El disputado voto del señor Cayo

In Señor Cayo's disputed vote, Delibes addresses a topic that is one of the great tragedies of our time: the abandonment of the countryside. A group of young militants from a political party arrive at one of the many practically empty and ruined towns in the north of Castilla to carry out electoral propaganda. Mr. Cayo, one of the two neighbors who remain in the town, receives them. His life is almost Robinsonian, his speech calm, full of an ancient wisdom that instills a deep human sense of his person. The crude and carefree language of the young people who visit him, sometimes educated, unconscious others, is the necessary counterpoint to highlight the distance that separates two cultures, two ways of living and seeing the world. One that disappears gradually replaced by an urban one, noisy and crowded.