The block of properties where I live in Valencia serves as an example for me. It was completed in 1997, and those of us who acquired the homes were mostly young couples (you know what I mean, in their thirties, born between the late sixties and early seventies) with small children, and there were quite a few pregnant women. Those were times when buying an apartment as a salaried employee was possible without having to take anxiolytics to take out a mortgage. I remember that the biggest discussion at that time was how to fix the playground in the inner courtyard, since there were as many opinions as there were boys and girls that populated the hallways. There was some resistance to the project, from older people who did not want to face an expense to buy a swing, a horse and a 10-year-old child-sized toy house on a cork base. But we were the majority, and we also had more energy to shout, which is a very common way of facing neighborhood meetings.
Human geography has changed radically. There are hardly any boys and girls, which means that the playground has become an installation that reminds me of those that appear in the reports about Pripyat, a town near Chernobyl, abandoned after the explosion of the nuclear power plant; in a ghost facility. What does abound are (pre-)retired, retired and anxious (they are the young people I mentioned before). Of these last two are the groups. In the first are those who make calculations about how much they have left to reach the goal and under what (economic) conditions they will achieve it. They tend to look at retirees and (pre) retirees with a certain envy, since they are the same age, and while some of them go to the gym early in the morning wearing tights or shorts, and then have lunch in a group (they are usually former bank workers or former officials), they must continue working.
There is a second group, who are those who are most aggrieved. They are all over fifty or approaching sixty (or even a little older) and have lost their jobs. They abound, not only in the geography I inhabit. Unlike the former, who usually embrace the system and are only concerned about the percentage increase in their pensions, which is what makes them decide their vote, the latter are very angry; and they are part of the “polarized” group, willing to support whoever is willing to blow up (in a metaphorical sense) the institutions. Lucky that they paid for their apartments years ago, and that their sons and daughters, in their twenties and who live with them (this also happens in the first group) were able to have good studies. What there is is a broad consensus, in the first and second group, and among their young and educated children, that the future is going to be more screwed up than when each of us decided in the 90s to set up our lives on these farms.
At the last neighborhood meeting I was able to confirm that for years fewer and fewer people have attended the event; It wasn’t like that in the past. There are no longer pregnant women, we have white hair (there are quite a few bald people), and they talk about hair dyes to simulate gray hair. We no longer debate how to improve the facilities for boys and girls, because they have disappeared. We don’t talk about them either, because even though they live with us, young people make their own lives. We talked about how to improve elevator attendance, because if it fails, which happens more than it should, some people’s knees hurt and there is a lot of fear of strokes. Or we discuss the need to install a cement ramp at the entrance because someone has their father and mother walking with a stroller. There are also those who complain that teenagers go down to the patio to chat or smoke; I have always said that there are “boomers” who left common sense in the 80s; They like to betray the memory of their generation.
I forgot: years ago we had a play center installed in a basement in the group of properties where I live. It closed and in its place a municipal recreational center for retirees was installed. The advantage is that they will no longer be able to build a tourist apartment there, I think.
