“I have seen how it has gone from being a whim of the rich to being completely general,” Mendiguren explains when he approaches him asking about the story. We have met “normalcy” again. Because it has become a “normal” custom of “normal” couples, to marry “normal”, to spend 25 years together “normally” and to celebrate “as normal” a “normal” journey together. All right, we are not going to get angry in the first paragraph: this is not the right place to say what we believe about marriage and traveling is not bad in itself, it also has positive aspects (“of course, I’m not going to start explaining the evidence” Mendiguren tells us); and yes, almost everyone will go this summer to a more or less close place, but… “But it has a lot of stupidity and social pressure.” Thank you Xabier, we would not dare to say the phrase so categorically.

The story comes from a journey by the writer himself. After spending a few days in the Italian capital last December, Argiakoon asked him to write this year’s Summer Story, and as the days of Rome had given him a fresco in his head, he began to spin the story there. The scrolls of Txente are mixed with reflections on tourism and travel in Il viaggiatore ponillanim. “I have always liked the narrators who know how to combine reflections and facts; in the 80s we read a lot Kundera; in the last decade Houellebecq... I don’t want to be like them, but for this story it occurred to me that it would be interesting to carry in parallel a reflection similar to a session, and a story that has something to do with it.”

The story plays with topics, without the intention of “the typical crisis and tribulations of a traditional couple,” nor of exploiting the romantic aspect of Rome. Mendiguren has narrated with a thin layer of irony the fears, the discomforts, the discomforts of Txente. But Mendiguren believes (and we too) that we all have within a character as “insignificant” as Txente, even in different percentages: “One 5 minutes a day, another 20 hours.”

Of course, we're all Txente, the poor innocent poor who suffocates with the small problems. We all say that we were once “OK”, we all tried sometimes to take the least risk possible, we all wanted to reach a point where everything would stay the same. But then something happens, let's say the wallet is stolen, like Txent. It can be a minor or a starting point for major disasters. But to find out, we'll leave it to the readers.