When I write this column, the course hasn't started, I'm still on vacation. When I think about entering, the image that has come to mind is the greeting of the first day of work and an inevitable question: “So, have you gone through nice bakanzas?” and the truth will have to be told: yes, I have spent a good summer with those of the house, on the mountain. In Bizkitarte, the tragedy in our environment has hit fast: one of them has died abruptly, the other has committed suicide, a cancer has appeared again... in a widespread and frightening environment. The threats of war and famine are there, at the gates of Europe, we are beginning to realize that barbarism has been left to us. I don't know if I would have liked to have enjoyed the relationships with the child, with my neighbor, with my families and with the citizens I see gradually, taking care of the garden, making music and reading, trying to educate fears and uncertainties. I don't know if I'm going to have the posture of staying for a long time, of escaping the explosive whirlwind of working time, but at least look, yeah, I've spent a nice summer.

My greatest pleasure has been to read to me some books that I didn't know and measure their impact within me. This year’s poetry collection Hatsa and Lizar Begoña’s Japanese Lepardo poem book invite us to decentralize. Last April, Marie Alin published Les Bouffeurs anonymes (Jale anonymous), a special dystopia that explores the pleasures and rules of food. In this novel, an authoritarian state is guaranteed its legitimacy in protecting the health and well-being of citizens, and its dictatorship is based especially on food control. The protagonist is a gastronomic critic dedicated to spreading the rules invented by the State. Gradually, he is forced to reflect on the intake of human cattle, reflects on the relationships between nature and society and asks key questions: what to eat, how and how to manage the physical and moral appetite of people with the growth nature and political organizations can offer?
What I read next is theatre, from Czech Karel Čapek, 1937: La Maladie blanche (White Disease), back this year to French. Absurdly and grotestically, the playwright invents that a highly contagious disease from China has spread, causing millions of deaths. In Europe, researchers look more at zoos looking for cures, the rulers take advantage of the situation to open lies and manipulate media... Some see a dream stop in this situation to ignite war, impose authoritarianism, in a narrow solution. But there comes the doctor Galen, everyone has rubbed his mind! However, it warns the leading states that if they decide that they will denounce the secrecy of care, do not make more warriors... Oh, if the heads of vaccine companies against COVID-19 have read it and made it their own!

Finally, I read the other book by the writer Karel Čapek, translated last year into French: L’Année du Jardinier (“The Year of the Garden”). In this philosophical-poetic work, the author alludes to the duties, hopes and fears of the horticulturist, deducing that the human being must remain humble in the face of nature: nature cannot be controlled, the concept of property cannot be pressed. The garden and the world cannot be limited and appropriated. According to this lesson we should measure our actions in solidarity with our hunger and satiety.