Jordi Évole has highlighted the so-called “iron generation”. That Spanish generation that did not enjoy any Erasmus, nor the Interrail, nor the youth card, nor the cultural bonus. Those who couldn't study because they had to work. A generous generation. That conquered rights. Who fought for the public.
I belong to that generation. I was born in 1951 in a shanty in the suburbs of the town of Hortaleza in Madrid next to the UVA neighborhood. That generation that went hungry, because in my neighborhood, Querol, they went hungry. There was no running water, no paved streets, and when it rained, new shacks flooded.
There were no public schools and it was Mrs. Aurora who taught us to read and write at home, without chairs or desks. The generation of the key around the neck, because our parents were working and couldn't come pick us up after school. And to prevent me from falling into the law of the street, when I turned 7, my mother put me in the boarding school for orphans, La Paloma, an orphanage where they barely taught me the four rules, because I misread the Álvarez Encyclopedia and, yes, the catechism to the letter.
And at the age of 14 I started working as a bellboy, and when I left I went to study high school at a night academy because it was the only way to get out of that horror. And I left. And I studied Journalism at the newly opened Faculty of Information Sciences and in my first year I went to look for a job and I found it with Manu Leguineche as a guy for everything at the Colpisa agency. And I fought against the dictatorship, and I was court-martialed for writing The Black Book of Vitoria, which was kidnapped and banned.
And despite all that hardship, he had more future than the current generation of young people from whom we have taken away any life plan, the hope and the ideals of living in a better world. We were bad, but we could only get better. They have all those “goodies” that Jordi Évole talks about, but they can only get worse.
This is how economics professor J.I. Conde Ruiz and author of the book Youth Atracada (Península) with his daughter Carlotta Conde Gasca, which is now in its third edition: “Jordi – he says in a tweet – I think this book can help you understand the true situation of young people and how they have it worse than when we were young.”
Two reports have recently been made public that portray growing economic inequality between parents and children. The first is that of the Afi Emilio Ontiveros Foundation, in which it is stated that they are a losing generation. They have worse salaries than 20 years ago and more difficulties in accessing housing and being able to become emancipated. The second is from BBVA, which indicates that a third of parents help their children make ends meet, which is deeply humiliating.
Maybe we should rethink what we are doing with our young people. Maybe we should dedicate more money to education and bet on the future, even if we grandparents have to tighten our belts like the working middle class is doing.
