2025: CENIE drives the path toward a long-lived and conscious society

2025 has been a singular year for CENIE. Not only because of the magnitude of the projects undertaken, but because each one of them has put into action a set of values that define our identity: scientific rigor, social awareness, a culture of care, respect for territories, data ethics, intellectual ambition, and a deep conviction that longevity is a national opportunity. This year is not measured in activities, but in coherence: between what we think and what we do, between evidence and action, between research and real life.

Longevity is not a phenomenon to be observed; it is a territory to be built. And CENIE has demonstrated that living longer is not a collective success if that time is not filled with well-being, participation, and meaning. That is why the first value that runs through all our work is Conscious Longevity: a way of understanding that an extended life is only valuable when it is chosen, cared for, and supported by institutions, communities, and territories that accompany it. This year, that idea stopped being an inspiring concept and became an operational criterion.

The second value is science with purpose. Nothing we have developed— from studies on healthy life expectancy to analyses on care, territorial well-being, or community action— has been conceived as an isolated academic product. The science promoted by CENIE is a science that asks what it is for, how it improves lives, how it guides policies, and how it reduces inequalities. In 2025 we have shown that it is possible to combine methodological excellence with public usefulness, and that the distance between the laboratory and the territory can be reduced when research is born with a vocation for impact.

Alongside this, CENIE has defended prevention as a culture of life. In a long-lived society, prevention is no longer a one-off health action: it is a form of social organization. Prevention means detecting frailty before it settles in; strengthening community networks before loneliness emerges; promoting healthy habits before dependency appears. This year we have launched projects that anticipate, that detect, that accompany. Prevention has become a shared ethic: caring for everyone’s future through small, constant, and meaningful actions.

Another decisive value has been respect for and attention to territories. Longevity is not lived the same way in a village in Ourense, in an urban neighborhood in Salamanca, or in a hamlet in the district of Bragança. That is why CENIE has worked this year from within the territory and with the territory. We have demonstrated that aging provinces are not scenarios of the past but social laboratories of the future. Where others saw decline, we saw resilience; where others spoke of loss, we found community. This perspective has guided projects that analyze territorial well-being, accompany communities, and build scientific tools that measure how people live— not only how many live— in each place.

Linked to this territorial sensitivity is another of our central values: the dignity of care and interdependence as a social foundation. CENIE has insisted that caring is not a private sacrifice but an essential public infrastructure. That interdependence— recognizing that we need others and that others need us— is not a burden but a strength. In 2025 we worked to make care visible, dignify it, and professionalize it, but also to remind that the community plays an irreplaceable role in well-being.

The progress we seek must also be supported by data ethics. At a time when technology advances rapidly, CENIE has shown that it is possible to build ecosystems based on artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, and data spaces without sacrificing privacy, security, and equity. The technology we promote does not extract: it protects. It does not surveil: it understands. It does not replace: it accompanies and anticipates. This data ethic, which we have reinforced in 2025, will be key to integrating science, governance, and citizenship in the coming years.

Longevity also needs culture. That is why one of our essential values is culture as a lever for social transformation. Science explains, but culture moves, inspires, and mobilizes. The exhibitions, illustrations, essays, photographs, and public events of this year have renewed society’s perception of longevity, breaking stereotypes and showing that an extended life is not a renunciation but a creative horizon. For CENIE, culture is part of an expanded public policy: a way of planting new perspectives.

In the same way, 2025 has reaffirmed community as the minimum unit of well-being. No long-lived society is sustainable without human bonds. No public policy can replace the effect of a cohesive community. Projects focused on combating unwanted loneliness and strengthening local networks have demonstrated that accompanying is preventing, that listening is caring, and that well-being needs human roots, not only institutional structures.

Finally, we have acted guided by intergenerational co-responsibility. Longevity is not an issue for older people: it is a pact between generations. Reorganizing work time, redistributing opportunities, redefining life trajectories, and ensuring that well-being does not depend on birthdate are essential elements of the immediate future. This year, CENIE has defended that every generation contributes a part of the solution, and that the society we want to build requires cooperation across ages, not separation.

And there is one last value, transversal to all the above, that deserves explicit recognition: cooperation as the foundation of progress. Nothing we achieved in 2025 would have been possible without the support of the Cross-Border Cooperation Program INTERREG (POCTEP). Its financial and institutional backing not only enabled the development of frontier projects— in both the territorial and innovative sense— but made possible the creation of an Iberian ecosystem of knowledge, data, and well-being. CENIE expresses its deep gratitude to POCTEP, because its commitment has turned a shared vision into an operational reality.

Taken as a whole, 2025 is not just a year of achievements: it is a year of identity. The year in which the values of CENIE ceased to be inspiring principles and became structure, method, and working culture. A year that confirms that longevity, when approached with science, ethics, and humanity, is not a challenge to manage but an opportunity to seize. A project that does not belong to one generation, but to all. And one that is only just beginning.