There was a time, I imagine, when there were no playgrounds. There were trees, a lot of them, wow, forests. There were rivers, stones, rocks, pinnace, flowers, animals jumping from tree to tree, or flying over them …

There was a time, I imagine, when playgrounds had dirt and sand floors. There were slides, swings, seesaws, and those semi-circle-shaped stair arches that, if you look closely, have disappeared from all parks.

There was a day when all the playgrounds were paved with cement. Asphalt is easier to maintain than grass, or the soil in which weeds grow. And it is much cleaner than sand! We all know how white children covered with sand on the ground are …

But falling on hard ground or concrete… it hurts.

So one day rubber floors appeared in the parks. And they appeared as a miracle solution. It cushions blows, weeds do not grow, you do not have to give it away like a lawn, children are not dusty with sand, or dirty with earth …

But it is still another step towards the industrialization of childhood and its spaces. We take the children to play in spaces that, despite not being asphalt, are soils derived from oil with few imaginative and play possibilities. You cannot add a little water to the rubber as you do to the earth, to make delicious clay soups, nor can you pluck some herbs to add noodles to said soup … Nor can we take a stick to trace large suns on the sand, or huge ships to sail on, or write our first letters on the ground (ideal to love reading and writing).

And as if that were not enough, in summer, when the sun burns … you are on these floors breathing an intense smell of plastic scorched by the sun (very healthy, for sure).

I cannot stop repeating to myself that this rubber is one of those ideas that appear to solve problems that we have created ourselves. Obviously, concrete floors are not the best option for a children’s playground (I tell you, Terrícola broke a tooth when he fell on the cement that was under a swing) … But why do we remove the earth, sand and grass ? Why were their little hands stained with dirt or their clothes?

Well, let’s put suitable clothes on them to calmly stain themselves and let’s vindicate! We demand that they give us back parks full of earth and grass, because they are soft, ideal to cushion the blows, and because children who live in highly industrialized areas, far from the mountains, would be given the opportunity to come into contact with more appropriate spaces with their innate needs to touch land, grass, water and imagine endless games with all of it.