Spain and Europe today appear to us as partial refuges, with structures that, far from being solid, are fragmented and incomplete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00c1lvaro Pombo, recently awarded the Cervantes Prize, had - according to himself - \"many years\" with his speech prepared, in case he was ever fortunate enough to receive such a high literary recognition. This text, entitled Phenomenology of fragility<\/em>written a long time ago and kept in a drawer, nevertheless seems to have been written for this very moment. Pombo reminds us that fragility is today one of the great issues affecting both Spain and the whole world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Didn't we feel that fragility just a few days ago, when a technological failure left us incommunicado for hours? Suddenly, our hyper-connected and automated world collapsed, and we had to resort to the most basic creativity and ingenuity to get by. In his speech - which I recommend listening to in the voice of Mario Crespo - Pombo points out how fragility manifests itself not only in technical situations, but also in the face of illness, loneliness, injustice, and perhaps most worryingly, in the face of the loss of convictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he is not wrong to say that we live in a society that is increasingly difficult to understand. In this scenario of uncertainty, both Spain and Europe are perceived as vulnerable structures. If we do not speed up the steps towards true integration - with a unified market and a common voice - how will we be able to stand firm against powers like the United States or China? If we do not react, we risk becoming irrelevant. And with it, fragility will only deepen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because, in the end, this fragility accompanies us on a daily basis, like an invisible layer adhered to our skin. Pombo closes his speech by moving from the fragility in Cervantes' work to the fragility that has marked his own life. Ortega y Gasset recalled that \"Don Miguel de Cervantes was a profound and poor man\". And it is here that Pombo finds a kind of answer: perhaps, for Spain to achieve true greatness and manage to overcome its fragility, we must all, at some point, go through depth and poverty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Espa\u00f1a y Europa se nos presentan hoy como refugios parciales, con estructuras que, lejos de ser s\u00f3lidas, resultan fragmentadas e incompletas. \u00c1lvaro Pombo, recientemente galardonado con el Premio Cervantes, llevaba \u2014seg\u00fan \u00e9l mismo\u2014 \u00abmuchos a\u00f1os\u00bb con su discurso preparado, por si alguna vez ten\u00eda la fortuna de recibir tan alto reconocimiento literario. Ese texto, titulado […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":44780,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"servicios":[],"sectores":[],"class_list":["post-44575","en-los-medios","type-en-los-medios","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n