Praise for the +70s

1. This March, Barça sent a survey to its members asking about what's working best for the club: women's football. The pile of folders asking for things Barça should be doing better is getting higher every day, but in the online survey, they ask for an opinion on why you attend, or don't, matches to see the European champions. When you've finished answering, they ask you if you want to answer what area of Catalonia you live in, whether you're male or female, and "what age range do you fall into?" And they give you six options: 18-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, over 70. I understand why underage members aren't consulted, but it's surprising that, in most surveys, after 70, there are no more categories... of old age. Whether you're 71, 85, or 94, the poll already places you on the brink of the abyss. Beyond that, nothing. You're 60, and look, you still have a track record. But, in the world of pollsters, when you're 70, it's all over the place. In a club where 8,000 members are over 80, in a country where life expectancy is 84, this limitation skews the results, is disrespectful, and, above all, demoralizes the more experienced population.

2. There are a handful of surveys that, even worse, place the last age bracket at "over 64." When the CEO does this, stratifying the population up to the age of retirement—more or less—it shocks me. However, the CEOSurvey of Linguistic Uses The recently published 2023 plan does take into account the age pyramid and life expectancy. It distinguishes the population from 15 years old to "85 years and over." At least, they've given more leeway, adapting to the average lifespan of the population and giving a little more leeway, and breathing room, to the person looking at it from this privileged vantage point. This reflection is even more pertinent this week when we learned that, according to Idescat (National Institute of Statistics and Census), within ten years there will be two million people over 65 in Catalonia. That's 328,000 more than now. Demographics don't lie, and the aging trend is evident. In 2035, 7% of Catalans will be over 80 years old, and the number of people who will have blown out their 100 candles will have doubled compared to today.

3. But who is old? The magazine Nature Stanford University recently published a study that dares to determine the age at which a person reaches old age. In biological terms, they consider it to be 78 years old. After studying the cases of 4,263 people, Stanford scientists believe that the stage of late maturity lasts until age 78, which is when they perceive the most evident physical and psychological changes. Nothing we didn't already know. Or nothing we don't perceive in the older people we love: they sleep less, have less muscle mass, less memory, less vision, they feel worse, their bones weaken, wrinkles multiply, and blemishes appear on their skin. All these changes are unstoppable. And, sooner or later, they will come to us all as we go through life. Because as everyone knows, the alternative is always worse.

4. In recent years, as people from other parts of the world come to care for us, the Dictionary has also incorporated new words referring to abuse at this vital moment. Ageism, for example, is an ugly word for a worse term: it's "a discriminatory attitude toward a person as a result of their age." Surveys that park those over 70 on the exit ramp, just like that, are also a form of contempt to be avoided. In the meantime, we can sing that beautiful anthem by Lluís Llach, "Old is so beautiful. When the limits of time, of art, of song, of me, of you, and of the world open up. Life."