The reality is that if we are lucky enough, we are getting older with each passing day, there is no way to go back in time and get younger. Míriam Feu, head of Social Analysis and Incidence at Cáritas Diocesana de Barcelona, commented that we will be facing a demographic change, boosted by a decrease in fertility and an increase in life expectancy. We are experiencing an ageing society. Cecilia Rossel, Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation at the Catholic University of Uruguay, said that Uruguay is following a very similar pace to Europe, and that in the next 35 years the elderly will go from representing 15% of the population to 30%. This will pose social and economic challenges.
According to Eduard Sala, director of Cáritas Diocesana de Barcelona, ageing depends on the postcode, leisure and quality of life, among other factors. It is a very uneven process, a process for which nobody gives you a manual explaining what it means to grow old. We forget that we all have an expiration date, and that if we are lucky, one day we will also sail through life in search of the non-existent manual that explains what we should expect from the new stage of life.
‘The obligation of universities is to be connected to the community and to be aware of cultural change,’ said Dr Joan-Andreu Rocha Scarpetta, dean of the Pere Tarrés-URL Faculty of Social Education and Social Work. Knowing what is happening around us allows us to devise solutions or ways of dealing with it. Sala emphasised that now is the time to take care of those who have taken care of us, it is a duty to move from citizenship to ‘citizenship’, as we are increasingly fragile and in need of each other.
The ‘E-cuida’ project, a platform that offers information, services and necessary resources about caring for a person, in order to improve the quality of the non-professional caregiver and indirectly that of the person being cared for, was presented by Albert Baulo, head of the area of project management and digital transformation at the Pere Tarrés Foundation.
As a community, with or without the help of platforms, we must empathise with the elderly and ensure that the conditions in which they live are dignified and offer help where it is needed. In the future we will want the younger generations, and those yet to come, not to neglect us. So let us try, in the present, not to neglect them.