For strictly personal reasons, this chronicler has been out of action in recent months. Some reader of La Vanguardia will have noticed this due to the absence of his articles in these pages. Unfortunately the world did not collapse, nor did Spain break up, not even the mayor of his town 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 those in the Government and outside the Government that without them the economy, literature, and, of course, journalism improve.
What happened to me during that time of forced laziness was that I had a lot of time, endless time, to watch television. You had to pay ten euros a week for the ability to turn on the television, but I considered that expense as a cultural investment. I was also able to see how technology advances, because there was a device that warned me of the time I had left and I must say in honor of the company that owns it that the device was not wrong. When he told me that I had one hour left, it was fulfilled like the Government announcements: there was one hour left and there was nothing more to discuss. The sciences continue to advance tremendously.
What interested me the most was the advertising. During the infinite periods in which I was abducted by the television, there was some important event: Christmas, the arrival of Santa Claus, the always cordial visit of the Three Wise Men or Valentine's Day, details that the beauty industry knew how to perceive. And so, I was able to verify the existence of hundreds, perhaps thousands of products to smell that you fall in love with, to have delicious skin, to be credible when you lose years, to remove wrinkles, to combat pain, to cure piles, for everything which is part of human and even cat and dog happiness.
I came to an elementary conclusion, although it is not very scientific: we age because we want to. Any physical or aesthetic problem can be combated, and in a pleasant way. I'm not going to censor myself: any problem can be solved even in an erotic way. It's all in the brands. Everything is in pharmacies and parapharmacies. It's all in the advertising.
