An excerpt from the book A real change. A return to the origin in the land of shepherds, by Gabi Martínez. A book that appears after a trip in which Gabi returns to the village in Extremadura where his mother was born and raised, while working as a shepherdess. “A return to the origin” that goes, perhaps, beyond the personal level.

For the website of the series Presentes Densos. Around the arts of living on a damaged planet, we published the introduction of the book. In it, Gabi writes: “My mother. She was the one who taught me that looking for the alternative is an option. Recovering a piece of the nature that has inspired her life was an old longing that over the years has taken on the dimension of necessity. As if in her way of growing up and relating to the world there was a palpitation of that elemental answer that in reality I knew, that we all know, and that I was losing sight of”.

We are grateful to Seix Barral for permission to reproduce, for the first time digital, this part of the book.