This Asturian woman receives a visit from her daughter every Sunday: “If something happens I’ll call her on the phone”
“To the doctor? No, I’m not going. Why? If when I call him or go he tells me that I have nothing, that I’m perfect…” he blurts out. Plácida Iglesias Fernández not without a certain temper and somewhat angry because the doctor tells her that her health is fine. She is sitting at the door of her house in the small and pretty town of El Castillo (Asturias). From the kitchen windows there is a priceless view of the Nalón estuary a few meters from merging with the Cantabrian Sea. Who knows if contemplating this landscape every day, which transmits calm and joy to the eye, could be one of the reasons for the iron health of Plácida Iglesias, who next January will celebrate a century of life – that is according to her ID, although she argues with her daughter who will be 99 years old – without ever having been admitted to the hospital and without taking any medication other than some paracetamol from time to time. At most, she uses the classic baking soda: “When something hurts my stomach.” The only “but” is her deafness. Nothing else.
Plácida Iglesias is one of the nearly 23,000 Asturian women over 80 years of age who live alone, a figure that places the Principality – according to the latest report from the National Statistics Institute (INE) – at the top of the list of the communities with the most women in such a situation. There are exactly 22,764; In total, of all ages, there are around 80,500, which represent 56% of single-person households in Asturias.
This nonagenarian has already spent many years alone in her home, as she was widowed very young, at 23 years old, after marrying at 18. Her daughter Anabella Fernández was not a year old when she lost her father. Then, she was left in the care of her maternal grandparents, Marcelo and Salomé, because her mother went out to earn a living for her. Plácida Iglesias fished for elver and studied dressmaking in nearby Pravia. She became a dressmaker – “it’s wrong for me to say it, but she was very good, all the people I sewed for say so” – she went to France, returned and settled for a time in Oviedo after reuniting with her almost teenage daughter. , to then return to El Castillo, to the family house, where he was born and where he lives now. Alone. It is her wish.
“She was barely a week with me and my husband in our house in Avilés, once she had a slight heart scare, but it didn’t last. It was difficult. Impossible, she couldn’t stand it, she didn’t want to,” explains her daughter, who is in the habit of visiting her. every Sunday morning in El Castillo, when he leaves her some cooked food and the errands that her mother asks her to do. Because Plácida Iglesias completely takes the reins of her own life: «I have some genius, yes, but it is necessary to live alone. “That’s how it gets along.”
His routine involves getting out of bed – his bedroom is on the second floor, as he has no mobility problems – around eight thirty, he makes his bed, has breakfast and thinks about what to eat: “Yesterday I put peas and potatoes, but no “They turned out very well for me.” He likes to eat well, hearty and abundant. The day passes between a walk, a visit from neighbors who bring him bread daily and little else. She has scheduled cleaning of her house on Saturdays. “If something happens, I call. My grandson left it ready for me with the numbers I need,” she explains. She doesn’t watch television, although she is aware of current events. Of course, she went to vote in the last two calls. The TV set is packed. “He told us that he didn’t want it, either we kept it or he threw it away,” her daughter clarifies with some resignation.
Plácida Iglesias does not quite make sense that La Nueva España, from Prensa Ibérica, wants to tell her life in a report. “Whatever you say, let it be true,” she warns. “I was never sick, no. I wasn’t afraid of Covid-19, why? If I’m here alone and I barely go out, I had no reason.” She also doesn’t know how to say what the secret is to that great health that allows her to be autonomous at her age.
It may be the other way around. “I have to be in good health to live alone, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to,” she concludes with conviction.