La Voz de Galicia – 15 de febreiro, 2026 →
During these Carnival days, I always find myself thinking about the masks and costumes we carry with us every day: the ones we put on to get through life. The mask of joy when everything is going wrong, the mask of toughness when we feel attacked, the mask of social life when we don’t feel like seeing anyone, the mask of work when we don’t have the energy for it. I myself carry quite a few that help me function, because I believe that sometimes it’s better to put on the mask and push forward than to remain exposed with your own fears, dramas, or thoughts. It isn’t always a good thing, but there are days when one has no other choice: either you put on the mask, or you don’t leave the house.
But on this Carnival Sunday, in these turbulent times when each day we are surprised by news more complex than the last, I wonder what the world is dressed up as. What mask does this divided Europe wear? What costume do the polarized United States have on? The parades of extremism roam through all the streets of the planet, making a deafening noise. They make so much noise, through so many channels, that unfortunately something always lingers, and little by little, without realizing it, we end up surrounded by those macabre costumes in the middle of an endless parade driven by an increasingly radical rhetoric, from which it becomes harder and harder to escape each day.
Among the masks of our daily lives is also the mask of survival. That one takes many forms, depending on the context. Sometimes it helps us see things clearly; other times it does the opposite. And I think that, on some occasions, consciously or unconsciously, that mask of survival can also end up becoming the most paralyzing of all: the mask of indifference.
