Young people come to the elderly

Writers are doing what politicians—or at least some of them—continue to fail to do: restoring the dignity of our elders. The elderly have endured many grievances in recent years, the most evident of which was the neglect of healthcare they suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic. The documentary 7291 ( Juanjo Castro , 2025) has established a future for what happened in the Community of Madrid during the lockdown, but novels are already beginning to arrive in bookstores whose authors pay tribute to the elderly with the same tenderness with which Ulysses embraced his father, the sad and lonely Laertes, as soon as he docked in Ithaca.

The central theme in all these works is, logically, that of care. The most recent novel, Push the Sun (Pepitas, 2025), the debut novel by Dioni Porta (Barcelona, 1977), co-owner of the Barcelona bookstore Obaga, tells the story of an elderly man who watches over the health of his wife and sister-in-law, both trapped in their respective wheelchairs, during the days leading up to the outbreak of the pandemic. Porta admits that he has always been obsessed with old age and that, as a teenager, he enjoyed dressing up as an old man, looking at art works, and walking through the city with his hands clasped behind his back. “More than a trend, I'd say there's finally a balance,” he comments on the publishing phenomenon surrounding aging. “There have always been coming-of-age novels, as well as those featuring people of working age, but very few have placed the elderly at the center of the plot. Old age has always been underrepresented in literature. Perhaps the time has come to change that.”

The theme of caregiving is also at the heart of the novels by Júlia Peró (Barcelona, 1995) and Eduardo Romero (Oviedo, 1977). The former, Olor a hormiga (Reservoir Books 2024), unravels the relationship between an elderly woman and a young caregiver whom she, unable to remember her name, simply calls "la chica" (the girl ). Although it is fiction, it's not difficult to sense a certain autobiographical element, given that, at seventeen, Peró lived with her own grandmother, who was suffering from Alzheimer's. "Given that there are few literary references that deal with the subject of old age, and specifically female old age, I wouldn't speak of a boom, but of a snap," she says ironically. And then, more seriously, she adds: “In a world where our body is a work tool, where our value as people is surrendered to the culture of effort, exhausted, unproductive, and lazy bodies do not deserve respect.”

For his part, Asturian Eduardo Romero, considered one of our greatest exponents of so-called listening literature , depicts in Centímetro a centímetro (Pepitas, 2024) twenty-four hours of care for an elderly man by a young woman whose name we never learn, probably as a denunciation of the invisibility surrounding migrant women who care for our grandparents. The novel is a kind of dance in which the woman constantly holds the man: when she takes him to the bathroom, when she accompanies him on a walk, when she puts him back to bed… “I come from the world of sports and I know that many things need to change so that the elderly can exercise their own bodies and regain mobility,” the author reflects. “But, of course, if we don't increase the resources in nursing homes, nurses will still not have time to encourage the elderly to walk on their own and will choose to carry them from here to there.”

Obviously, there are also novels in which the caregivers are not hired people, but the children of suddenly aged parents. The overabundance of autobiographical novels makes it impossible to list all the novels on the subject here, so we will focus on the autobiographical narrative with which AJ Ponce (Santiago de Chile, 1995) won the Best Literary Works Award, unpublished, in Chile in 2022 and which is now available in our bookstores. In Vivero (editorial dosmanos, 2025), the author recounts the personal experience of caring for his own father, a victim of a neurodegenerative disease, for five years. The narrator is brutally honest in these pages and, in addition to analyzing the fragility of the man who brought him into the world, speaks about the feelings of guilt that caregivers experience when faced with the inappropriate thoughts that sometimes cross their minds.

⁄ Old age is today a kind of second maturity, hence the concept of 'fourth age' has been coined.

In the realm of fiction, but also about children who take on the care of their parents, journalist Pedro Simón 's (Madrid, 1971) latest novel, Los siguientes (Espasa, 2024), stands out. It shows the different attitudes three siblings have toward the decline that threatens their father. With this plot—and the premise that witnessing the decline of our parents is to anticipate our own—the author places an entire generation, those currently around fifty, in front of a mirror and asks them a question: which of these siblings will you be when it's your turn to take care of yours?

Fortunately, not all novels focus on the saddest side of aging. Many reflect medical advances and portray retirees as active, independent, and healthy people: “Old people are the new beatniks,” says Dioni Porta. “Nowadays, they are more motivated than other age groups. Look at the importance that the elderly have had in political events such as the independence process , the 15-M (with the yayoflautas), the fight for healthcare…” This involvement of older people in recent political movements has been reflected, for example, in the novel El dia de la independència (Alrevés, 2024) by Tuli Márquez , although the true independence that the elderly protagonist seeks is her own. It is clear, then, that old age is today a kind of second maturity, hence the coining of the concept of the fourth age to refer to the moment when decrepitude is already evident.

The longevity revolution has brought with it a new literature on old age, in which the elderly are no longer the submissive and dependent people we're accustomed to, but people capable of hitting the table and standing up to them. In this sense, the novel Urraca, Urraquita, Urraquitita (Urraca, Urraquita, Urraquitita, Urraca, Urraquita, Urraquitita) (Dos Bigotes, 2025) is extremely interesting. In this novel, Jaime Riba Arango (Vera, Almería, 1992) portrays an elderly village woman who suddenly sits down to await death under the only remaining orange tree on her property. "I wanted to talk about old age, not from a place of fragility, but from experience, rage, and struggle," explains the author. "My protagonist's gesture of sitting down to await death is not a surrender, but a rebellion." Indeed, in this novel, Jaime Riba Arango demonstrates the strength of women born in rural environments and, furthermore, breaks the association that many people still make between rurality and antiquity. "Because the rural world isn't dead," he adds. "Currently, the countryside represents youth, dynamics, and change."

Adriana Riva (Buenos Aires, 1980) also displays rebellion in her novel Ruth (Seix Barral, 2024), in which she puts into action an elderly woman who has had it all and, instead of staying home and lamenting the end of her productive life, takes advantage of the free time that retirement grants her to squeeze the most out of life. Even crazier is the plot by Jordi Ibáñez Fanés (Barcelona, 1962) in Good Night, Owl (Tusquets, 2025), a story of spies in the service of Russia in modern-day Barcelona that has a curious thing: the protagonists are elderly people touched by a thirst for knowledge. Even more daring is Marta Altieri 's (Seville, 1987) graphic novel, Hotel Abuel (Reservoir Books, 2025), in which the author opens the doors to a nursing home of the future inhabited by members of Generation Z, that is, by elderly people who stream, talk as if they were on TikTok, and maintain a more than active sexuality. "Everyone has the image of the dirty old man in mind, but not of the dirty old woman," says Júlia Peró. "This shows that the silencing of desire only affects us."

The theme of euthanasia and death in nursing homes also appears in novels from a less dramatic and more lighthearted perspective. Irene Cuevas (Madrid, 1991) constructs a cozy crime in Un momento de ternura y piedad (Reservoir Books, 2024) by imagining a woman who acts as a hitwoman for children who, eager to collect their inheritances, want to kill their parents. Curiously, this plot bears a close resemblance to that of Cien cuyes ( One Hundred Cuyes), a novel that won the 2023 Alfaguara Prize in which Gustavo Rodríguez (Lima, 1968) tells the story of a nurse who is offered a salary to kill the elderly people she cares for in the nursing home.

⁄ Not all of them describe the sad side of aging; many portray active, independent, and healthy retirees.

Obviously, not all novels featuring older people have been written by (relatively) young authors. Those who have already passed retirement age have also begun to analyze the new type of life they can now enjoy, as Anna Freixas (Barcelona, 1946) does in Jo, vella / Yo, vieja (I, old) (Ara, 2023 / Capitán Swing, 2024), a feminist reflection on how older women should enjoy the freedoms they have gained in recent years. Another example is the Basque writer Arantxa Urretabizkaia (San Sebastián, 1947), whose Azken Etxea / La última casa (The Last House) (Pamiela, 2023 / Consonni, 2024) tells the story of a woman who wants to do something usually reserved for young people: buy a house, an action that perfectly exemplifies the feeling of having a whole life ahead of her that many older people have today. This vitality is also present in Ultimate Love (Círculo de Tiza, 2023), a novel in which Dolores Payás (Manresa, 1955) portrays the passions of love at a mature age; and in Señoras Bien (Planeta, 2025), a humorous work in which Pilar Eyre champions the vital and active role of the same-sex women of Barcelona.

Of course, there are also authors who prefer to portray old age from more classical perspectives. Thus, Valentí Puig (Palma de Mallorca, 1949) has written a collection of poems, Llum enemiga (Enemies Light, Pagès, 2025), in which he reflects on the passage of time and accumulated experiences, offering a profound look at life and maturity. And Luis Antonio de Villena (Madrid, 1951) has published another collection of poems whose title anticipates its content: Miserable vejez (Visor). According to Villena, whitewashing old age is pointless. For him, old age is shit, period.

Interview with Adela Cortina “In their way of life, our grandparents were very different from those of today.”

A. Colomer A few years ago, Adela Cortina published an essay, Ética cosmopolita (Cosmopolitan Ethics, 2021), in which she denounced the wave of gerontophobia and ageism that became evident during the lockdown. According to the Valencian philosopher, our society discriminates against the elderly, arguing that they are unproductive, a burden on the state, and a threat to the sustainability of the social protection system. During the 2008 economic crisis, many families survived thanks to the pensions and savings of the elderly. A decade later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of those same elderly people were denied access to healthcare resources. How can a society be so ungrateful? Unfortunately, gratitude is a virtue that is not widely spread among the human species. Although it's true that human beings are reciprocal animals, willing to give as long as we receive something in return, the truth is that we increasingly tend to believe that everything is owed to us, that we have a right to everything, and that there's no reason to return the good received when the opportunity arises. In these cases, we practice forgetfulness, a lamentable forgetfulness. The bad thing is that an ungrateful society is an inhuman society, one that causes enormous harm. As the saying goes, quite wisely, "it is a sign of good birth to be grateful." In your essay, you note that, with the longevity revolution, the "age map" has changed. Now that the fourth age exists, what role do seniors play in society? As you said in Cosmopolitan Ethics , they play many indispensable roles. If it weren't for seniors, societies would have collapsed long ago. Although the essential point here is that all human beings, regardless of age, are self-sufficient, it turns out that the elderly are also a source of productivity: many families depend on the resources of an elderly person; grandparents care for their grandchildren, look after them, and sometimes educate them. To the point that some countries provide tax breaks for grandparents who care for their grandchildren. Furthermore, the elderly contribute to the consumption of a large amount of healthcare resources (pharmaceutical industry, hospitals, clinics, laboratories), require nursing homes, feed universities for the elderly, and are irreplaceable in the tourism sector, but also in charitable organizations. Sometimes they support young people and advise them with the knowledge that experience brings. When we talk about "sources of employment," many of them are related to caring for the elderly. Forty percent of consumption in our societies depends on the elderly. You define "gerontophobia" as a "suicidal attack on human dignity." Can you expand on this idea? Gerontophobia is the contempt for the elderly. Since every human being is valuable in and of themselves and therefore has dignity and deserves all respect, contempt for a person's age is an attack on that person's dignity. Just as with aporophobia, contempt for the poor for being poor is an attack on that person's dignity. But in the case of gerontophobia, it's also suicidal, because whoever despises someone for that reason will, if they don't die first, live to be old, be an old man. And then they are despising themselves in advance, which is suicidal and quite senseless. Do you think young people today have the same view of their elders as their parents did (or do)? No, they don't, but at this point I think it's mainly because the elderly have undergone enormous transformations in their habits and customs in step with social change. Of course, the elderly population has increased, but life expectancy remains a statistical measure. What's interesting for our topic is that societies have rejuvenated, not aged. With a few exceptions, our grandparents were completely different from today's in their way of dressing, their leisure time, their entertainment, their way of relating to young people, and their use of new technologies, which are homogenizing young people and adults. At the same age, our grandparents' lifestyles were very different from today's, and young people perceive this as well.