This Sunday the kiosk on my street closed. Its owner, Jorge, had been saying for months that things were bad. He recently told me that in a year it would be closed for sure. The math didn’t work out. In his kiosk, near Berlin Park, in Madrid, you could find books, CDs, videos, bags, lighters, t-shirts… “One day”, I told him, “we will buy bread and milk here”. Your customers are (were) older people. And they bought mostly The reason AND ABCbecause in this neighborhood they vote to the right. Next to the kiosk there is a lot fashionable. I have never seen any young man buy a newspaper there and enjoy it with coffee. On Sunday Jorge started crying when I asked him if I could kiss him goodbye. He had been selling newspapers for 32 years, he told me. Now he returns to his first job, a butcher. He was lucky to find another job. And meanwhile I’m surprised every time I see someone on the street with a newspaper in their hand. It is already a rarity and, at the same time, a sign of identity. We are remnants of the Gutenberg era. We are digital, yes, not all of us, but paper reminds us that there was a time when your paper newspaper defined you and made you part of a community.
Aurora Minguez Santos. Madrid
Respect the presumption of innocence
Some prosecutors seem to agree with the Popular Party’s private accusation and have torn their clothes, very offended, because they believe that the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has interfered in justice by declaring, before the pronouncement of the sentence, that he is convinced that Álvaro García Ortiz, Attorney General of the State, is innocent. And they proclaim it without blushing and without realizing (and this is an unforgivable oversight) that, until a conviction is passed, the State Attorney General is innocent. It is about the right to the presumption of innocence, which for those who accuse him and for those who would like him convicted, does not seem to exist. Will they also believe that proclaiming one’s innocence before sentencing is a threat? Wouldn’t it be the opposite?
María Teresa Caravaca de Juan. Seville
Where has the romance in football gone?
For a long time now, men’s professional football has lost, in my opinion, all its ethical sense. There were only two debts that football had to pay off, even if you weren’t a fan of these teams: a World Cup for the Netherlands and a European Championship for Atleti. Today, faced with the news of the billions of euros that a fund will invest in that club, one of the two distances herself emotionally from me. In fact, the only tournament in my opinion that has football in its most honest definition is the Copa del Rey. A tournament where anyone can eliminate anyone. A reservoir of emotions apart from the excessive exploitation of the ball. First there was obviously money and business but, being excessive, they did not even approach the level of economic absurdity that prevails today. Some of us say enough is enough and we hope, in the field of men’s football, for a Copa del Rey that takes us back to other times when certain things were worth it.
Juan Luis López Pérez. Totana (Murcia)
