They have started building buildings again. I understand that it is to meet the huge demand for housing in this country, which is no different in my coastal town. Out of interest in getting my first home, I check the plans at real estate agencies and construction companies. The vast majority of apartments have a combined living room and kitchen; one or, occasionally, two bedrooms; one bathroom and that’s it. I don’t see a house to raise a family; I see a tourist apartment. I discover that they are not building homes, but hotel rooms. Does it make sense to satisfy a market that seeks profitability and not offer a roof to those who do not have one of their own? We should not allow this to happen, but the market does not seem to agree with me.
Read more He who sees black humor in humiliating a woman (and those who support it)
Juan Tenorio Cosa. Moaña (Pontevedra)
Are you okay?
We were returning from Galicia when we received the call: my father had passed away. With the children in the car, we stopped at a gas station to give them the news. The four of us hugged, cried, and remembered grandpa. A family at the next pump looked at us with concern. Finally, they approached: “Are you okay?”. They simply saw some strangers suffering and were worried. In times of growing distrust, it is worth remembering these small acts of kindness. If that family who saw us hugging on August 20 in Villacastín, on the A-6, reads this, we want to thank them. You didn’t know why, but our tears mattered to you. And maybe that is precisely what makes us human.
Ricardo Cuevas. Belmonte (Cuenca)
The drums
I hear on the radio a debate about military service. Drums of war have been sounding since the United States has forced itself to arm against its enemies, while silencing and collaborating with the genocide in Gaza. Not much is said about the deaths in military service, nor about the number of suicides, nor about the imprisoned conscientious objectors. It is a “necessary” debate, given the dangers that threaten us, they say. And it must be recognized that military service had one good thing: the antimilitarism it managed to spread. Perhaps all those young people who threaten to vote for the far right would not be so sure after spending a few months in a totalitarian state like the one experienced in the barracks.
Read more The adjustments in the Budgets up to June exceed those of the entire last year
Manuel Montañés García. Madrid
Low birth rate
Ana Iris Simón’s article on Saturday presents the decline in birth rate as a “crisis of meaning” linked to post-materialist individualism, omitting a central fact: the pronatalist norm she nostalgically describes was not a simple “shared meaning,” but a reproductive expectation especially imposed on women, sustained for centuries by legal and religious frameworks that restricted their autonomy. The breaking of that norm is not a symptom of spiritual emptiness: it is a basic rights achievement. Calling those who do not wish to be mothers or fathers “deniers,” with the inevitable resonance of those who deny scientific facts, is to discredit in advance a life choice as legitimate as theirs and to present as universal truth a particular conception of meaning and personal fulfillment.
Read more Open letter from Sergio Ramírez to President Lula da Silva
Patricia Muñoz. Murcia
