Thank you for visiting Salva Castillo’s personal website. As a digital native who has lived in different cities (Córdoba, Madrid, Buenos Aires and Miami) it is natural for me to keep an open door to the world where I can share some aspects of my life, and where I can exchange information with others. My proverbial unconfined verbosity is also a factor to consider in this initiative.
The scorpion, the palm tree, er bisho, the lobster or, more recently, the prawn; whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t matter. If we ever meet in person, I most likely was wearing it around my neck.
Although I also maintain a profile in some social networks I prefer to centralize my content in this website that resides on my own server. I want to become independent from third party platforms that use the content I provide for free as their asset (they also use your content, so you know), that monitor my communications undermining my privacy (end-to-end encrypted they say, ha!), that create a socio-demographic profile (which they share with countless third parties), then flood me with advertising and also, through algorithms whose logic I do not know, grant the visibility (or not) of my content for other users.
Finally, these social networks can decide at any time, at their own discretion and unilaterally, that they do not consider any of my content appropriate and delete it, or even delete my account and/or profile. I prefer not to talk about the political and social polarization they promote. As the distinguished Facundo Cabral sang in his deliciously funny “Ferrocabral” (1983):
“No one expects anything from anyone or everyone expects everything from anyone. That is, politicians decide how much you should earn and the military how much you should lose. The priests how much you should put up with and the trade unionists when you should stop.”
Corollary for the 21st century:
“Social networks and social pressure from your peers in real time help decide your ideological position on what concerns you (and what doesn’t concern you, too).”
In our society, the feeling of belonging and acceptance is very important. The speed of information dissemination is almost immediate and, due to the current social polarization, we can feel coerced to position ourselves unequivocally on one side or the other, and sometimes we do it in an unreflective way. It can happen to all of us. In a joking tone some time ago I commented:
“The commonly-accepted healthy mind is in perfect euphoric alignment with The Current Thing that the local community embraces at the time.”
I like to think of this website as a hymn (my hymn) to some values that I consider important, such as independence, freedom of expression, privacy, and doing things the way you think they should be, even if it takes more effort and sometimes (or many times) you are wrong. It is important for me to agree with myself. This web is, in short, a song to myself, as Walt Whitman once said:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
You may notice that I do not explicitly mention third parties, nor do I publish photos or videos in which other people appear in a recognizable way. It is not, in any case, for lack of affection. It is due -besides an evident exaltation of my own narcissism- to the fact that I respect the privacy and the different life projects, in some way diverging from my own path, of all the people who have been part of my life. It does not matter if the photos were taken in public places and, therefore, I am legally entitled to include them even without anyone’s explicit permission.
Unless otherwise agreed, no other persons who can be recognized will appear on this site. I do not believe that anyone should be publicly related to me without knowing it. That is not an obstacle, however, for me to publish freely those contents that I feel like of a place or event in which I was (or was not) accompanied.
On this website all points of view, as long as they are legal in the country where the website is hosted, are publicly accepted, although I personally may not agree. Again, Cabral:
“On the left the revolutionaries, on the right the reactionaries; in the middle the men, those who decide their own lives, that is, three or four.”
I don’t pretend to have a successful website in terms of number of visits or any other metric. This is only, but not less than, my personal window to the world where I share what entertains me, which doesn’t have to be the same as what entertains you. It is also a downtoned blog of my experiences, like a multimedia autobiography, which is widening and mutating as I find the time. I haven’t watched C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate, but I have some anecdotes worth telling. Anyway, I offer it to you free of charge, just in case you might be interested. As a beautiful saying goes (Slavic, I think) that I make my own:
“You can take away by force but you cannot give away by force.”
To find out about me professionally, what I’m involved in and what my professional experiences and interests are, please visit www.salvadorcastillo.net. I try to separate the two worlds as much as I can.
If you want to contact me, you can write me on Telegram by following the link below; this way I can keep private my phone number -and you too. Later, only if we add each other as a contact, Telegram will give us the option to share our number with each other. So if you decide to contact me, please tell me something other than “hello” so I don’t mistake you for a chat-bot. I think you really do have material on these website to have a few laughs with me. I am not easily offended, and never if the banter is in good faith. I do, however, execute insta-blocks to impertinence, outbursts, and any other message I deem inappropriate. For everything else:
Notice: all personal opinions published on this website are subject to change or retraction without notice. I would be just the last straw if in the face of new evidence, better reasoning, or deeper introspection, I could not change my mind about anything. I have been doing it all my life. Another thing is to change my personal values. Which I have also changed them as I have gone through life. But those other changes take substantially more time and cost me much more. The zeitgeist is something real and although we may prefer to feel independent and against the current, I think it ends up affecting us all.
Greetings, and thank you again for passing by. Open the menu below and keep exploring!