In times of concern about the growth of unwanted loneliness and difficulties in youth access to housing, apartments that shelter someone over 65 years of age and a university student under the same roof stand as an efficient alternative. Older people who enjoy physical and mental autonomy (a sine qua non requirement, since young people should not act as caregivers due to their lack of knowledge) give up a room in their home in exchange for boys and girls five or six decades younger. age keep them company.
María José Sánchez-Bustamante Páez is the owner of a house of 85 square meters and four rooms (including “the music room” and the “iron room”…) on San Antoni Maria Claret Street. She opens the door herself when the doorbell rings and leaves the visitor speechless, as it is incredibly well preserved. Everything that is said about this 91-year-old woman is not enough: she dresses in bright colors, walks at a good pace and her brain runs with agility, without lapses or digressions. María Laura Andrade Laso is waiting for him in the dining room, a 29-year-old girl born in Ambato (Ecuador) who is currently studying a master's degree in Migration Studies at the Pompeu Fabra University.
Mari and Lau have been living together since last November and are loving life. They met through the Viure i Conviure program of the Roure Foundation, after a team of psychologists interviewed them and decided that they had enough affinities to make a 'match'.
Your cohabitation agreement includes some guidelines. For example, the university student agrees to dedicate two and a half hours to the elderly person and to return home at 10:30 p.m., at the latest, without bringing company to the apartment. Of course, you can spend one night a week away from home. In exchange, the owner gives her a key and agrees to respect her privacy. For the rest, each one cooks and buys what she wants, although the usual thing is to share a table and tablecloth.
Since María José made the decision to host a university student, she has become accustomed to drinking the fig tea, aromatic waters and cherimoya smoothies that the young Ecuadorian anthropologist prepares. For her part, Laura's eyes widen every time María José cooks Catalan beans, a dish she didn't know.
“We usually share dinner and eat one or two days together a week,” says María José, who turned 91 a few days ago and celebrated for three days. The day before this journalist visited his home, he was at El Cangrejo Loco with eight acquaintances and had a great time; Shortly after our meeting he planned to go out to eat again with two married couples who were friends. Curiously, Laura is also celebrating her 29th birthday at this time, so they both had breakfast together at a pastry shop on Paseo Maragall and had a delicious apple pie. “She alone lives very well, but with good company she lives better,” admits María José.
It is not the only thing that these two women do together, who have developed a very special bond. Last Christmas they went to the now-defunct Comedia cinema in Barcelona to see Eight Moroccan Surnames. They also watch the Telecinco contest Chain Reaction together and cook while listening to boleros.
“What have I learned from Laura?” María José repeats the question. “Her sweetness, her knowing how to be, her understanding...,” she lists. “She has many virtues: she accompanies me to the doctor, she organizes my agenda, she helps me with my cell phone and technology…”
“What I have learned from Mari,” Laura says of her nonagenarian friend, “is to live with joy. And also the importance of having friends. She has a phrase: 'friends heal'; and it is true,” she adds. “I don't feel like Mari's caregiver or her granddaughter, but rather like a friend to whom I can tell everything,” she points out.
“When the student's motivation is purely economic, it usually doesn't work,” intervenes Olga Ibáñez, the psychologist who has worked in this program since 1998, who did not want to miss the interviews.
In 2021, María José was left alone after the death of her brother Damián, for whom she felt great devotion. It was then that she took the step to sign up for a program that has the support of the Barcelona City Council and the Research and Universities department of the Generalitat. From what Ibáñez says, “most older people want to grow old in their homes and this program is a perfect alternative.”
“Nowadays, the normal thing – highlights the psychologist – is for grandparents to live in their homes, because their children's apartments are small and do not fit. Furthermore, they work and are not at home,” she points out. “So grandparents say: to be alone in your house all day, I stay in mine with my memories, my schedules and my rhythm.”
Ángel Cotanda Carbonell, 86 years old, also says he is delighted to live with Marlin Galviz Arias, a 30-year-old Colombian university student. As one of the oldest participants in the program, Mr. Cotanda keeps in a display case in the dining room photos of all the university students who have already passed through his house. “Eixe is the meu fillol. “He is Luis and he is from Peru,” he indicates with an unmistakable Valencian accent, pointing his finger at a photo of Axel Luis, the first student he had and with whom he continues to maintain a close relationship.
“This is the second girl I had, whose name was Clara,” he continues. “This other one is Patri. And this Manuela, who was the fourth, so Marlin is the fifth”, resolves this man born in Llíria (Valencia) who carries his people in his heart. “All the paellas I make are with chicken, rabbit, batxoqueta (green bean) and garrofó (a large flat legume that adds flavor to the paella). What they make here is not paellas, it is rice,” he warns the sailors.
The fact that Cotanda considered Axel Luis his godson is no coincidence. They both spent the pandemic together and shared unforgettable moments. There was also Messi, the little dog that his children gave to Ángel when his wife died, for whom time does not seem to have passed, judging by the antics he performs, worthy of the Argentine star.
One of the things that Ángel and Axel Luis did was collect wood on the street, which they then cut in the small workshop that still exists on the ground floor terrace. With them they built an urban garden where today chard, spinach, broad beans, cabbages, even a small lemon tree are planted. It's not hard to imagine they had a great time.
Marlin nods amused. “What has Angel taught me? That we must try to be well, as he always is, to be able to help others,” she says. “And also to be sociable: Ángel is good to everyone and everyone is good to him. When we go along Paseo Sant Joan, many people come up to say hello,” she says about her roommate.
The ground floor where they currently live was a shoe warehouse years ago that Ángel refurbished with his hands. Sitting in a rocking chair in the living room, Marlin, who has a degree in psychology, listens with amusement to the adventures of her host: how much she liked the Primitiva de Llíria (the oldest civil music band in Spain); her cycling times; on Thursdays she would go down to the old bed of the Túria River in Valencia to see the horses; her indelible memories of Xera (València), the town near Requena where his wife had some land; how well she eats in the soup kitchen next to her house...
“I would give Ángel a ten or a twenty. We never argue. The truth is that I had a preconceived idea of what it would be like to live with an older person, but he is always cracking jokes and is very kind,” he says. “We argue – Ángel intervenes – because she has no work and she is angry, when she knows that she will never lack a plate of food, because my house already has it. But she gets angry because she doesn't have a job and I want her to be happy and not suffer,” he explains.
“Intergenerational friendship enriches us and gives us a sense of life-affirming and energizing connection,” writes psychology professor Marc Schulz in his book The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Study on Happiness. Lessons from the world's longest study on happiness).
Another research from the University of Glasgow indicates that loneliness shortens life and that those who do not receive visitors have a 39% greater chance of premature death. Currently, there are 9,479,010 million elderly people living in Spain, of which more than 1.7 million are over 70 years old and live in a situation of unwanted loneliness, according to the CSIC study A profile of elderly people in Spain. Spain (2023). Projections for 2040 suggest there could be more than 14.2 million older people, 27.4% of the population.
On the other side of the scale, young people are becoming emancipated later, at 30.3 years on average. The stratospheric housing prices and the continuous pressure from foreign investors (in 2023 they bought 21.4% of all homes) and tourism make emancipation an entelechy for many young people.
“Intergenerational coexistence between an older person and a young person is a win-win for both, so it is very likely that this trend will increase in the future,” concludes Olga Ibáñez, the psychologist, while the silhouettes of Ángel and Marlin begin to fade along Paseo Sant Joan on their walk to a nearby greengrocer.
