Nowadays being old is politically incorrect. To avoid using the word, a series of euphemisms have been invented. For example, some newspapers have a section called Longevity. Training programs are announced for senior adults or seniors 65+. The word old or grandparent for an unknown person is considered derogatory. There is also the word ageism to define discriminatory treatment towards older people.Before, Catalans affectionately called Francesc Macià The Grandfather. Although he was old (he was seventy-two when he took over the presidency of the Generalitat in April 1931), the people loved him as if he were family, hence this nickname. At that time, and in a more traditional society, cultural practices placed the elderly person at the center. In Macià's case, there was something more: his figure was revered for the trust people placed in his way of taking care of the country. He was old and, above all, he was trustworthy because he had experience.What has happened to the veneration and respect for grandparents? We could isolate at least two factors from today's world: on the one hand, the non-acceptance of the inexorable passage of time. Everything must be reversible and fast. Technology, a continuous present, does not foresee time with consequences. A second factor is the contempt for experience. Experience includes not only the set of experiences a person has accumulated over time but, above all, what they have learned over the years, the result of having lived. The contemporary world rejects the elaboration time that experience requires to be transmitted and understood.Currently, there is the idea that growing old is an injustice and a problem that, in the future and with the help of technoscience, we will be able to solve. Meanwhile, it bothers everyone a lot. Old people do not want to grow old and do everything possible to delay the moment. Young people complain that they have to look after old people, especially now during the holidays, when cities empty and families have to take turns. They find it hard to accept that old people are old, because they do not want to see that they will be too.The French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller once said that being old is being inhabited by the same desire as always without having the physical resources to make it apparent. In this sense, being old ultimately means ending up confronting the limit of the precariousness of the body and sometimes also of the mind. Contemporary society rejects any limit that obstructs omnipotence: Trump is the paradigm of the old man who pretends not to be one.Being old means legitimizing the memory of what we have learned in life. The duty of society as a whole is to empower this life, the experience it entails in teaching the younger ones what the old have learned from all that they have lived through. Thus, future generations will know who they are, where they come from. They will acquire a sense of belonging and legitimacy.Then we will remember Macià, and the other grandparents and the lessons of his life.

Life expectancy has doubled in a century in Spain. And in the last 50 years it has gone from 73.5 to 84 years in Catalonia. A revolution that is not only biological or sanitary, but also cultural, according to the biochemist and science communicator Pere Estupinyà. In his latest book, What do you want to be when you grow up, he explores how today's 70 years have nothing to do with the 70 years of previous generations, and argues that it is a stage that can perfectly be the best of life.

Three weekday mornings, Lídia takes care of her one-and-a-half-year-old grandson. She's already at home by nine: she gives him breakfast, helps him get dressed, and spends the morning playing with him until his mother returns from work at noon. "It's not hard for me," assures this sixty-seven-year-old grandmother.

CaixaBank has launched a strategy to attract customers over 60, a growing segment of the population. The bank, which has more than four million customers across Spain over the age of 65 and manages 34% of retirement pensions, has decided to launch a range of products and services aimed at this population, following the guidelines set out in the 2025-2027 strategic plan. The proposal includes alternatives for financial planning, but also leisure, training, and care options.

Manel is 82 years old and Maria Àngels is 80. Both are widowed and have been together for eighteen years. They met dancing. On the dance floor at the Imperator, of course. The ritual is repeated every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, and the neighbors on Carrer de Còrsega and Passeig de Gràcia witness it with delight. It's a spectacle, a beautiful spectacle. The line in the street, the lively conversation, the jokes, the complicity. They are between 65 and 80 years old and their energy hasn't left them. They share setbacks, absences, health scares, a career already lived, children, grandchildren... Each with their own circumstances and one commonality, a renunciation they are unwilling to make: for all of them, the Imperator is sacred. Manel and Maria Àngels have their gang, and they all sit at the bus stop waiting for the club's doors to open one more day. Maria Josefa (76), Margarita (80), Amanda (76), Manoli (67) and Elena (73). They chat endlessly, joke around, and tell each other about their lives, even though they already know each other's lives by heart. Carles (83) joins the gathering; he lives in Gavà and comes here every day on purpose: "What I like most are the people I meet. I could stay at home, but I love dancing and it's really good for my health." "For me, it's like a psychologist and a gym combined," says Manoli. And Elena: "It's our therapy; no one has sore feet." "We're a loyal group, we joke around a lot, we have a great time. Like a family!" Ah! It's essential to move well, because that way it makes things even more exciting.