Dear Xandri:
You have been living in Bresca for four years now (ten inhabitants with your dog, Gisca) after fifty in Barcelona’s Eixample. Upon learning of your departure, our friends, who tend to forgive offenses rather than successes, mislead that you were on your way to Andorra, like so many evaders… And you got lost in Pallars.
I beg your pardon: today you have already bottled your first vin nature and you have chickens, vegetables and fresh salad every day (not the tomato poop from my supermarket)… And partner: Marta, charming and indomitable defender of the territory in front of her bookstore in Tremp every morning.
That is why I have thought of you when contemplating the auction of the fish of each campaign in which the sardine –in this touch house– is sold to the sea breams in exchange for votes.
Rents and subsidized mortgages are touted (in the past, jobs were promised; today, money directly) in prime areas of large capitals, when the serious thing would be to think less about the polls over the weekend and more about the country of the next decade. And that would require addressing the lack of housing in the large metropolis along with the number of inhabitants where there are too many: in emptied Spain.
You tell me that you are happy: that you already have more friends in the towns than in Barcelona and that at home you don’t lose anything that you would have in the metropolis: you sleep without noise or smoke; you pay less for electricity, water and wifi. And you know every shopkeeper; Amazon is far away there.
They take your children by bus for free to the local school, where there are few; and the teacher strives to educate them and the doctors also know you: for the serious there are ambulances to the city.
Hence, you point out that instead of marketing with housing, companies should be encouraged to settle in these emptied regions until they achieve a Mittelstandt here, like the German one, of medium and small companies in towns of all sizes: with quality employment and not concentrating it on a great Madrid or Barcelona. That would be a federal country.
By distributing wealth and activity in a balanced way, the population and housing would also be distributed. And maybe we would have more children and better schools, because they are sorely needed. And –eye– everywhere.
