Yesterday, as the lights went out across Valencia and much of Spain, a different kind of illumination emerged—one not powered by electricity or the internet, but by humanity, solidarity, and simple kindness. In a moment where modern infrastructure faltered, where our digital lifelines disappeared and the comforts of convenience paused, the people of Valencia showed that their true power lies not in machines, but in the goodness of their hearts.
The blackout, following so closely on the heels of the DANA floods that had already tested the resilience of the region, could have felt like another blow. Instead, it became something unexpected: a demonstration of grace under pressure, of calm where there could have been chaos, and of community in a world that often feels disconnected.

The Silence of the Machines
As the power cut swept across the city, the first thing most of us noticed was the silence. No hum of refrigerators, no buzz from neon lights, no traffic signals clicking through their cycle. Phones lost signal. Wi-Fi dropped. The tap of keyboards fell away. For a few moments, Valencia fell still.
But in that silence, something else began to rise—a murmur of voices, real voices, not ones filtered through screens or speakers. People stepped out of their homes. Neighbors talked, some for the first time in months. Drivers, usually isolated in their vehicles, rolled down their windows and coordinated passage at dead intersections with hand gestures and smiles. Cafeteria owners stepped out into the streets and shrugged when customers tried to pay: “Don’t worry about it—next time.”
There was no panic. There was presence. We looked at each other instead of down at our phones. And in doing so, we remembered that we are more than consumers, commuters, or workers—we are part of something larger, something rooted in shared experience.

Radio Renaissance
In the absence of internet and television, radios became sacred again. People gathered around car stereos and battery-powered sets like something out of another era. It was strangely beautiful—strangers leaning in together, listening to updates, piecing together what had happened and what might come next. These spontaneous gatherings transformed sidewalks and plazas into temporary living rooms. The city, momentarily unmoored from the digital world, began to beat with a slower, more human rhythm.
These moments reminded us that while technology connects us, it also distracts us. The blackout peeled away the distractions. What remained was essential: our voices, our presence, our willingness to be with each other, even in confusion or uncertainty.

The Valencian Spirit
There’s something deeply rooted in the Valencian character that shone through yesterday. It's hard to define exactly, but if you live here long enough, you feel it. It’s a mix of generosity, resilience, humor, and practicality. Maybe it’s in the sun, or in the sea breeze, or in the way people here still take the time for a café con leche and a conversation. But when the city went dark, that spirit lit up like never before.
At street corners where traffic lights had gone black, people took turns with patience and grace. No honking, no shouting. Just mutual understanding. In the markets, vendors continued serving regulars, some even giving away fresh bread and fruit rather than letting it spoil. No one kept score. It felt natural, even obvious: Help each other out. That’s what we do.
This is not to romanticize hardship. The flood and the blackout were real challenges, with real consequences. But moments like these show that hardship doesn’t have to isolate us. In fact, it can be a force that binds us more tightly.
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The Economy of Trust
One of the most striking aspects of yesterday was the spontaneous emergence of what I’ll call an “economy of trust.” With card readers down and ATMs offline, money as we know it temporarily lost meaning. But trust stepped in to fill the gap. Business owners allowed customers to take their coffee or groceries and come back another time to settle up. No receipts. No systems. Just a nod, a handshake, and an understanding.
This kind of trust is fragile in many places, but in Valencia, it held strong. It wasn’t taken advantage of; it was respected. People didn’t exploit the moment—they honored it. That’s a kind of social wealth we don’t talk about often enough. And it’s worth more than all the technology we temporarily lost.

Human First, Always
What does it say about us that it takes a blackout for us to look each other in the eyes? Why is it in moments of breakdown that we remember to be human?
Perhaps because in those moments, the systems we usually rely on—economic, digital, logistical—fade into the background, and we’re left with something more immediate. Ourselves. Each other.
In times of uncertainty, we see who we really are. And yesterday, the people of Valencia showed that we are, above all else, decent. We’re willing to listen, to give, to care. When the structure around us collapses, the community holds.
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A Lesson Worth Remembering
As the lights flicker back on and the Wi-Fi reconnects, there’s a risk that we’ll forget what we felt yesterday. That we’ll slip back into digital detachment and transactional thinking. But we don’t have to.
We can carry forward the lessons from the blackout. We can keep greeting our neighbors, keep offering help without expecting anything in return, keep trusting that most people, when given the chance, will choose kindness. We can remember that behind every screen name, every email, every blip of data, is a person—just like us, just trying to make it through the day with a little dignity and a little joy.
The blackout may be over, but the light it revealed—the light inside us—is still burning.

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​In our hyper-connected digital age, where opinions travel faster than facts, one disturbing intellectual trend keeps growing: the urge to retroactively judge history through the lens of modern morality. We are told to tear down statues, rename streets, cancel historical figures, and rewrite textbooks—to correct the past, as if we were gods looking down on it with superior vision. But judging from the past based on today’s values is as absurd as blaming a newborn for a traffic accident they’ll have in 40 years. It misunderstands the nature of time, civilization, and what it means to be human.
Civilizations Grow Like People
Civilizations, like people, are born in darkness. They crawl, stumble, and sometimes run before they walk. They learn, fight, fail, love, and rise again. To expect moral maturity from ancient societies is like expecting a child to recite a philosophical treatise on justice before they’ve even learned to speak. Yes, there was slavery. Yes, there was war, empire, disease, despotism. And yes, there was discovery, invention, liberation, poetry, and love. These opposites do not cancel each other, they coexist, forming the rich, complex reality of human history. To whitewash history is not to heal it, it is to amputate it.
The Dangerous Fantasy of the Time Machine
Let’s play the revisionist game for a moment. Say we invent a time machine. We go back and stop every tyrant, prevent every war, cure every plague, abolish every injustice. Nice idea. But then ask: where would we be now? Without tyranny, would we have discovered liberty? Without empire, would global civilizations have connected? Without oppression, would we have written constitutions? Without war, would we have built peace? The cause-and-effect principle, the foundational law of existence, tells us something uncomfortable: progress often grows out of pain.
Slavery, Democracy, and the Paradox of Progress
Slavery is abhorrent—but its existence shaped the world we live in. The brutal, shameful system gave birth to abolitionism, civil rights movements, and a deeper understanding of human dignity. Democracy did not emerge in a vacuum. It emerged because people lived under kings, emperors, and theocratic rule, and eventually said enough. The abuses of the past gave meaning to the freedoms of the present. We love democracy but forget that it is the child of despotism. The very ideas we now hold sacred were forged in the fires we wish had never been lit.
The Illusion of a “Pure” History
Some argue: “If Christopher Columbus had not discovered America, the indigenous peoples would have been spared.” Maybe. But then maybe there would be no Enlightenment, no global scientific exchange, no United Nations, no internet. Maybe we would still be living in fragmented, isolated societies, each fearing the other.

The same goes for the Sykes–Picot Agreement or the Crusades or the Hundred Years’ War. These are not isolated evils. They are links in a long, painful, but necessary chain. To break one link is to unravel the whole. We are not passengers watching history from a distance—we are its inheritors. And our modern privileges rest on ancient shoulders.
Cancel Culture vs. Historical Complexity
Canceling historical figures doesn’t make us wiser. It makes us shallow. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves—and wrote the Declaration of Independence. Churchill held colonialist views—and defeated fascism. The same duality lives in us. If perfection is the standard, then none of us will survive the judgment of the future. Instead of rewriting history, let’s read it more carefully. Let’s teach the contradictions, not hide them. Let’s learn how flawed people created extraordinary things—not to excuse them, but to understand them. And to understand ourselves.
History as a Mirror, Not a Weapon
The past is not a crime scene. It’s a mirror. When we look into it, we don’t just see “them”—we see ourselves. Their mistakes, their ambitions, their fears, their triumphs… they are ours, too. To grow as a civilization, we need to stop throwing stones at the past and start asking better questions: What did they believe? Why did they act that way? What can we learn—not erase—from their journey? The maturity of a society is measured not by how well it judges its ancestors, but by how well it understands them.
Conclusion: Grow Up, Not Backward
There’s a deep immaturity in trying to correct history from the comfort of the present. It is childish to wish the world had been simple, pure, or perfect. It never was. And that’s what makes its achievements more beautiful—not less.
We are here because countless generations struggled, suffered, built, and believed. They weren’t always right—but they kept moving forward. That is the only standard that matters.
Let’s stop pretending we’re above history. We are history. And if we don’t start respecting its complexity, we may lose the wisdom it offers.
Final Thought
As G.K. Chesterton once said:
“The object of the progressive is to go on making mistakes. The object of the conservative is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. But the wise man learns from the mistakes of both.”
Let us be wise. Not perfect. Not pure. Just grown-up enough to see the full picture.

Last Friday, as golden light melted over the hills of Castellón, I found myself at the Hermita de San Sebastián, a small rural chapel now transformed into a site of contemporary questioning, a space between past and present, earth and spirit. The art opening, titled The Sacred and the Profane, seemed to ripple with more than just aesthetic intention. It asked something deeper: What is sacred? What is profane?
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These questions hovered in the air like incense, carried in quiet conversations between paintings and visitors. They were not questions meant to be answered but lived. And perhaps that is the point—these binaries, these categorizations, are not fixed coordinates in the universe. They are stories we tell ourselves, born from our own evolving consciousness. At one point in history, the moon was a goddess. She was Inanna, Artemis, Selene—an eye in the heavens, watching over our world with divine intent. We danced under her glow, planned our harvests and rituals in tune with her cycles. The moon held mystery and power. But then, something shifted. Through the telescope's lens, she became a rock, a satellite of Earth, a celestial object subject to laws of physics rather than divine will. Did the moon change? Of course not. We changed. The sacred and the profane are not absolutes; they are mirrors of our inner world. What we deem sacred is what we choose to elevate, to protect, to give meaning. What we call profane is often what we reject, fear, or misunderstand. These are human constructs—reflections of culture, need, and evolution.

Historically, civilizations have created gods in their own image. Anthropologist James Frazer wrote about how primitive societies personified natural forces—thunder, rain, sun, moon—granting them names, faces, and wills. The gods served not only as explanations for the inexplicable, but as guides for social behavior. Stories of gods taught us about courage, justice, love, jealousy, betrayal. The divine became our moral compass. And yet, the very gods who preached compassion were invoked to justify wars. The prophets who taught humility became symbols of dominance. How many have suffered, killed, or been killed in the name of the sacred? In every age, from the Crusades to present-day extremism, we’ve seen how religion—meant to connect us to the divine—can be twisted into a tool of division. The sacred, when institutionalized, can become dangerous.

Perhaps what we are confronting now, as a modern species, is not the death of the sacred, but its transformation. We no longer need gods with thunderbolts or commandments carved in stone to teach us basic human virtues. We know, deep within, what kindness looks like. We know what suffering feels like. We are capable of empathy without divine punishment hanging over our heads. The sacred, today, may not dwell in the heavens, but in the simple acts of care between beings. At the same time, the profane has shifted too. There was a time when dancing, sexuality, even women's voices were considered profane—unclean, dangerous. Today, many of these are reclaimed as expressions of vitality, authenticity, and even healing. What was once suppressed is now embraced. We are reshaping the map of what is "holy" and what is "unholy."

In the art exhibited at Hermita de San Sebastián, I saw this dialectic play out. One piece juxtaposed religious iconography with secular intimacy—flesh and faith entangled. Another offered a stark, almost brutal representation of abandonment, as if to say: Where is God in the silence? These works didn’t preach; they provoked. They offered no answers but insisted on the question: Is the sacred found in beauty, or in suffering? In ritual, or rebellion?

To me, the sacred today lies in awareness. In presence. In the ability to stand before a mountain, a painting, or another human being and feel something stir in the soul. That stirring—that awe—is a kind of prayer, even if no god is named. The sacred is not confined to churches, temples, or mosques; it lives in the act of witnessing, of feeling deeply. It can be found in music, in poetry, in birth, in death. It is not a domain of the chosen, but of the open.

And what of the profane? Perhaps it is simply what we have not yet understood. What we fear, we often vilify. But within the profane may also be liberation. The "profane" can shock us out of complacency, challenge norms, dismantle dogma. It is the artist’s realm—the edge, the underground, the grotesque. Without the profane, the sacred loses its contrast. Without shadow, no light.

Standing under the arches of the Hermita, surrounded by artwork, candlelight, and murmurs of reflection, I realized that the building itself had undergone a metamorphosis. Once a house of Catholic worship, now a platform for contemporary exploration, it was no less sacred. Perhaps even more so, because it held within it multiple truths, multiple questions. It was no longer a monument to a single god, but a space for dialogue between gods, people, and ideas.

So, what is sacred? It is what we hold with reverence. A child’s laughter. A moment of forgiveness. A work of art that makes us weep. And what is profane? Perhaps only that which we exile from the sacred until we are ready to look again and find the divine hidden in its folds. In the end, maybe the question is not what is sacred or what is profane, but what are we choosing to sanctify? What meanings are we weaving into the fabric of our lives? What gods are we still creating, and what old ones are we ready to release? And maybe the most sacred act of all is asking the question itself—with honesty, humility, and an open heart.