And you, where have you gone on vacation?

The resumption of work and school activities is approaching. Sant's Day, we're back! With the joy of reunion, many conversations begin with the question: "And you, where did you go on vacation?" This is a dreaded question for those who haven't left home. A bit lazy, they are forced to say: nowhere. Vacation is a time of leisure and rest, but it is also, above all, a place, a different geographical space, where you can go for a change of scenery and forget the work routine (or the work that causes suffering). Some people take advantage of it to see the world (Bali, Burma), others go on an excursion through Ripollès, and others go to the beach for a few days with a gang of friends. Everyone goes out, of course, but this going out, what human direction does it take? They can be strangers, visitors, and—worst of all—tourists. Tourists are predators, exploiters of places. The outsider looks at it from the outside (hence the word); he doesn't seek to understand what he sees or delve deeper: he merely passes by for a while. The visitor, on the other hand, sometimes tries to empathize, but only for a few hours. In all three cases, the place isn't experienced from within. Going, one goes on vacation, but one rarely experiences it in the sense of being, because it would mean wanting to stay, it would mean a certain immobility and also a certain availability. A place is something transitory, temporary. It's the opposite of territory. Territory comes from the earth. Roots are put down in the earth. Exploring a territory is much more than taking a tour, like these tourists happily perched on the tour bus with their sunglasses on their noses. What kind of city can you explore from the second floor of a tour bus? Well, you can explore a place, but territory is something very different. Now that people are going back home, that's their territory, because it's where, for better or worse, they've sunk their roots. Sometimes we don't like the place we come from, or the place where we've made a life, because it jars us a bit. But it's our territory. A territory can also be mental or spiritual: it's the symbolic space we remember, we once inhabited inside, and it inhabits us inside.

During vacations, everyone posts wonderful photographs on Instagram of the places they've visited. Places where they've hiked, eaten traditional dishes, traveled. The place can be a backdrop for the human figure. It can be a landscape. On the other hand, the territory must be explored on foot, smelled, and we must give it time to sink deep into us. We don't see the territory in the photograph: only a place.

There are many cultural initiatives in the territory. I recently received the beautiful magazine. Taga, which is published in Ripollès about Ripollès, and I have thought about the primordial importance of bringing the territory back to life, where the paths – as Eva Martínez-Picó says in one of the articles – "are not the public park of a large city."

Now the question that many people must ask themselves, returning from vacation, is if they know for sure where they are returning: if to a random place, in their territory... or nowhere.