Every August 12, International Youth Day is celebrated. A date that, beyond institutional publications, photographs, and messages of commitment, should serve to ask an uncomfortable question: are administrations truly responding to what young people need?
Because talking about youth cannot be limited to organizing one-off activities, inaugurating spaces, or filling an agenda with proposals that look good on social media. Young people need much more than headlines. They need real, useful, and sustained policies over time.
Being young today means facing an increasingly complex reality. Access to housing has become an almost impossible race for many. Emancipation is happening later and later. Employment, even when it exists, does not always allow for building a life project. Mental health has become a daily concern. And digital overexposure, constant comparison, and social media pressure are part of the daily lives of a generation that lives connected, but often feels alone.
That is why Youth Day should not be an excuse to say that one is with young people. It should be the moment to prove it.
Proving it means listening to them before deciding for them. It means asking them what they need, what worries them, and what they expect from their municipality. It means creating spaces for real participation, not just activities designed from an office. It means talking about housing, training, transportation, employment, healthy leisure, culture, mental health, and the future.
It also means understanding that youth is not a homogeneous group. Not all young people have the same opportunities, nor the same problems, nor the same aspirations. There are young people who study, young people who work, young people who want to start businesses, young people who have had to leave, young people who want to return, and young people who feel that their municipality does not count them.
And that is where administrations have a clear responsibility.
Young people do not need to be used as an image of modernity. They need to be taken seriously. They do not only need spaces to spend time, but tools to build their future. They do not need empty speeches about young talent, but measures that allow them to stay, grow, and develop their lives in the place they belong.
Because youth is not the future. It is the present.
And when a municipality does not listen to its young people, it not only loses a generation: it loses ideas, it loses energy, it loses talent, and it loses the capacity to move forward.
This International Youth Day should serve to open a serious debate. Fewer empty gestures and more commitment. Fewer photos and more planning. Less talking on behalf of young people and more sitting down to listen to them.
Because celebrating youth is good.
But truly defending them is much more important.
Ana Hernández, president of Nuevas Generaciones of Lanzarote
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