My grandmother was already a recycler in the 1960s in Madrid. By Nora Sesmero

By Nora Sesmero

When I was 16, my grandmother would get up at five in the morning to work as a ragpicker alongside her parents and siblings in a Madrid neighborhood.

Until 1969, they, along with other neighborhood residents, were responsible for collecting various types of waste from doorways and hotels.

She even got her hands on a remnant of Queen Fabiola's wedding dress from the house of Balenciaga, she says. You see, it was a source of fascination for me.

Using mule-drawn carts, the "garbage" was collected in sacks, baskets, and drums. Later, it was taken home to be sorted in the corral where the pigs and chickens kept their food, earning a pittance thanks to the organic waste.

On the one hand, the ash from the heating systems was separated into coal and charcoal. On the other, the paper was removed. Rags were also removed. And sometimes, objects such as perfume bottles, stockings, shoes, or clothes that were useful to themselves were also removed. Bottles, cans, metals, etc. were used to recycle, sell, or discard them once a month. Anything that was definitely no longer useful was taken to the landfill.

My grandmother's family made a living from this. Years later, the local governments took over this work.

Period arrangements

I also learned to sew by hand and machine from my grandmother. She always tells me that back then, clothing—which was generally of better quality than it is today—was repaired with different types of alterations.

For example, socks were patched with soles that served to fix the sole of the foot so they could continue to be worn.

In addition, trousers were "knifed" to renew the inner leg. Due to wear, new pockets were also made or knee pads were added to continue wearing the garment. Work aprons were designed from scraps left over from other garments.

Back then, sheets were repaired by sewing pieces of fabric over the holes. Today, we'd never let a hole appear in a sheet when we could buy new ones...

And seamstresses also came to homes to perform more complex tasks. Today, many of us dream of returning to that simpler, communal lifestyle. We no longer dedicate time to what's important; we've accelerated our lives too much.

How wonderful it is to invest time in altering your clothes when you like them so they continue to fit well. The sewing never needed to be perfect if we'd had a good time together.

What I learned from my grandmother

Today, I'm grateful for having been able to learn so much from my grandmother. For the time I've spent listening to her and for how proud I am of my roots. Because her life was harder than mine, and thanks to the efforts of my entire family, I have learned things today that many people will surely never experience again.

Sometimes I think about that, about everything we're losing. About everything we're letting slip away.

I used to say that one day there would be a machine that tied our shoelaces, and we'd no longer learn as children. And then came artificial intelligence. I look at my little brother's generation, and we feel increasingly incapable of tackling a manual task, a task in the tangible world. And it hurts.

It pains me that people no longer gather to talk, to sew together, or simply to work together for the pride of maintaining the tasks that make us human. Those tasks I would love to do alongside my grandmother if I were told the world would end tomorrow.

And it's something I'll carry in my heart for the rest of my life, and I feel a responsibility to share it. But despite this melancholy, I remain hopeful that we'll figure it all out and roll up our sleeves again.

nsa / al