For strictly personal reasons, this columnist has been out of action for the past few months. Some reader of La Vanguardia must have noticed it by the absence of his articles on these pages. Unfortunately, the world has not collapsed, nor has Spain cracked, nor has the mayor of his town even changed. I regret having to admit it so openly, but it has been confirmed that society can live without my contributions and there will be no shortage of people telling the Government and outside the Government that without them the economy, literature, and, of course, journalism
What has happened to me during this forced leisure time is that I have had a lot of time, an endless amount of time, to watch television. It was necessary to pay ten euros a week for the possibility of turning on the television, but I considered the expense as a cultural investment. I was also able to check how technology is advancing, because there was an artifact that warned me of the time I had left and I have to say to the credit of the company that owns it that the widget was not wrong. When he warned me that I had an hour left, it was fulfilled like the Government’s announcements: there was an hour left and there was nothing more to discuss. Science continues to make tremendous progress.
What interested me the most was advertising. During the endless periods in which the television abducted me there was some important event: Christmas, the arrival of Santa Claus, the always cordial visit of the Kings of the Orient or Valentine’s Day, details that the beauty industry knew how to perceive . And so, I was able to verify the existence of hundreds, maybe thousands of products to make a scent that makes you fall in love, to have delicious skin, to be believable when you take years off, to remove wrinkles, to fight pain, to heal bruises , for everything that is part of human and even feline and canine happiness.
I have come to an elementary, if not very scientific, conclusion: we age because we want to. Any physical or aesthetic problem can be combated, and in a pleasant way. I will not censor myself: any problem can be solved even erotically. It’s all in the brands. Everything is in pharmacies and parapharmacies. It’s all in the advertising.
