Recently, the father of a group of savage homophobes killed by stabbing or kicking in the middle of the street, rejected the proposal of the City Council of A Coruña to bring his son’s name down a city street, after collecting 20,000 signatures in twenty-four hours. It seems that the father of the murdered boy did not want so much prominence to his son's memory, as if he were persuaded that the name of a street was not the right one, but that it was absurd. “Very well decided,” was the first one that came to mind, as I believe that the names of the streets of the cities must correspond to the individuals featured in different areas throughout history for their actions and virtues. In other words, maybe a bit crude; I think the streets have to bear the name of those who have done something, and above all something for the good of local society; but no, something, I don't care what they have done, no matter how amazing or painful it may be. Samuel is a Galician boy who has been the victim of inhumane and intolerable intolerance, terribly cruel, ruthless, absurd and murdered, a deplorable murder shaken society. However, would a street with names of victims be valid? Would it not be a little disappointing, a little sad, a little inopportune to discover a city in which the names of the streets would constantly remember the accident, injustice and terror? Is there no other way or place more worthy to properly pay tribute to the memory of the victims?

On the other hand, this anecdote about the street in A Coruña reminded me of another one, which was the most appropriate to reflect long and deeply on what today is truly a reminder through all kinds of monuments: A monument in honor of the women who once washed clothes in the sink of a small Alavese village. Does everyone deserve a monument? Is everything a memory in itself, however common the motives in our streets, squares or corners?

So things came to me suddenly, next to the country house that my mother-in-law has in a small village in the interior of Asturias, a monument to a former mayor that I didn't know what to build long ago, or perhaps collapse, and above all ridiculous. Moreover, the abandoned and miserable corner of the monument was soon named "plaza", with an inevitable municipal celebration, including, of course, the Gaiters, to somehow dignify the memory of the former mayor.

In this way, and even if we return to the subject, the question is whether we all deserve a reminder as reminders or not. Or, in other words, if people deserve a reminder to do fine things, like washing clothes in the sink, what would be worthwhile for people doing real things, like real masterpieces or artists, researchers or whatever, that make discoveries for the good of our society? Or is it about equating, by means of present and reminders, at all costs, all the actions, converted almost by chance into merit, both the ordinary and the extraordinary, in favor of four cats or the whole human race, that do not excite us, surprise us or entertain us, as they make us better individuals? Is this not an increasingly obvious trend the last of the supposed egalitarian rebellion of human masses that the Spanish thinker Ortega y Gasset explained a long time ago, a kind of sackcloth, but that is, always down, in the deceit, because they have forgotten that nobody can feel serious, have they left it behind, everyone complains, are bitter, nobody can remember the fulana, the beast? All in the same basket, all screaming that the names of people as humble as we are up to the great names of history, all special and, above all, reminders. So everyone would deserve a memory, for example, the scientist Tu Youyou, who in 2015 received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for inventing a malaria vaccine, or the street vendors selling bats to eat in the Ningbo market, where he was born.