Carlos Sánchez Criado

“Letter”
Dear sir or madam,
My name is Carlos Sánchez Criado and I have recently visited your city, Madrid. I am
writing this letter as a compilation of complaints towards the tourist attractions and
several organization mistakes that could easily be fixed, but always showing my
respect for your work.
First of all, the signs. All over the city are touristic signs that help us visitors to know
more information about certain locations, about their history and even their reason to
exist. The problem appears when not even the text on such signs can be read. Due to
the direct contact with the sun light, the entire board, or at least most of it, was almost
white. I appreciate the fact that all of these boards are translated to English, but there
is really no point to do so when there is no text to be read. It is also a shame that on
darker areas, where direct sunlight hit is not a problem, most boards were broken,
with pieces missing specially on the corners.
Leaving material subjects and talking about organization, I don´t find very appropriate
that a tourist office is closed on a Saturday, especially when it is located in the middle
of city, in the most touristic point of interest and at 11 in the morning. We asked there
was any national festivity happening at that time, and many locals told us that there
was not, that the office is hardly ever open. Therefore, we found necessary to go back
to our hotel in order to have some information.
I hope you don´t find this letter as an attack, on the contrary. Some small things like
changing information boards or opening your main tourist office on your peak tourist
season would not only be helpful for tourist, but many negative comments online
could be avoided, as they already exist.

“Reasons To Be Cheerful”
Due to the letter received on the local newspaper earlier this week, I would like to give
my point of view on the matter. For those who didn´t have a chance to read this letter,
the writer, who was kept anonymous in order to protect his identity, I could suppose,
pointed out how often only bad news are published on the newspapers, being the ratio
of good/bad news astonishingly on the bad news side.
In my opinion, it is not the newspaper´s fault as such, and let me develop my
argument. Nowadays, unfortunately, it is true that bad news is given more importance
that good/positive news, but only because it is important for the press or media to
make sure that their audience or readers don not forget what kind of society or world,
they live in. On that take, one could guess that the author of the letter does not read
press very often, and if he indeed did, he would not necessarily be so surprised on the
amount of negative news. On the other side, the audience is who demands that kind of
news, focusing on the morbidity of it, as it really is what attracts new audience and
what sells newspapers.
Being serious, and talking about adults, it should not be necessary to focus on the bad
side of life. Life itself is positive, or at least should be positive, focusing on friendship
and family. Many happy moments take place when we are with our beloved ones, and
these moments should mean more than any negative news seeing on the tv or read on
a random newspaper. At the end, what keeps people living are the good side of things,
what carries us as negative being by nature.
Do not take to personal news on a newspaper and do not try to blame the editorial
staff of a small local newspapers as they are doing their job and simply trying to sell
copies of it. Focus on enjoying those small moments that could hugely improve your
day by making you smile.