Vivo

María stopped eating bread two years ago. Then she eliminated sugar, the little beer with appetizers, and practically any ultra-processed food. She started walking 12,000 steps daily, stopped using the elevator to always take the stairs, and signed up for daily strength classes. Additionally, she bought a watch that measures her sleep and every morning checks an app that calculates her “biological age.” She is 66 years old and, yet, says she has never felt so afraid of aging.

“I have always been a very olfactory person,” admits Laura López-Mascaraque. So much so that, as a child, her parents scolded her because before trying any food she needed to smell it. And she even used her sense of smell like a radar: “If I didn’t like someone, I didn’t want to give them a kiss,” she confesses. To that sensitivity was added a fascination surely uncommon decades ago. “While my friends wanted to be hairdressers or artists, I said I wanted to study and become a neurosurgeon.” For that reason, she decided to study the great forgotten sense: one that “was always left behind” and whose interest seemed reserved for a few fascinated by “that chemical world that surrounds us,” and who “knew how to appreciate its beauty and understand the emotions, memories, and experiences it can awaken,” she says.

“No, the elderly are not a big expense. Longevity is an investment, these people have contributed throughout their working life and will continue to contribute from 65 onwards. And even if at 80 or 85 they have dependency, they will also continue contributing, because the services they need generate economic and social return.” This is how emphatically Pedro Cano, the first general director of the Gent Gran of the Generalitat de Catalunya, expresses the great importance of the senior group in our society.

Flat abdomens, extremely thin arms and legs, almost geometric bodies with well-defined bones. A girl explains to the camera, in a soft and low voice, a series of habits that have allowed her to achieve the body of her dreams, a body that is extremely thin.

Lourdes proudly states that her sixth decade has been thrilling, fun, and challenging: she succeeded in digital journalism thanks to her Twitter activity, took on professional challenges such as directing a magazine, and now, having turned 70, continues with her vacation rental business in Malvarrosa and is finalizing the details of her first autofiction novel. In it, this Valencian woman, who prefers not to reveal her last name, addresses a “very surprising” sentimental experience: a romance with a Dane 16 years younger than her. But first, let’s go back a little in time.