We are saying goodbye to 2020, a terrible year, which began with a family loss that affected us all in an enormous way; my mother-in-law, Gerard’s grandmother, whom we had to say goodbye to before she was put to sleep forever. I will never forget that goodbye between grandmother and grandson, it is tattooed on my heart, and I still cry every time I remember it. We were losing someone important, after a difficult year of a long illness and knowing that it was coming to an end. A hard time was over, and we were left with the pain, which gradually turned into a memory, a memory that still hurts, at least for me. With the end of a painful stage, for her and for us, it seemed that we could recover normality in a short time, but that period lasted only a few weeks, because with March came the pandemic, this terrible time that we are still living through and that changed our lives completely.

For all these reasons I would have wiped this 2020 off the map, if not because it has been a time of learning for a society that was and is still sick. We have realized that the urgent is not the important thing, that the small, everyday things are the most valuable, that hugs, kisses and relationships with people are more necessary than we think, in short, that we need each other. That’s why I wouldn’t erase this cursed year altogether and I hope that we’ve all been left with something positive from a terrible 2020, which will make us more good-hearted people, or so I hope.

Books have helped us more than ever and for this reason I would like to end this last blog of the year by thanking the publishers, booksellers, distributors, readers and all of us who are a part of the book chain, who have not stopped believing that books can do anything, and who have continued to work and fight for culture. It has not been and it will not be easy, but the stories have kept us alive, the essays have given us alternative ways of facing up moments that we never expected to live, and we have reinvented ourselves with technology, allying ourselves with it and seeing that they are two compatible worlds, not rivals, where together they add up. We have seen this clearly with our great best-seller, IKIGAI by Francesc Miralles and Hèctor Garcia, which after being translated into 60 languages and being number 1 in sales in many countries, the authors have now decided to create the course IKIGAI: descubre y potencia tu propósito vital en 8 semanas to give one more tool to those readers who want to see and live in this new world that is presented to us in the best way possible. I recommend it with the same passion with which I recommend the book, because after a year like this, we all have questions that seem to have no answer: What is my mission in this world? How can I strengthen my talent to try to live from what I love the most? How can I make my vital purpose the center of my existence? The answer to all these questions is what the Japanese call IKIGAI, and in this course you can find them in the hands of these two authors. Here is the link to register: https://t.co/8NbdtFPm6h?amp=1

I wish that 2021 will be a year full of health, recovery and finding oneself again, where the pause and reflection of 2020 has made us think and decide that we can be happy in our daily lives, because happiness does not stop being the small daily moments of joy. Let’s go for them without thinking too much, because we deserve it. 

Happy 2021!