Mercè Tarruella missed the first three years of her daughter's life because she was bedridden, and the little girl was always with her grandmother. After giving birth, she contracted an infection that affected her spinal cord, leaving her paraplegic at a time when doctors didn't know what to do with these patients: the only prospect they had was to remain in bed. However, Mercè's life changed radically the day she met Dr. Miquel Sarrias, who had returned from England with the mission of establishing a new hospital in Barcelona designed for people who, like her, couldn't walk. She still remembers the day, 62 years ago, when she was told she could get out of bed, after having already resigned herself to never being able to: "I had never seen a wheelchair. There weren't any in Barcelona. Paraplegics were confined to their homes, and they died young."

If you read, you'll live longer. And this isn't a threat, but scientific evidence. To be exact, you'll live 20% longer than people who don't read, a figure that is slightly lower for magazine and newspaper readers. study published in Social Science & Medicine, led by the University of Michigan, which links reading with longevity and has tracked the reading habits of more than 3,600 people over 50 years old in the United States for 12 years.

At the Guttmann Institute headquarters in Badalona, ​​​​high in the mountains next to Can Ruti Hospital, a dozen wheelchair-bound patients took out their phones and took photographs of the team preparing to compete in the Titan Desert, the demanding cycling race that crosses the Sahara Desert. For the first time, a Guttmann team will participate. "It's nice to see how other patients look at what people who have been through difficult times like them can achieve," says Dr. Alex del Arco, a traumatologist at the Institute. Del Arco, who is passionate about sports, participated in the Titan Desert in 2015 and stated that he would not return after suffering from gastroenteritis. Now he will return with someone else.