one in charge of ensuring fair competition between both parties can become the most active forums as European and British legislation go their own way, with the risk of possible divergences and discrepancies.

The Council and the committees will meet at least once a year. But they may be summoned at any time by either of the two parties.

The agreement also establishes four working groups to ensure that there are no serious discrepancies on such specific points as organic products, automobile components or the coordination of Social Security schemes.

The distrust caused by Brexit and, above all, by Johnson’s presence in Downing Street, has led Brussels to shield compliance with the agreement with arbitration systems in case of discrepancies and with draconian timetables to impose commercial reprisals if necessary.

But the laborious text agreed, of 1,246 pages, also includes the institutional framework that in the future could allow a stable and, perhaps, ever closer coexistence. “The UK is, of course, culturally, spiritually and emotionally, part of Europe,” says Johnson in the cover letter of the deal to British citizens.

The text agreed by Barnier’s team and [David] Frost’s even goes so far as to foresee the possibility that the European Parliament and the Westminster Parliament could create a joint Parliamentary Assembly, composed of elected members of both houses.

The new Euro-British hemicycle would have to be informed of the work of the Council of the Partnership, to which it could also address recommendations.

The design conspicuously follows the creation of the European Parliament, which also began as an assembly without legislative powers or directly elected members, but which, as of 1979, has MEPs elected by direct suffrage and has been gaining powers legislature after legislature.

Brussels and London have also committed to facilitating the organization of a Civil Society Forum that they hope to convene at least once a year, with representation from non-governmental organizations, companies, employers, unions or groups in defense of sustainable development, human rights humans or the environment.

The first coalition government since the 1930s is not even a year old, but it is already beginning to show significant wounds after a very tough and unexpected battle against the coronavirus and the economic and social crisis that it has brought with it.

The Executive of PSOE and United We Can ends the year with multiple open internal fronts and with the feeling, widespread among the ministers, that a completely different phase is now beginning, almost a kind of real term after a year of absolute emergency in that there has not been time for much more than to face the crisis and defend against the opposition’s attempts to bring down the government.

Now, with the approved Budgets, the president seems to have decided to launch very clear messages that it is the socialist sector that directs economic policy. Meanwhile, United We can try to mark red lines in key reforms such as pensions, a very sensitive issue in Brussels.

2021 will therefore be the first real year of the coalition, where it will undergo the test of resistance even harder than that of the pandemic: that of surviving the economic crisis and the complex decisions always marked by pressure from Brussels.

While in the political environment the idea is installed that the PSOE no longer needs United We can so much and therefore could even force the machine and reach the limit of a rupture to govern alone, within the Executive this option is not seriously contemplated by anyone , although the difficulties that the coalition is going through are not hidden precisely after achieving the supposed stability that the Budgets give it.

The tension is taken for granted and very strong at least until the Catalan elections of February 14, which will reconfigure the board. So much so that within the Executive the idea has been installed that, politically, 2021 actually begins on February 15.

It will be then when the Catalan elections clear the horizon for all the great protagonists, both in the majority and in the opposition, since each of them has their internal battle in a meeting that will open a long period without scheduled elections. These are some of the key issues with which 2021 will start.

The economic agenda, a source of internal tension. The end of the year comes with key decisions that have opened a gap in the coalition and that runs the clear risk of continuing to enlarge in the start of 2021.

The economic vice president, Nadia Calviño, who has achieved all the public and private support of the president in In recent days, it has agreed with Brussels a series of key reform elements that it wants to carry out despite the fact that they are not in the PSOE-United We Can Government pact.

In particular, that of pensions, with the proposal to go from 25 to 35 the working years on which the pension is calculated. That would lower spending by around 6%, according to the Executive’s calculations.

United We Can and the unions reject this reform outright, but Calviño and José Luis Escrivá, the Minister of Social Security, are determined to move forward.

They argue that a sustainability horizon must be offered in Europe that compensates for the increase in pension spending produced by the 0.9% rise this year and, above all, because the sustainability factor established by the president has already been definitively eliminated Mariano Rajoy and that he himself breached later.

In addition to pensions there is the labor reform. Calviño does not want to allow the most harmful aspects to be changed now, as had been agreed with United We Can. In these weeks that battle will come because the plans on the labor market must also be sent to the EU.

The most immediate fight, that of the minimum wage, already seems resolved in favor of Calviño, who defends the freeze. This Tuesday the decision could be closed in a Council of Ministers chaired by Pedro Sánchez, who has already finished his quarantine, and who will appear later to take stock of the year.

United We can already transfer the idea that these types of issues are red lines and will not be able to count on your votes for a pension reform like that, with which it could not move forward. But long before reaching Congress, the reform plan will have to be approved by the Council of Ministers to send it to Brussels, and the toughest battle will arrive there, probably in February.

There is division of opinions also in the analysis of the data. In both sectors of the Government there is concern about the erosion that marked the last political barometer of the CIS and other polls.

But while in Unidos Podemos they believe that it is due to the fact that the PSOE is beginning to turn its economic policy with unpopular reforms such as pensions, the socialists interpret that the problem, in addition to the natural wear and tear of a very tough year of pandemic, comes from those divisions that are beginning to become clear.

“This is a very unbalanced coalition government, because the small partner commands very little and needs to overreact to make it appear otherwise. They should claim the achievements. We are raising pensions, we have raised the minimum wage by 30% in two years, and it will seem that we are going backwards ”, they point out in the socialist part.

United We can pressure the PSOE so that it does not turn the center in economic policy and warns of those surveys that are beginning to reflect wear and tear.

Even within the PSOE there are many doubts with controversial reforms that can alienate him from his electorate, such as pensions, but Calviño and Escrivá have Sánchez’s support for the moment because the great priority now is to manage the economy with the support and guidance of Europe.

How to spend 27,000 million euros to change the economy . It is the great challenge of the Government for the whole year. The machinery has already been launched with a decree that changes all administrative procedures to streamline procedures.

Sánchez’s economic team, with Calviño, María Jesús Montero, Minister of Finance, and Manuel de la Rocha, head of the economic office of La Moncloa, will be key, but the heavy weight falls on the different ministries.

Autonomous and business leaders transmit many doubts about the operation. Sánchez is playing his credibility in the challenge of ensuring that this great European fund is well spent, with truly modernizing projects.

There is not much talk in the political debate, but it is the issue that occupies the ministries the most time. United We can have a strategic participation through its ministries and Nacho Álvarez, Pablo Iglesias’s key man for economic issues, but the socialist side carries the strongest weight. It is, with vaccination, the executive’s star project to get out of the economic destruction caused by the virus.

The laws after the Budgets . In theory, Parliament stands in January. The reality is that it will not happen. Once the Budgets have been approved, the Government has an intense legislative horizon, although the coalition has been in great haste to approve two fundamental milestones on its agenda: the laws of euthanasia and education.

The first law that begins processing now is that of climate change. In the same month, others such as the food chain or the protection of children will be addressed. And there is also the investigative commission on Operation Kitchen, which will mark a strong confrontation with the PP.

Other major reforms are that of the Judiciary —for the moment in its mild version, which will prevent the Council from continuing to appoint judges until their mandate is renewed, which has expired for two years— which is the one that most confronts the PSOE and the PP.

After the rejection of Brussels to the attempt to reduce the majority necessary to renew it, Sánchez has decided to try to the end the pact with the PP. But this issue is not resolved and will return strongly after the Catalans.

The Catalan elections change the board . On February 14, all matches are examined. Not only the independence movement, which elucidates its great final battle for hegemony, and even the coalition – it is a great test both for the PSC but especially for United We Can, which is playing it with the commons after the fiascos in Galicia and the Basque Country— but also the right.

The battle between the PP, Vox and Ciudadanos will mark the opposition of the coming months and the success or failure of Pablo Casado’s strategy to launch the attack against Vox after Santiago Abascal’s motion of censure.

The crisis of the emeritus king. Beyond the fact that this matter will continue to divide the Government, as has been seen in the reactions to the King’s message at Christmas , what most worries the Executive, or at least the socialist part, which defends the Monarchy, is that the scandal that this year will have judicial advances continue to deteriorate the image of the institution.

It will also be the key year to find out how far the worst crisis of the Monarchy has reached since the recovery of democracy.

After a terrible 2020, a decisive 2021 arrives, in which the forces are rebalanced and the real term begins. Nobody knows how long it will last, but it will not be easy.

The Christmas Lottery draw distributes different and large prizes in each edition. In fact, it is one of the draws with the highest number of prizes of the year. If you have bought several tickets, it is recommended that you check them one by one, just in case. Next, we leave you a method with which to know if your number has won a prize in the Christmas Lottery.

To check the winning number of the Christmas Lottery, it is not necessary to be aware of the draw from the beginning to the end, although this possibility is the one that usually gives you the most excitement.

Remember that the draw starts tomorrow at 9:00 am at the Teatro Real in Madrid , and that you can follow it through the different media that broadcast this event every year. This 2020 2,240 million euros are distributed.

If you are lucky enough to be graced with the ‘Gordo’ you will take 4 million euros to the series , or what is the same, 400,000 euros for every tenth that you have with the winning number . Although the Treasury always takes part of the cake, in this case 20% of all prizes over 40,000 euros.

In addition, there are other prizes that distribute a smaller amount of money, but that also suppose a good pinch if you have been lucky. The second prize of the Christmas Lottery is 1,250,000 euros to the winning series, that is, 125,000 euros for each tenth .

The third is 500,000 euros to the series or 50,000 for each tenth. The fourths and fifths distribute 20,000 and 6,000 euros respectively. Remember that a number, a tenth, a ticket or the series are not the same , and that understanding the differences between these terms is essential so that you know how much money you can win in the lottery .

Another possibility that you should not rule out is to go to a lottery administration and have them check if you have been awarded any of the prizes. It is what you have to do without fail if you have been lucky, since many lottery winners receive a prize but forget to collect it on the stipulated date .

If your number has received one of the prizes of the Christmas Lottery, you have until March 22, 2021 to collect it.

The leaders of the United States Congress presented on Monday a 5,593-page proposal that includes a federal spending law for an amount of 2.3 trillion dollars, which would include the stimulus package to alleviate the effects of the pandemic on the economy by value of 900,000 million dollars, according to EFE.

Local media indicated that this could be one of the largest pieces of legislation ever considered by Congress and is expected to be voted on by both houses shortly, hours after it was presented.

The 2.3 trillion dollar proposal includes funds for the federal government until the end of fiscal year 2021 next September, as well as help to stop the economic deterioration caused by covid-19 .

The initiative collects 1.4 trillion dollars for federal spending, of which 740,000 million dollars would be for Defense and 664,500 million would go to domestic programs. It also includes $ 900 billion for the so-called covid-19 relief bill, which would be the stimulus package agreed on Sunday between Democrats and Republicans.

The combined proposal of 2.3 trillion dollars – federal spending law plus stimulus package – would exceed the bailout approved last March by Congress and initialed by US President Donald Trump, worth 2.2 trillion dollars to alleviate the economic crisis generated by the coronavirus and which was the largest in US history.

In the current initiative, the stimulus package focuses on the expansion of unemployment benefits, as well as direct transfers to citizens and aid to small businesses; While the “omnibus” proposal, as the draft federal spending bill is known, covers a broader range of issues, such as transportation, agriculture, health, national security and foreign operations.

The CNN television network indicated that first the Lower House will approve this afternoon the rules on the debate of the proposal in the hemicycle, which will include extending the deadline by one week to avoid the closure of the federal Administration due to lack of funds, which has been postponed several times.

This strategy is intended to give Congress time to complete all the procedures so that the spending proposal is signed by Trump, once it receives the approval of both chambers, which is expected to take place in the next few hours, without running the risk of a government shutdown.

The vote on this macro-measure is expected to take place in two rounds in the Lower House: first, legislators will vote on financing for the departments of Commerce, Justice, Science, Financial Services, Defense and National Security.

There will then be a second round of voting to approve the rest of the spending package, with the rescue included.

After the approval of the House of Representatives, the Senate will have to put the entire proposal to a vote at once and, once it has its green light, it will be taken to the White House to be initialed by Trump.

A new massacre in the north of Colombia leaves at least three fatalities

The motive for the crime is still unknown, but the Police are considering a reckoning

At least three people have been killed this Monday in a new massacre in Colombia , this time in the municipality of Santa Marta, in the northern department of Magdalena, according to Europa Press.

This has been denounced through his Twitter account by the human rights defender and political activist Gustavo Enrique Mestre Cubillos, who has explained that three people, two men and one woman, have been victims of a hitman early Monday morning.

The victims have been identified as Breiner Escobar, Ana Paulina Acosta and Pedro Tórrez Velázquez, who were in the ‘El Bolsillo’ sector at a party. Two of the deceased tried to run to safety, although they died a few meters later, according to witnesses to the incident, collected by the regional newspaper ‘Hoy Diario del Magdalena’.

The testimony of the witnesses details that two unknown persons arrived at the place of the party where the victims were and opened fire on them.

Mestre Cubillos has also influenced the fact that a few days ago the narco-paramilitaries of the Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada launched threatening pamphlets in this city.

At the moment, the motive for the triple homicide is unknown , although the authorities are working on the crime through a special group of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Sectional Criminal Investigation Unit (SIJIN) of the Directorate of Criminal Investigation and Interpol, in which the Metropolitan Police also participates.

According to the police commander, Colonel Óscar Solarte, the crime was due to an alleged settling of accounts against the murdered woman.

With this, there are already 87 massacres that have been counted so far this year in Colombia, while there are 122 homicides registered in 2020 in Santa Marta with the massacre this morning.