Librería Nicolás Moya, calle de Carretas, Madrid. Foto wikicommons.

Go bust

When an old bookstore closes something breaks into that invisible warp that sustains the worlds.  I have to confess that I feel a certain pain and an aftertaste of uncertainty before the sinking of an old time that does not resist the speed of the new one. This week closed a well-known bookstore in Madrid that I knew well both for having been there and for having passed by countless times. A medical bookshop full of good science books that hardly compete with digital worlds and multiplatform formats that do not need paper.

I work in a health center in a small town in the mountains of Madrid. It is increasingly difficult to find doctors who want to work in rural areas. It is almost impossible to find substitutes when one of us is absent due to illness or a leave of absence. In these moments I attend my clinic slowly with the box of tissues on the table taking care of patients with my same symptoms. It is not technically correct but I prefer it to leave without service the clinic. So do most of my colleagues in these circumstances, as things have been for too long.
Somehow I sense that many small towns will be left without medical service, will be closed health centers twinned with those bookstores that went bankrupt. And nothing will happen. We will hear complaints that will be covered by the avalanche of shouts, scandals and news that the television and social networks spit without re...