Is the CORONA VIRUS really the solution to CLIMATE CHANGE?(QUARANTINE: DAY 11)

COVID-19 is being devastating against us, especially for elderly people. It is killing many persons not just in Spain but in the whole world, the cypher of deaths is too high and we don´t even know the real world ´s cypher due that the misinformation of some governments and the inability to know the effect in underdeveloped countries. A measure that has been taken is the quarantine, which has reduced the number of infected people and it´s helping to slow down and decrease the curve of the pandemic.

This quarantine is key for the solution of this problem and we have to respect it and be solidary, and if we are given freedom to go outside we must be sensible and be aware of the risk that it is for us and for other people.

This quarantine is being as I said good for ourself, but also for our planet. While we are being quarantined the global pollution has decreased dramatically due that people are not using cars and staying at home. Not using the car has reduce a lot the amount of CO2 that is released to the atmosphere and has made the air quality in the cities much better, it has also cleared the sky of big cities providing photographs that show a shocking difference.  Also, the factories have slowed down their production because of the people staying at home and most flyings have been cancelled.
Many animals have returned to their habitats now that human action has stoped and we can even see them in urbane areas. Furthermore, water quality has improved.


This improvement on  our environment in just one month has made a big difference. And we are hoping some of these new habits will remain when COVID-19´s quarantine finishes. We must learn something from this tough experience and maybe some people will keep in mind this progress and use less their cars, recycle and do the shopping conscientiously.

To put it in a nut shell, the quarantine is helping us and our planet. We mustn´t be childish and respect it staying at home. Moreover we should use this time to think about the planet and how can we stop climate change.

Too skinny for the catwalk

Fashion industry is everywhere; social media, magazines, tv or on the streets. And it is represented by their models, that over the years have set the trends and have been the image of the perfect body. So this obviously has influenced people,  making them want to have those bodies and look like those models. But, is the fashion industry realistic?

On the one hand, the fashion industry has settle a canon of beauty where not everyone can fit in. Bodies very exercised and other factors that depend of the complexion and cannot be changed with exercise such as being tall, the color of your eyes, etc..
 For women it is even more specific than for men because it also talks about facial features such as having a small nose, full lips, feminine face,  and sometimes make girls think they need plastic surgery or botox.
Another thing is the amount of people that trying to fit put at risk their own health, by starving themselves in order to loose weight, doing extreme diets or diets they find on the internet that are not validated by any expert and could cause a deficit of some nutrients.
Also mental health is  affected, people are too hard with themselves and think they are not enough, also it can lead them to suffer from anorexia or body dysmorphia.
Models also struggle with this cannon, and very often they are told by their agencies to loose a little more of weigh for some jobs even when they are perfectly fine. This is dangerous thinking that the normal age for starting modeling is between 13 and 16 (18 is considered very late) and at those ages they are not aware of what they are asked and they don´t know how to say no.

On the other hand fashion industry is slowly changing. They are diversifying their models, introducing more plus sized models and more colored people to the industry. Last year the "Angels of Vectoria´s secret" catwalk was cancelled for this reason, it wasn´t "diverse" enough and the public complained a lot on social media and stopped watching it ,so at the end the company lost money and had to cancel the catwalk.
People are talking about those issues on social media and making changes, because they want to be represented too and see more types of body with which they can relate. For example, the movement of "body positivity"wants to demonstrate that plus sized models are equally beautiful.

To sum up, fashion industry should be more open and diversify their models so everybody feels included.

Once upon a time, 400 years ago, a writer named Cervantes...

The 23rd of April of 1616 was the date where both Shakespeare and Cervantes died. They were two of the greatest writers of all time and whose works are been read until today and will probably continue to be read and studied in the future.
It is such a coincidence that they both have the same death date that the 23rd of April has become nowadays the International Day of the Book.
The truth is that they did die in the same date but not in the same day, that ´s because while on England they used the Julian calendar in Spain they were using the Gregorian one.


On the one hand, Cervantes was born the 9th October 1547 in Alcalá, being the fourth out of seven siblings. He studied at the Jesuit college and learned to read and write at a very young age. He and his family moved to Seville trying to improve their economy ,since Seville was third biggest city of those times and could give them more opportunities.
Cervantes was sentenced to lose his arm and be arrested because he was in a fight with an important person and he had to leave the city and go to a part of Italy which was owned by Spain in order to scape. And there he became as a soldier in Diego de Urbina´s company.

He fought in Lepanto Battle (1571) and he received three injuries, one of them disabled his left arm forever so he received the nickname "the one-armed man of Lepanto".

However, he went into battle again in 1573 with his younger brother in Corfú. After that he received two letters of recommendation which aim was to give him a better position but  in 1575, coming back to Spain he was captured by Turkish pirates and he was a prisoner for 5 years in Argel.

He tried to scape 4 times unsuccesfully,  he was sold to the Hassán king and in 1580 he was finally freed.
Now in Spain he decided to write. He created his most famous work in 1605, El Quijote, which was a parody of the popular genre of cavalry novels.


On the other hand, Shakespeare had a complete different life. He was born in a wealthy family of Stratford-upon-Avon. We do not have much information about the childhood and adolescence of the author,  but we know that with the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had 3 children.
He started writing when he moved to London and his first work was Venus y Adonis, a poem. He became known thanks to his theatre; he wrote 14 comedies, 10 tragedies and 10 historical dramas.
Furthermore, Shakespeare has added to the English dictionary a total of 1700 words and sometimes english language is referred as "Shakespeare language".


In conclusion, those two authors have had a very different life as I said and they had never met in person but they have both left an great legacy in their respective language, literature and even culture.

Shall we eat? Yes, but...

A food allergy is a reaction of the immune system after consuming a specific food or substance that results harmful for the person itself. There are so many kinds of food allergy and intolerances now a days, some of the most common are lactose, egg and nut allergies ,and the reactions are also very different, while some people just feel bad or have a bellyache some people could actually die from the allergy. So it is really important for people who suffer from them to read the ingredients of every product they buy.

In my case, I am celiac, which means that i can not eat anything that contains gluten in it. In fact it is a quite usual allergy due that between the 1% and the 2% of the Spanish population is celiac (in actual numbers those are between 450.000 and 900.000 people just in Spain).

But the numbers are growing and growing as the time pass, and not just with that allergy but for all of them. So that is something scientist have observed and are tying to figure out. Why are there more people with food allergy now?  Why are there even new kinds of intolerances? 

Scientists after a lot of research don ´t have an exact answer but they explain that it could be caused by the change of our diet.

 I have lived that on my own experience, when I first was diagnosed that allergy there were many fewer cases. It made my family visit different doctors in different cities without any result because the illness wasn´t so well known. 

Also, at the end when they finally told my family what I had they had no clue of what it was and there wasn´t almost any gluten free special product in the supermarket moreover it was even worst if I had to go to restaurants where they had to explain it to the waiters ,but at the end, there was cross contamination(when products with gluten mix with products without it), so I always got sick.

Where as today that is very common and there are many things in the supermarket to buy (more expensive that the normal ones but it´s an improvement).

Also because of all those new allergies scientists are trying to create cures ,investigating why is it produced and developing new kinds of aliments without those substances that in the future could replace the others. 

In my opinion that is very interesting and it´s new field in science which surely will be very successful. And who knows.. perhaps in the futures food allergies might be solved.

Talking about tourism, all that glitters is not gold.

Spain is the second most visited country on the entire world. Right after France and placed ahead of bigger countries such as United States, even China or Italy. Over 83 million people visit Spain every year. So, as a consequence, such an unbelievable figure obviously leaves a print for the rest of the citizens of Spain, but what is not clear is if that impact brings just advantages or we should read the fine print.

On the one hand, tourism is one of the key building blocks of our economy. Many millions of employments are created to manage that many people who come to our country.   Jobs which directly depend of them such as the hotel sector, catering or travel companies or amusement parks besides of jobs which depend of them indirectly suffer dramatic variation and crisis if not as many people visit us.
Tourism is also an inducement that pushes many towns and cities to improve their appearance, trying to call the attention of foreign people but also being beneficial for the local ones. An example of this is the "Blue Flag", which is a symbol given to some of the cleanest and most beautiful beaches of Spain and it places them into an international map. So, having this symbol makes many people to visit the beach and also is a commitment with the city to keep the beach clean and well-kept. This is positive for both the city and the environment.


On the other hand, having a big demand increases the price of the products, so that some of the products of the supermarket become expensive for the Spanish people who have to buy them during all the year.
Furthermore, high prices are not only in supermarkets, but also happen when looking for an apartment, because it makes more money renting apartment to tourists with a short stay than renting them to Spanish ones who are looking for setting there for a long period of time. Making this almost imposible to find an apartment for a reasonable price in cities with a lot of tourists.

To conclude, I think tourism is great for our country and population but we should sort out the issue of the apartments because that one really is a major problem