All posts by Carmen Gomaro

Carmen Gomaro - leading international news and investigative reporter. Worked at various media outlets in Spain, Argentina and Colombia, including Diario de Cádiz, CNN+, Telemadrid and EFE.
SPORTS

The "no, no and no" of Luka Modric to the millionaire insistence of Arabia

Leave a comment

“Luka doesn't care about money”. In the Ciudad Deportiva de Valdebebas, from the offices to the pitch, there is absolute devotion to Luka Modric. Managers, coaches and colleagues adore a footballer who came as a complement to other stars and has become a Real Madrid legend. So much so that he has total freedom to decide when to step aside and leave the white team. A step that until now he has not wanted to take despite constant offers from the Saudi Arabian government and that still keeps him at the Santiago Bernabéu, closer to his 12th season in Chamartín than to packing his bags for the East.

Modric, who tonight plays the semifinal of the League of Nations against the Netherlands (20:45, La1), wants to stay one more season in Madrid and has let the club know, which has extended his contract until 2024 , as he did with Benzema. And you already know the final destination of the French…

The Croatian wants to play in the new Bernabéu, he wants to continue being the link between Madrid, winner of five Champions Leagues, and the new generation led by Vinicius, he wants to continue being the “father” of promises like Rodrygo and the teacher of young midfielders like Bellingham, signed a few days ago for 103 million. He knows that the competition will be criminal with the continuity of Kroos, the explosion of Valverde and Camavinga, the need to give Tchouaméni minutes, the technical direction's commitment to English and the hypothetical renewal of Ceballos, but he wants to continue for another year. He is not afraid of young people, on the contrary.

“I have taken a decision”

Modric, for the moment, does not care about money, as Valdebebas insists, and he has passed by the 60 million net that Saudi football has put on his table time and time again. Since February, in a piece of news reported by EL MUNDO, the Arab federation has maintained similar conditions to those that were initially offered to Benzema. Salary of 30 million net for each of the two seasons, without taxes, with image rights for him and with the possibility of choosing the city and team in which to settle. “No, no and no”, has been the response of Modric, who will turn 38 in September.

If at some point he changes his mind, the doors of the Bernabéu will open for him in the same way that they opened for Benzema's wish, although the Frenchman's contract, like that of the Croatian, will also end in June 2024.. His relationship with Florentino is exceptional and it will continue to be so no matter what happens and ends when his stage ends.

Meanwhile, this week he returns to his little hobby, something that torments Madrid a bit but that continues to be his natural habitat: captaining the Croatian team. The World Cup in Qatar seemed like the end of his era in the national team, but the midfielder has decided to continue defending his country until the next European Championship. First, the Final Four of the League of Nations, where they could face Spain in a hypothetical final. Later, a Euro in Germany that he would reach on the way to 39 years of age. “I have made a decision, but we will talk about it when the League of Nations ends,” he said yesterday.. Arabia insists, and insists, and insists…

SPAIN

The Selectivity note increases from 8.75 to 10.34 in six years

Leave a comment

The grades that students have in Selectividad do not stop growing. It is no longer just that the number of passes is increasing, but that the grades are getting higher and higher. If in the 2015/2016 academic year the average was 8.75 out of 14 points, in the 2021/2022 academic year it was 10.34. The increase is observed in all the autonomous communities and is explained by two reasons, according to a study published today by the think tank EsadeEcPol. On the one hand, students try harder and compete fiercely for places in public universities.. On the other, there has been an “artificial increase in ratings” that has caused an “inflationary phenomenon” due to the “greater facilities” provided by the Government during Covid.

In 2020, the then-minister Isabel Celaá allowed greater optionality when answering Selectividad questions that still remains today, although there is no longer a pandemic. They were “measures to relax the pressure” that led to “a more benevolent evaluation”, according to the report. Students can choose the questions that they know best to the point that “they can get a 10 studying half of the syllabus”, as denounced yesterday by a professor from the Complutense University of Madrid. In, for example, Mathematics, the so-called “pandemic exams” allow us not to study entire blocks of content, such as calculus or geometry, and concentrate on what is easier for students, algebra and statistics, which in the 2nd year of Baccalaureate occupy barely two months of school hours.

EsadeEcPol researchers Lucía Cobreros, Lucas Gortázar and Juan Manuel Moreno say that “the measures taken during the Covid could have made sense in 2020 and even 2021″, because students missed class during confinement, but they advocate eliminating them as soon as possible. “They had a clear inflationary effect. The data clearly shows that the measures caused a significant increase in high school grades and also in the general phase and the specific phase due to the greater optionality within each of the subjects,” they conclude.

To know more
Paper. The best universities in Spain by degrees
  • Drafting: LUISA VALERIO | PATRICIA LOZANO | RUBEN G.. LOPEZ Madrid

The best universities in Spain by degrees

They also observe that the change that occurred in 2017 caused another “inflationary effect”, when the then PP minister Íñigo Méndez de Vigo made the modality subject compulsory and that meant that there were more students who had to take the Mathematics exam.. «As the students complained, the CCAAs and the universities decided that the grade for the modality subject would score twice. There was a silent tacit pact that also caused an artificial increase in grades”, explains Gortázar, director of Education at EsadeEcPol.

To know more
Paper. The best universities in Spain by degrees
  • Drafting: LUISA VALERIO | PATRICIA LOZANO | RUBEN G.. LOPEZ Madrid

The best universities in Spain by degrees

What part is due to a bubble and what can be attributed to the effort of the students? I would say half and half. The competition hypothesis weighs as much as the inflation hypothesis to explain the rise in qualifications, “replies Gortázar. “Students are trying harder because they take the test more seriously, especially those with high grades. There is also inflation in high school. And there is the rise in the final admission grade in 2020, which, in a single year, tripled the annual rise of the previous period.

The work reflects how very specific political decisions have a real impact on the future of young people. The university entrance exam is already 50 years old (it is the only educational piece of the Franco regime that is still in force) and, every time it undergoes a change, however small, it produces a domino effect on students.

The authors also see that this exam has “low uniformity” and “low objectivity” compared to other tests in neighboring countries, such as the French Bac, the German Abitur or the Italian Maturità.. They are not in favor of a single test throughout Spain, as the PP claims, but they do ask for “more comparable” exams and a more reliable correction system.. “Just because our education system is increasingly diverse, it makes sense that the university entrance exam is a statewide benchmark that levels the playing field for all students regardless of their background and study preferences,” they stress.

They point out that “in a single district system it is inconsistent that uniformity is so low and that objectivity could be improved.”. It is necessary to move towards greater comparability” and they urge “setting questions or tests common to all the CCAAs or agreeing on the weighting of different subjects”. “It is necessary to harmonize the correction criteria, now very different from each other,” they add.

The best universities in Spain by degrees

As every year, EL MUNDO has published its renowned ranking of the 50 best Spanish universities, a reference classification for campuses and families. Click here to see which educational institutions are most in demand for qualifications.

HEALTH

'Lucy' was already walking as upright as us 3.2 million years ago

Leave a comment

The first digital reconstruction of the muscles of a hominin (primitive human) has shown that 3.2 million years ago, 'Lucy', the Australopithcus afarensis fossil that revolutionized the study of human evolution, already walked as upright as we do.

The research, led by Ashleigh Wiseman, from the University of Cambridge, has modeled in 3D the muscles of the legs and pelvis of the famous Lucy, discovered by Donald Johanson in Ethiopia in 1974.

Named in honor of the Beatles' success (“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”), it is one of the most complete skeletons of Australopithecus, of which 40% of the bones are preserved.

In life, Lucy was 1.10 meters tall, weighed about 27 kilos, and had a skull comparable to that of a chimpanzee and a brain equivalent to a third of ours.. It is believed that he was in his 20s when he died, as his wisdom teeth had just come in.

Australopithecus afarensis was an early human species that lived in eastern Africa more than three million years ago and managed to adapt to the forests and savannah, allowing it to survive for almost a million years.

But their main feature is that they could do something that primates cannot do: walk on two legs.

However, although paleoanthropologists agree that Lucy was bipedal, they disagree on how she walked, and while some believe that she moved in a crouching position and that, like chimpanzees -our common ancestor- she could walk on two legs, others believe that she moved in a bipedal way. more similar to our upright bipedalism.

A consensus on walking fully upright has begun to emerge in the last 20 years, and Wiseman's work bears this out. Details of their research have been published in the Royal Society Open Science journal.

DIGITAL RECONSTRUCTION

The study was made possible by the open publication of new data on Lucy, which enabled Wiseman's team to create a digital model of the muscular structure of the hominin lower body.

To recreate Lucy's muscles, Wiseman used MRIs and CT scans of the muscular and skeletal structures of a modern woman and man to trace “muscle trajectories” and build a digital musculoskeletal model.

Then, he used the virtual models of Lucy's skeleton to “rearticulate” the joints, that is, to recompose the skeleton and recreate its movements in life, and finally, he compared them with the muscles of modern humans.

The team recreated 36 muscles in each leg, most of which were much larger in Lucy and bulkier than those of modern humans.

For example, the major muscles in Lucy's calves and thighs were more than twice the size of those of modern humans, since we have a much higher ratio of fat to muscle.

In fact, the muscles made up 74% of the total mass of Lucy's thigh, compared to only 50% in humans.

Lucy's knee extensor muscles, and the leverage they would allow, confirm the ability to straighten the knee joints as much as a healthy person can today.

“We are now the only animal that can stand upright with our knees straight, but Lucy's muscles suggest that she was just as adept at bipedalism as we are, although she may have been at home in trees as well.. It is likely that it walked and moved in a way that we do not see in any living species today,” Wiseman summarizes.

These reconstructions will help to study mobility in humans, and determine “what drove our evolution” and what capabilities “we have lost”, concludes the researcher.

ECONOMY

Spain before and after the covid: hotels 44% more expensive; food, 27%, and gasoline, 18%

Leave a comment

Inflation, the general rise in prices, is moderating in Spain, which means that prices continue to rise but at a slower pace. As confirmed on Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), prices in Spain were 3.2% higher in May than those of a year ago, an increase lower than that registered in April (4.1% ).

Despite this slowdown, which will foreseeably continue in June to around 2%, food continues to present exorbitant price increases, of 12% last month compared to May 2022. Some products that are part of the weekly shopping basket of all families show very large increases: sugar is 46.3% more expensive than a year ago; butter, 25.2%; olive oil, 24.7%; whole milk, 24.3%; potatoes, 23.6%, and skimmed milk, 23.2%.

Processed foods are the ones leading the rise today (12.9% in May compared to 8.8% for fresh foods), hence core inflation -which excludes fresh foods and energy products- still stands at 6 .1%, well above the healthy level of 2% pursued by the European Central Bank (ECB).

The problem is that although the year-on-year rises are slowing down, inflation is accumulating and that, since the pandemic, families and companies in the country have had to assume an unprecedented price increase: already over 15%.

If the prices that exist today in Spain are compared with those that existed in the country in February 2020, just before the pandemic broke out, food has not stopped rising and has become more expensive in total by 27.2%; while alcoholic beverages and tobacco have increased their price by 12.2%.

There has also been a sustained increase in the price of hotels and other tourist accommodation, which accumulates a rise of 44%; while restaurants are today 13.2% more expensive than before the covid.

Electricity and gasoline, which suffered a supply shock after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, recorded their highest increase in 2022 and are now on a downward path again, but even so, accumulate increases of 3.7% and 17 .6%, respectively.

In today's Spain, three years after the pandemic, what has risen in price the most is sugar, which is 52.5% more expensive than then (if it cost one euro per kilo, now it will exceed euro fifty); followed by the price of hotels and other tourist accommodation, which have risen by 44% (the room that in 2020 was 60 euros, will now exceed 86 euros); olive oil, which has shot up 40.4%; butter, with increases of 38%; sauces and condiments, which have become more expensive by 36.4%; potatoes 34%; eggs, 33%; and whole milk, 33%.

Despite the fact that food is what rises the most, both its level and its increase continue to be below the average registered in the European Union. In May, for example, in Spain they rose by 12.8% in harmonized terms -manipulating the statistics to make them comparable to the European one- and an average of 16.6% in the EU, according to Eurostat data.

moderation in sight

Although a drop in the year-on-year rate is expected for the next two months, coinciding with the holding of the general elections on 23J, subsequently the rise in prices will pick up again until the end of the year at around 5%.

“In June, the interannual rate of inflation will fall to 2% as a result of another important step effect, although it will later rise again until the year ends at 5%, with an average annual rate of 3.9% (since 4 % former). The forecast for the underlying rate is 6.4% (from 6.6% previously). For 2024, the expected average rates are 3.4% and 3.2% for the general and core rates, respectively,” Funcas said yesterday, warning that “the impact of the drought on food prices” is an upside risk.

In fact, Funcas forecasts that processed foods will maintain a 12% price rise for the rest of the year and that on average the year-on-year increase will be 13% by the end of 2023.. For fresh fruits, they expect a little more moderation and that the average annual increase is 9.5%.

“From February to May, inflation has shown consistent data with a decline that can be sustained over time, reaching averages of 3.4% in 2023 and 3.2% in 2024,” said BBVA Research in a report presented this Tuesday. , which includes the hope that inflation “converges to levels around 2% in 2024”.

ECONOMY

Business revolt before the new Statute of the Yolanda Díaz Scholar: fewer positions and fewer FP graduates

Leave a comment

The Scholarship Statute -still undefined- continues to be quite controversial and generating rejections, and even more so after last Saturday, Yolanda Díaz, Minister of Labor and Social Economy, announced an agreement with the unions, but without the support of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE). The employers' organizations of private education and the rectors have come to the step rejecting the proposal. They assure that, if they go ahead, fewer companies and public entities will want to welcome these students.

The objective of the norm, which has been in negotiations for more than a year, is to regulate the working conditions of internship students and develop a legal regime that orders them. Basically, it includes a penalty regime for companies for breaching the rights of students, with fines of up to 225,000 euros; it limits extracurricular internships to 480 hours, and establishes compensation for the expenses incurred by students, such as travel, accommodation or maintenance.

For organizations, this issue belongs to an academic and not a labor sphere, so they consider that the Statute for people undergoing non-labor practical training in the company sphere is the responsibility of universities and not of the social dialogue table. They even warn that the rule “puts at risk” the qualification of vocational training students.

The private education employers ACADE, Education and Management and CECE have issued a statement in which they oppose the announcement made by the Ministry of Labor. They ensure that the norm that has been agreed bilaterally with the unions does not address the problem of the scarcity of training internships, but rather exacerbates it, and does not take into account the reality of the vocational training system, as it was negotiated without having the educational community, even without the participation of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training.

“It is a rule that, if it comes into force, will put a brake on the new model of dual professional training, supported by the majority of all the actors involved,” they explain in a statement.. “It calls into question public-private collaboration, which is one of the axes on which this model is based,” they allege.

For this reason, the organizations request “that legislation not be legislated in extremis, in the pre-electoral period, without having listened to the entire educational community”, and without solving the real problems and creating others that will make it practically impossible for the students of professional training access training stays in companies, essential for your degree.

According to data from the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 426,441 students took the FCT module (Training in Work Centers, internships in companies) in the 2021-2022 academic year.. Another 45,613 students took the Dual Vocational Training modality in the same academic year.

Likewise, the employer organizations point out that the forecasts of students enrolled in VET courses for the 2022-2023 academic year amount to almost 1,100,000 students.

A THREAT TO THE MODEL

For its part, the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) has also ruled against the proposal, pointing out that it constitutes a threat to the internship model in force in the Spanish university system.

“The internships of university students are a strictly academic matter and it is not understood for what reason, unions and employers have to agree on their legal regime,” asks CRUE in another statement. They are also radically opposed to the establishment of compulsory compensation for the expenses that the student internship may incur, since they consider that it is an unprecedented provision in our Law and whose immediate consequence will be a dramatic decrease in the number of companies and, above all, everything, from public entities willing to welcome students in practices.

ECONOMY

Riberas (Sernauto): "Europe has goodwill, but it is slow with electrification"

Leave a comment

“Europe has good will, but it lacks speed” when it comes to supporting the automobile industry, according to Francisco Riberas, president of Sernauto, the employers' association for auto component manufacturers. “There is talk of strategic sovereignty in elements such as batteries, materials or their refining, but it is going more slowly even than the US, which thanks to the IRA law has attracted two battery plants that were going to go to the Old Continent” added the also president by Gestamp. Because, clearly, China is ahead in aspects such as electrification technology or charging infrastructure; and it is at the same time that it manufactures cars with an increasingly higher quality.

“They have not wasted time,” said Riberas, and neither can the industry he represents, which implies large investments in electrification in a context marked by political demands, tight margins, rising costs and the impact of inflation. In fact, more than the sales volumes, it was these last two factors that drove the turnover of the Spanish auxiliary industry to 37,668 million euros in 2022, 17.4% more than a year earlier.. Of that figure, almost 61% corresponded to exports, with 22,669 million, representing a record turnover.

6,500 million in R+D+i

Last year, the component sector invested almost 12% more (1,520 million euros) in productive capacities, while spending on R&D+i reached 1,231 million, 3.3% of total turnover and the triple the industry average. In the last five years, the volume spent on adapting to the technological and digital transformation has already reached 6,500 million euros.

“They are investments that must be made now or you don't make them. They are the ones that will define the future of the next 10 years and we cannot miss that train” added Ribera, for whom public-private collaboration is necessary “more than ever”.

The PERTE VEC, between July and September

The best example of this is the PERTE of the electric and connected car, whose second call will open on July 1 for battery factory projects to be presented.. “We make a positive reading of the efforts that the Government is making,” said José Portilla, general director of Sernauto, on this matter, although it may be that the second line referring to projects in the value chain, which may now be individual, “will be go to september”.

In principle, the change that this process will entail towards electrification will have an impact on employment due to the impact that the ban on selling cars with combustion engines will have since 2035 in Europe; or the impact of fewer components and less manpower required by battery-powered vehicles. “But the world does not end in Europe, it will be possible to continue selling in other markets and jobs will also be created with the new profiles that will emerge. And the path that e-fuels have remains to be seen,” said Portilla.

Employment in the sector

In 2022, the auxiliary industry employed 329,950 people, with 203,000 direct jobs, and for this year it is expected to increase by 1% precisely due to the need to incorporate more qualified and technological profiles. As for billing, the forecast is for it to grow by around 6%, although Riberas recalled that some positive data that the market is giving, with significant increases in registrations, “are a mirage given the poor level of the first semester of the last year”.

SPAIN

An "illegal" protocol forces Irún police to pick up immigrants rejected by France

Leave a comment

The protocol that the Irún Police Station has in place to assume the return of migrants who have already crossed into France keeps the national police officers of the Basque municipality with their swords raised.

Irún, on the border with the French town of Hendaye, is one of the hot spots for the so-called secondary migratory flows, that is, of those who, after reaching Spain from Africa, continue their journey to other European countries.. Despite the fact that the border is within the Schengen area -of free movement of people and goods- and is, therefore, an internal border in which, according to the law, rejection practices do not fit, the Police Station is executing them with orders very precise.

The coordinates of the “Protocol of action in the event of rejections” to which this newspaper has had access consist of keeping all agents on alert so that, in the event of any requirement from France, they go to the pass to pick up migrants at any time and under all kinds of circumstances.

“This protocol has no place at an internal border. It's completely illegal. The figure of Ceuta and Melilla, which are external borders, has been imposed in Irún”, clarifies an agent of the Immigration Brigade after harshly questioning this practice.

In addition, he also wonders about the “legality” that the same person can have two open files: one when he reached Spain from Africa and the other in transit between Irún and Hendaye.

Likewise, a broad sector of agents consulted agree that the problem of the Basque city, they conclude, “is the statistics”. They ensure that each return is counted as an arrest and that, on occasions, they have even had to take care of minors and pregnant women.

Instead of applying the figure contained in the so-called Malaga agreement, which speaks of “readmission” whose bases are clear and immovable – the dossier states that to accept a migrant you have to verify their circumstances and then decide whether or not to accept them – the order makes use of the word “rejection”. This route exempts them from carrying out checks since all readmission is governed by a strict rule.

The Protocol for action against refusals puts in writing, for example, how to filter affiliations, how agents have to go to the border crossing every time they are required and even contemplates the refusal of the troops to carry out the order.

“In the event of a negative response from the person in charge of controls due to the need for reinforcement personnel, he must notify the room manager” to inform the French authorities “if the service can be carried out or not”. The questioned order has a clear objective: “to give an agile and effective response to Spanish-French collaboration in terms of rejection at borders.”

The high number of migrants that Irún concentrates also poses a problem for the NGOs that attend to them since the resources to do so remain small.. The Basque city denounces that it is overwhelmed with sub-Saharan Africans that the French Police return.

«They are returns that do not proceed under any circumstances. They are not acting in accordance with the law,” claims a worker from one of the humanitarian organizations that operate in Irún. The Jupol union also questioned the orders of the Irún Police Station, which are even posted on its premises.

“It is a protocol designed to deal quickly and effectively with all those returns that occur, regardless of whether they are legally correct.. It shows, without a doubt, that the returns by the French Police are not specific cases as stated by the Ministry of the Interior or the Government Delegation, “insists the group.

«From Jupol we have denounced in recent years the statistical pressure to which the Irún police are subjected, the lack of security in the controls, the lack of material and human resources, the high volume of returns practiced by France, even returning immigrants by train commuter, or unmarked vans.

The Ministry of the Interior, for its part, indicated that “the only readmissions that are carried out are those regulated in the 2022 agreement” and regarding the protocol indicated that “to be aware that all readmissions between the two countries in both directions are made legally.”

SPAIN

The appointment of Delgado as prosecutor of Democratic Memory will be appealed before the Supreme by one of the applicants for the position

Leave a comment

With the majority of the prosecutorial race against it, the Council of Ministers yesterday appointed the former State Attorney General and former Justice Minister of Pedro Sánchez, Dolores Delgado, prosecutor of the Democratic Memory and Human Rights Chamber. The Executive thus ignored the Association of Prosecutors (AF) and the Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors (APIF) who had warned the Government that the appointment is “null and void” after the Fiscal Council was robbed of the possibility of pronounce on Delgado's incompatibility with his partner, former judge Baltasar Garzón.

According to tax sources reported to EL MUNDO, in all likelihood the last word on this appointment will be held by the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court. Once the designation has been published in the BOE, the anti-drug prosecutor Luis Ibáñez will challenge the royal decree of the appointment before the High Court.

Ibáñez was one of the togados who requested the position of prosecutor of the Democratic Memory Room. In his interview with the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, he proposed that this newly created position serve to investigate unsolved ETA crimes.

Meanwhile, in the absence of addressing the issue with the Executive, AF sources describe it as “highly probable” that they will also appeal the appointment of Delgado. On the other hand, from the APIF they also value filing a lawsuit before the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court.

“Diversion of power”

Some of the tax sources consulted by this newspaper consider that, with the appointment of Dolores Delgado as prosecutor of Democratic Memory, there has been a “deviation of power”, since the prosecutor herself, when she was part of the Government, promoted the creation of this square. In fact, most members of the prosecutorial profession believe that this specialized Chamber Prosecutor's Office had first and last names since its creation.

For their part, the prosecutors groups have also emphasized that Garzón was also one of the ideologues of the same. Currently, the former judge is the sole administrator of the Ilocad office and head of the FIBGAR foundation, both entities specialized in the matter that Delgado will control as Human Rights and Democratic Memory prosecutor.

In an unusual event, and as a sign of protest, the majority of the Fiscal Council refused last Thursday to rule on the appointment of the former Minister of Justice of Pedro Sánchez. The members of this body described Delgado's unsuitability for the position as “blatant”, as his impartiality was “seriously affected” by being a partner of Garzón, “the promoter” of the Democratic Memory Law, “being its content what he does, and what the prosecutor is going to do now, which could lead to a clear conflict of interest.

At this time, the promotion and appointment of Delgado as prosecutor of the Military Chamber is also being appealed in the Third Chamber of the Supreme. The lawsuit was filed by the former prosecutor lieutenant of the Court of Accounts, Luis Rueda, whom García Ortiz did not propose despite having proven experience in military jurisdiction for three decades.

SPORTS

Barça gives Unicaja the finishing touch to meet Real Madrid in the final

Leave a comment

A dominating Vesely under the basket (nine rebounds), the success from the three-point line, with Satoransky (12 points), Kuric (10) and Abrines (11), plus the competitive gene of players like Mirotic or Kalinic were decisive for Barça will win the fourth game of the ACB playoff semifinals against Unicaja (75-87) and will certify their presence in the final series. A third devastating triple in attack and very serious in defense was the great key to Barca's victory. [Narration and statistics (75-87)]

Barça made a very serious start, fighting off Nnaji in defense and taking advantage of Satoransky's success from the perimeter. In the second quarter, on the other hand, Unicaja, with Carter as the leader, worked hard and came to only four points (21-25) behind a Barça team that, in the end, would recover the distance a bit.. The Catalans survived the local push thanks to a couple of blows from Abrines in the triples and the opportune flashes of Satoransky, Mirotic and Kalinic to reach the break still with some oxygen (37-45).

It was useless for Unicaja to close the gap at the restart. Far from getting nervous, Barça improved their defensive performance and pushed forcefully in attack to prevail with a 15-28 run, which would translate into a clear 52-73. Mirotic's combativeness, more successful in destructive tasks than in scoring, and, once again, the triples were the great keys to what seemed like a definitive blow.

Unicaja, however, tried to overcome in a dizzying last quarter, in which Jasikevicius was disqualified for double technique. His attempts, however, collided with the conviction of a Barça that was not at all willing to let the game slip away. His maximum distance of 24 points (60-84) five minutes from the end was already too heavy a slab for the locals, which would crystallize in the final 75-87. The classic in the final of the ACB is already served.