The Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and the 2030 Agenda has imposed a fine of one million euros on the car rental company Avis for charging its clients for fine management. As detailed this Wednesday by the department led by Pablo Bustinduy, the company charged a fee of between 33.88 and 45 euros under the heading "administrative sanction management expenses" to users who had committed a traffic violation while using a rental vehicle.

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.

My friend Alícia told me one day that she would have liked to have a village to spend the summer in. It is a very different concept to have a village than to have a second home on the beach or anywhere else. In the village you have roots, connections, you surely have relatives there or with a bit of luck your grandparents still live there. Nothing happens in the village, there isn't much and for not having, perhaps there isn't even a beach. There life stops, the days pass slowly and lazily and the day's work is just waiting for it to be less hot to go out and play in the street.

The other day, at a social gathering (they call it baby shower and I haven't been able to sleep since), there was a mother with a small child in a stroller. She was next to me, so I could see how she was looking, all worried, at children's reels on her mobile phone (a phone the size of the middle slice of a rustic loaf). To spare myself the sight of the creature passing, with its little fingers, disturbing frogs with a narco accent, I made a joke. The kind of jokes you make to kids. Then the mother looked at me, condescendingly, and said: "You'll be a good grandmother." If my daughter made a joke to the same creature or said things to it, the deceased wouldn't tell her: "You'll be a good mother."

Courage, energy, fun, cooperation, shrewdness, gratitude, admiration... These are some of the terms that are intertwined throughout the story The grandmother has a lot of energy (Editorial Octaedro) with the energy that Carme Puxan, the protagonist of the story, carries throughout her journey in Ecuador. The book, written by her son, Francesc Balagué, illustrated by Joana Bruna, and available since April at Joanabruna.com, tells the adventures of the grandmother of Luka, 12 years old, and Kael, 9 years old, who also appear in the story.

I see the nursery school's number on the screen and my heart stops.

"I consider myself a somewhat atypical grandfather because, for a number of reasons, including the fact that I don't live in the same city as my grandchildren, I'm a long-distance grandfather. Also, because of my personality and hobbies, I have a pretty busy life with a number of activities I do regularly, and therefore, I don't have Josep available either." His case is less common, but increasingly prevalent in a context where intensive care for grandchildren has been a social pillar. Although there's no manual for being a grandparent, the data reflects a well-established pattern: 42% of Spanish grandparents (between 55 and 69 years old) with minor grandchildren take care of them daily or at least once a week, mainly because the parents can't (41%). These tasks include picking them up from school or extracurricular activities (39%) and doing leisure activities like going to the park or for a snack (39%). according to the V Mapfre Foundation Senior Consumer Barometer (2025)

Between four and six in the afternoon, while his parents are still working, Luca Azañón typically spends time with his maternal grandparents during the week. They pick him up from daycare, have snacks and play together at home, and go to the park or shopping. When his two-and-a-half-year-old son falls ill, Hilario and Jacinta also take care of him. His parents, Carlos and Miriam, point out that the grandparents' role "is essential" in being able to manage everything, especially when his work shifts change and he has to call on his in-laws to care for the child. "My shifts rotate, so if we didn't have their support, maybe I should ask to be transferred to another department where the shifts were more consistent," Carlos acknowledges. Beyond being a vital resource when it comes to balancing work and family life, the grandparents and grandson also enjoy leisure time and free time with the rest of the family.

My eye is twitching, and it's only July. And I don't want to complain too much because I'm incredibly lucky to be a teacher and can balance my four children's vacations well. Three months, four teenagers, four meals a day. They eat a lot, and the issue is no longer making lunch, it's planning it and making it substantial and satisfying. Just think, if I have to start coating chicken breasts with breadcrumbs, I should have started in April.

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.