In the center of the image, a woman without a mask in the center of Barcelona.Albert Garcia / EL PAÍS
There is some mystery in the masks.
Let's remember how they came now that we start to take them off.
There was something salvific about them in that terrifying moment when we felt in danger breathing the air without filters or approaching people without a shroud.
Its price skyrocketed when the first supplies failed.
They were the subject of speculation, forgeries, and even political fights between competing governments.
So, when they were rare, we knew little about them, their classifications and differences.
So high was the ignorance that his legend was incorporated into conspiracy theories.
Thus there were masks that contagious instead of protecting.
As would later also happen with vaccines, which would inoculate the viruses that they claimed to fight or implant microchips to control the entire human species.
If it had been for our scant pandemic culture, so different from that of Asians, we would have gotten rid of them right away.
Its use became mandatory.
It became clear that they were essential to inhabit the world turned into a virusphere and interact with human beings in the infected global society.
So fast was the learning that we have almost forgotten it.
Now that we are going to dispense with their continuous use, is when we know better how to use them, to prevent them from fogging up the glasses or making our ears red.
We will not have to forget what we learned.
The oriental culture of the mask has definitely settled among us and it will not go away even when the rules and obligations are relaxed.
They equalize us thanks to the hidden part of the face, half a mirror of the soul.
Sometimes it becomes difficult to recognize yourself among acquaintances and friends.
You have to sharpen your eyes to read the other's eyes without the pout or the smile.
Bodies, tattoos and clothing attract the stares rejected by the semi-hidden faces.
Just when we have gotten used to it, all humanity cloaked from one end of the planet to the other, they tell us that there was not so much.
We will learn to dispense with them as we learned to carry them continuously, a symbol of our common and fragile condition and a banner of collective and solidarity combat.
Unmasked, we recognize ourselves in who we are even if we had forgotten. Fragile beings, in need of protection and care, also changing in terms of feelings and ideas, such as scientists and doctors, all subjected to the painful and deadly learning of the pandemic, an experience that does not deserve to be forgotten.