Masks, deserted offices, lost hugs: the illustrations that told 2021

Photographs and illustrations are the graphic engines of a newspaper.

Normally, the former portray reality and the drawings interpret it, but this is not always the case: in this second year of the pandemic, EL PAÍS has published numerous tremendously descriptive illustrations, full of masks, deserted offices, lost hugs, scary politicians, people who read and many, many mobile phones.

From among the tide of works published in the paper or pixel pages of this newspaper (only in the Opinion section more than 450 originals have come out) we have selected 51 illustrations that summarize (and sometimes interpret) the year that has already left.

Lord Salme

Mr Salme: 'Reduce pandemic fatigue'

“If you find yourself tired and with little strength to do things, you are not alone.

Fatigue is one of the most uncomfortable and unexpected consequences that the pandemic has brought us ”.

→ Read the news.

Daniel crespo

Daniel Crespo: 'The expansive wave of telework shakes the economy'

"The popularization of employment from home is already making itself felt in multiple sectors, and it will do so even more in the future in activities such as real estate, hospitality, technology or tourism."

→ Read the news.

Enrique Flores placeholder image

Enrique Flores: 'Spain, in therapy'

“We are wrong.

Mental health professionals have never been so busy.

In Spain, 41.9% of the population has suffered sleep problems since the start of the pandemic and 38.7% have felt tired or without energy ".

→ Read the news.

Petra eriksson

Petra Eriksson: 'Women, the year of a thousand plagues'

"Losing your job.

Having to leave it to work (even more) at home or juggle to combine it with childcare.

Lock yourself up with the abuser.

Get impoverished.

Go back in rights.

The covid imposes suffering and challenges on the female population that add to the general impact of the virus ”.

→ Read the news.

Diego Mir

Diego Mir: 'What we miss by not touching others'

"The absence of contact due to the pandemic takes its toll.

'We evolve as beings whose need to touch and be touched is essential for a healthy life', explains the anthropologist Agustín Fuentes ”.

→ Read the news.

Ignasi monreal

Ignasi Monreal: 'Confinement of open doors'

→ Read the news.

Alberto Heart

Alberto Corazón: 'There were silences'

“His health had already said 'no' to him, but when we asked Alberto Corazón for a reflection on confinement, he was deluded like a child, he took the gear and left us this work that is both essential and complex, serene and tremendous.

Painting, thought and complaint.

Unlikely to express more with so little.

Unfortunately, 'There were silences' became his posthumous work.

Alberto Corazón died two days after painting it ”.

→ Read the news.

Chema Madoz

Chema Madoz: 'Shoe'

“Spoons-forks, ladders-mirrors and dishes filed in sewers.

The world of Chema Madoz (Madrid, 1958), poetry and image and vice versa, deceives and seduces us because it is that of impossible facts, possibility, even certainty.

Like that Shoe with a tenant inside, a cruel and tender metaphor of confinement.

That shoe is us.

We are all".

→ Read the news.

Marta Seville

Marta Sevilla: 'Curiosity: antidote to anxiety'

“Exploring healthy activities, relationships or experiences is a great antidote to anxiety and uncertainty and a generator of pleasant sensations.

And it can be cultivated ”.

→ Read the news.

Lalalimola

Lalalimola: 'Pleasure changes the schedule'

“Without nightlife, breakfast has become the most anticipated event of the day.

With this new way of relating, the first generation of couples was born who first shared a coffee and not a drink ”.

→ Read the news.

Vidal Ribbon

Cinta Vidal: 'The city accelerates its great transformation'

“The city looks to the future.

"I've never seen the world so divided, but not so united," says writer Suketu Mehta.

And the cities, hit by the pandemic, are territories where that feeling is intensifying ".

→ Read the news.

Luis Mendo

Luis Mendo: 'Tokyo, village life in the metropolis'

“Almost as many people live in the vast metropolitan area of ​​Tokyo as in all of Spain.

When I moved here 8 years ago, the vastness of the city excited me.

Being born in a provincial city, living in an endless metropolis was a dream come true. "

→ Read the news.

Javier Jaen

Javier Jaén: 'The toilets who should never have left'

“They escaped from the contracts of months or days.

They wanted stability.

Investigate without stealing hours of sleep.

Spend more time with patients.

Or have life.

More and more doctors and nurses are emigrating.

And what was missing in this crisis.

Their lives are the negative of the evils of a system that stopped taking care of them ”.

→ Read the news.

Mr. Garcia

Mr. García: 'The Pandora Papers'

"A global investigation piloted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that analyzes the secret files of 14 law firms reveals societies of politicians, millionaires and artists from more than 90 countries."

→ Read the news.

Gaston Mendieta

Gastón Mendieta: 'The vicious loop of Spanish politics'

“Citizens attend a harsh and disconcerting political spectacle that in the last two weeks has reached new heights.

As the human and economic crisis progress, disenchantment is in danger of permeating.

Where can this drift lead us?

→ Read the news.

Carmela caldart

Carmela Caldart: 'Very funny'

"The deputies laugh with former Commissioner Villarejo instead of investigating what great businessmen in this country did."

→ Read the news.

Nicolas Aznárez

Nicolás Aznárez: 'When politicians are scary'

"Perhaps the time will come when what is truly revolutionary is good sense and a sense of state, but for this it is important that citizens return to politics and be demanding with their representatives."

→ Read the news.

Martin Elfman

Martín Elfman: 'Lessons from the Capitol Hill'

“The contempt for institutions and the trivialization of rules and language end badly;

transfers of power must crystallize the legitimacy of the system;

and the ineffectiveness of democracies gives advantages to authoritarianism ”.

→ Read the news.

Agustin Sciammarella

Sciammarella: 'Eight faces that made the news in 2021'

"Athletes in distress, female power, the heir to a textile empire, the absent emeritus and the Nobel that nobody expected."

→ Read the news.

Eva Vazquez

Eva Vázquez: 'Dear diary'

"I have seen many people age fatally and, of course, without realizing it."

→ Read the news.

Arribas Tape

Arribas tape: 'Blackberries as God intended'

"There is a re-Islamization in the question of women's rights that is having the approval, among others, of academics, relativist feminists and certain sectors of the left."

→ Read the news.

Of hungry

From Hunger: 'Candidate meme'

"We spend too much time focusing on politicians who spread hateful messages and we stop thinking about our role in all of this."

→ Read the news.

Eduardo Ortiz

Eduardo Ortiz: 'Summary of 2021'

"The year of turning the page kept us subscribed to the shock."

→ Read the news.

Delgado wonders

Wonders Delgado: 'Prevent 2050 from being a mission impossible'

"Scientists, with the support of youth and other climate action groups, have finally made a dent in politicians, who have become aware that climate change and its imminent consequences stem from human action."

→ Read the news.

David de las Heras

David de las Heras: 'One Hundred Years of Berlanga'

→ Read the news.

Tyto Alba

Tyto Alba: 'What Rome hides'

“The Roman light coming into my apartment was brutal.

You could call her God, or Mary, or Elvis Presley, or Joan of Arc.

But it was only light.

Sometimes I had the feeling of living in heaven itself.

It was the ghosts of the Spanish Academy in Rome who gave me this higher order of existence ”.

→ Read the news.

Sergio García Sánchez and Lola Moral

Sergio García Sánchez and Lola Moral: 'Ethics in the classroom: the debate'

“The new educational law, the Lomloe, contemplates the subject of Civic and Ethical Values ​​to the detriment of Ethics, of a purely philosophical nature.

Thinkers, teachers, students and the Minister of Education debate the controversy ”.

→ Read the news.

Mercedes de bellard

Mercedes deBellard: 'The cheap island'

“

Creta, the Barataria island of the Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince, is very far from Medellín, where he lives, but very close to his soul.

It is where you want to return again and again.

He has felt it very close in his pandemic confinement ”.

→ Read the news.

Monica Loya

Mónica Loya: 'The country that appears on TV'

“The past confinement brought to Santiago Roncagliolo the memory of another in Peru as a child. That was overcome thanks to the television programs that came from Mexico. This one too, but working for them ”. → Read the news.

Javi aznárez

Javi Aznárez: 'The best of culture in the year of the reunion'

→ Read the news.

Yime is great

Yime is Great: 'The siesta, time against capitalism'

“Rest as a flight from the system, as a refuge from the present, as a dissent and a conquered own space. A vindication of the nod at a time when wasting time is synonymous with losing money ". → Read the news.

Tute

Tute: 'The second youth of the Latin American tale'

“Every night someone treats themselves to a bedtime story. In Latin America, this rite acquires new accents ”. → Read the news.

Anna Parini

Anna Parini: 'Essay in feminine singular'

→ Read the news.

MIGUEL ANGEL CAMPRUBÍ

Miguel Ángel Camprubí: 'Summer Readings'

"From narrative to essay, through history, science and poetry, specialists in all literary genres recommend the best recent volumes to pack."

→ Read the news.

Amalia andrade

Amalia Andrade: 'Colombia, bigger than Macondo'

"Opaqueed for decades by the brilliant figure of García Márquez, Colombian literature is experiencing a golden moment as a result of the recognition of its enormous geographical, linguistic and ethnic diversity."

→ Read the news.

Issa watanabe

Issa Watanabe: 'The other boom of Peruvian literature'

"Peru celebrates its literature at the FIL in Guadalajara with poets who write from the Amazon or the Andes, narrators marked by the war against the Shining Path or authors who question the history of their parents."

→ Read the news.

Fernando Vicente

Fernando Vicente: 'Butterflies, dictators and writers'

"The German critic and editor Michi Strausfeld refers to Latin American literature in her new book as an integral whole, very varied but organic, and at the same time she judges it as something linked to history."

→ Read the news.

Juan Palomino

Juan Palomino: 'Mexico-Spain, the history that divides us'

“The memory of the conquest in Mexico is not a problem with Spain, but with its own past and with its national definition.

On the Spanish side, for its part, the colonial past moves between ignorance and pride in the times when it was an imperial power ”.

→ Read the news.

Literary Recommendations.

Special BABELIA Book Fair 2021. (09/11/21).

Illustration: LEANDRO BAREALEANDRO BAREA

Leandro Barea: 'The booksellers' favorite titles'

"From the most powerful novelties to the best reissues, specialized bookstores throughout Spain offer their suggestions so as not to drown in a sea of ​​works".

→ Read the news.

Ana Galvañ

Ana Galvañ: 'Silicon Valley wakes up from sleep'

→ Read the news.

Guillermo Vazquez

Guillermo Vázquez: 'OnlyFans: the' uberization 'of porn'

“In 2020, the social network went from 20 million users to 120. Less than 1% of them upload their photos and videos, generally erotic and sexual.

The rest look.

And pay ”.

→ Read the news.

Cristina Daura

Cristina Daura: 'Anatomy of a' hater ''

"The phenomenon of haters on the Internet sometimes reveals the deep dissatisfaction of people who invest their energy in belittling others."

→ Read the news.

Twee Muizen

Twee Muizen: 'Open Instagram to do a social thesis'

"There are people capable of detecting if two people are dating or in crisis by the comments left, decryption of emojis and photos in which they are written."

→ Read the news.

Jorge Cuadal Street

Jorge Cuadal Calle: 'Machines, institutions and democracy'

"Are technology and a political system alike?

Our relationship with both depends on concepts such as control and delegation, supervision and trust. "

→ Read the news.

Santi Grau

Santi Grau: 'When the algorithm is wrong'

"People are not infallible.

Neither do machines: they limit themselves to reproducing what we do and think.

Increasingly important decisions are delegated to automated systems.

And their failures are becoming louder and louder, which can sink a person's life and even topple governments ”.

→ Read the news.

Laura Wächter

Laura Wächter: 'To have a purpose is to be happier'

“We have all had the feeling of achieving what we wanted, living the rush of a success and being just as empty after a while.

The alternative to get out of that loop is to build a vital sense ”.

→ Read the news.

Gorka Olmo

Gorka Olmo: 'When the mind creates a lifeline'

"Sublimation is one of the procedures we use to transform what threatens or frustrates us into something tangible, creative or of social utility."

→ Read the news.

Oscar Llorens

Óscar Llorens: 'Manga philosophy for everyday life'

"Four lessons from the Japanese comics that can serve as inspiration to turn around difficult situations."

→ Read the news.

Maria Hergueta

María Hergueta: 'The psychology of money'

“The way we manage our heritage, little or a lot, speaks of how we are.

The experiences we have had in our first decades of life condition us ”.

→ Read the news.

Mikel Jaso

Mikel Jaso: 'How to close (well) a vital stage'

"Four keys to be able to end a romantic relationship or a work agreement and move on without emotional backpacks."

→ Read the news.

Juarez Casanova

Juárez Casanova: 'In January, give yourself hope'

“Reinforcing the illusion in adverse circumstances is possible, and also necessary.

Five keys to face the year that begins without fatalism or resignation ”.

→ Read the news.