Some cities have the gift of aptly expressing culture; They become saturated with the way of life of their people, are infected with their stories and become places to live. Some cities just by saying their name evoke memories, memories and even nostalgia for ignorance, that is, they fuel the imagination, activate that feeling of missing a journey that was never taken.

The ability to evoke was, and still is, the virtue of many cities. Cuenca is one of them, because it has preserved the air forever, because it has a culture, a personality and a sense of beauty that goes beyond architecture and infects the spirit of every intelligent being who visits it.

But there are other cities, like Quito, that had this powerful spiritual capacity but lost it.

Political traffic, poorly understood modernity and the increasing absence of memory have contributed to Quito becoming an impersonal space, a kind of memory cherished by few and rare citizens. Furthermore, Quito is marked by the belated anger and frustration of some who feel that they have left the capital to the fate of tasteless builders, city planners without criteria and authorities busy strengthening their electoral careers and waging petty wars, instead of giving tone, dimension and transcendence to that historical space, which is born when conquerors, friars, landowners and chiefs implemented an urban layout, Castilian and Andalusian, on an old autochthonous settlement. That is, when they all decided to inaugurate the meddling.

It is dramatic and painful that a city with a monumental historical core, with such a deeply rooted tradition, with certainly significant churches and monasteries, has become a faceless city where anonymity and indifference prevail, and whose memory begins to remain in photographs. , in books and in the nostalgia of some inhabitants of Quito, and many other provincials, who still appreciate the old and historic.

It is unfortunate that Quito only invites politics; that the Plaza Grande is so damaged that it has been reduced to a space for occasional riots caused by any trainee leader. It is sad that the nobility of its stones is lost and darkened among graffiti, garbage and informal trade.

In the north of Quito, with rare exceptions, snobbery and bad taste prevail. What can still be seen of the landscape has been preserved, between brazen towers and crooked skyscrapers.

The most serious and sad thing is that the city’s personality has evaporated, that citizenship has become an empty statement and insatiable consumerism. And to live worried about not seeing Quito, imprisoned between the traffic and commotion every day, immersed in political everyday life, narrowed by short horizons and mediated by interests.

I’m not Quito. I dare, however, to criticize the city that received me, because I no longer recognize it. (OR)