Alabama-born physicist Kathryn Thornton, 72, embodies a historic shift in space exploration. Born into a working-class family, her first job was washing dishes in the restaurant run by her parents, who wanted their children to be the first in their family to go to college. Thornton not only achieved that, but also became one of the first female astronauts, embodying the new face of space exploration at NASA, which until then was dominated by white men with military training.

Thornton traveled to space four times between 1989 and 1995, and is the woman who has spent the second-longest time outside a spacecraft, performing spacewalks. In 1993, she was the only woman to participate in one of the most complicated spacewalks in history to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, an observatory that had cost around $2 billion and was returning blurry images due to a flaw in its optics. The mission was successful and restored the instrument for science, which has since helped make some of the greatest discoveries in the history of astronomy. Many years later, Thornton’s eldest daughter, who was 11 years old when her mother helped repair Hubble, earned a PhD in astrophysics using images taken by the very same telescope.

This week, Thornton will visit Spain to give a talk at the Starmus Festival, which kicks off Friday on the Canary Island of La Palma. In this interview with EL PAÍS, the astronaut reflects on how much space exploration has changed, especially in the current era, which she views with some dismay. She expresses astonishment at Elon Musk’s power and his influence over NASA, as well as concern about Donald Trump’s attacks on science in the U.S.

Question. How would you explain to someone what it would feel like to go into space for a spacewalk?

Answer. You train in the water tank and other simulators, but you find out when you first go out that all simulators lie to you in one way or another. And so you get pretty smart in the first 20 minutes about how to move around and maintain control of your body. Because when there’s no gravity, and you stop moving your hands, for example, the rest of your body still has momentum unless you apply an opposite torque to keep your rear end behind your front end. I’d say it’s like moving a refrigerator on ice, while wearing skates. It’s hard to get moving, but much harder to stop.

Q. What is your most vivid memory from your trips to space?

A. One of them was definitely letting go of the solar array from the Hubble we repaired. I just took my hands off of it, didn’t push it anywhere, and it floated away. I could see it flapping like a giant bird flying through space, right above Saudi Arabia, which is a beautiful part of Earth seen from space. It was mesmerizing.

Q. Do you have any bad memories from traveling to space?

A. On my second mission, I had a rather frustrating experience. We had to capture a satellite and strap a new booster motor on it. But it turned out to be much more difficult than expected. The predictions about how it would behave when interacted with were pretty far off. It weighed about 4,000 kilograms, and half of that mass was liquid propellant. And the satellite was rotating, which gave it gyroscopic stability, but since it wasn’t a solid mass, it didn’t behave exactly like we thought. The method we had intended to capture it with didn’t work. So we did the first and only three-person spacewalk. I was inside, guiding everything and making sure they got into the airlock. They went out and grabbed it with their hands.

Q. You were one of the first female astronauts, and you were at NASA for 12 years, what was that experience like?

A. I wouldn’t say it was terribly challenging. The fit of some things, particularly the spacesuit, was probably the biggest challenge because it wasn’t custom-made. It’s made up of various parts. So they give you a shorter upper arm than some of the guys would wear, a shorter lower arm, but they don’t change the diameter. When you try to bend your elbow, you start interfering this piece with this piece, which restricts your movement enormously. When you’re training in the water, you’re flopping around inside that suit. If I were to get positioned on my back in the tank, I would fall into the back of the suit and I couldn’t reach the gloves because my arms couldn’t reach. There were a lot of things like that. It’s not really a gender thing; it’s more a build thing, which of course is correlated with gender. In the end, you can either complain and make someone else do it, or work really hard to make it work. And that’s what I did.

Q. What do you think about current space exploration?

A. There have been many changes. My NASA was completely different to that of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. At the NASA I came into in the shuttle program, we were flying a lot of people, and we were flying a lot. I myself had four flights in six years, which is unheard of now. With the retirement of the shuttle and the arrival of the space station, everything changed. I don’t think we’ll ever see that rate or that number of flights again. Crewed missions to recover satellites or repair Hubble are no longer possible. I don’t know that that’s a bad thing if we go off and do something even more spectacular. I would love to see people walk on Mars, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Q. Do you support going to Mars instead of the Moon?

A. Yes, I’m on the Mars side. If we need to go to the Moon sooner to make the journey safer, then I support that too. But I worry that if we establish a permanent base on the Moon, that we will have sunk an anchor in there and have a hard time moving past that.

Q. Why?

A. After the end of the Apollo program in the 1970s, our next goal was to have a permanent presence in space: a space station. That was the focus for over 25 years, until we finally achieved it in 2000. Since then, there’s always been somebody in space. But we haven’t done much else: just orbited the Earth over and over again. We won’t be able to move forward until we end that. We have to decommission the space station, and NASA will hand over the baton to commercial space stations. Only then can NASA move on to the Moon and, hopefully, develop something beyond.

Q. Did you ever imagine that the richest man in the world would be a space entrepreneur sitting to the right of the president of the United States?

A. I’m completely flummoxed by that whole concept. Every day we’re surprised by something new, and we have no idea what’s going to happen next. Unfortunately, I have no factual information. I can only blather my thoughts, which aren’t necessarily based in fact, but rather on what I read or hear.

Q. Are you concerned about a wave of layoffs and cancellation of projects like the new Nancy Roman Space Telescope?

A. Yes, some of the science missions are probably in danger. It’s heartbreaking. Not just for NASA, but for the other space agencies.

Q. Could the mission to land the first woman and person of color on the moon also be in jeopardy?

A. Yes, of course. All the progress we’ve made over the past 70 years is in peril.

Q. What do you think of China as a new space power?

A. China is already our biggest competitor. Before that, it was the Soviet Union, and that competition is what got us to the Moon. I don’t see competition as a bad thing. In the past, even with ballistic missiles pointed at each other, we collaborated with the Soviets in space. We’ve worked with the Russians for 25 years on the space station. I think we could do that with China, if we chose to. But right now, we’re in a competition.

Q. What current space technology do you find most promising?

A. There’s a lot of potential in high-specific-impulse, low-thrust engines, like plasma engines. When I was teaching orbital mechanics, I asked my students to design a trajectory to Mars, and they unwittingly proposed an idea very similar to the Gateway [the lunar outpost]: take multiple components out of Earth’s gravity, assemble them in space, and, at least for cargo, use low-thrust, continuously operating thrusters — like a “slow boat” like the ones that go to Antarctica. You can send cargo to the Gateway, and from there, slowly to Mars. For people, we would use a different system, but for materials, it’s a possibility.

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Vicente Borrero has sunburned skin and wears a hole-ridden tuxedo, a dirty old cap and faded shorts. His eyes appear to always be looking away, always on the verge of tears.

Vicente looks like the last survivor from the village of Jicotea, in Santiago de Cuba, a post-war man who saw it all and lived it all. In his house, built with a zinc roof and plank walls, through which any torrential rain can penetrate, Vicente has been waiting for someone for a long time. The day that Yasser Sosa traveled more than 90 miles to find him, Vicente couldn’t believe it. He looked at the visitor and told him that he was probably just like all the others, who had passed by the village for years, promising to help him.

Vicente doesn’t know it yet, but, in a few days, he’ll have a new home. He will leave the space where he’s lived for 77 years and move to a cement house that’s not far away. It has a garden and a front porch.

Vicente doesn’t walk like other people. Due to a congenital defect, he’s learned to move nimbly, using the strength of his arms and feet to traverse rocky paths on a daily basis. A few days ago, someone saw him crawling through a local park and notified Guillermo Rodríguez, a 34-year-old journalist from Ciego de Ávila. For at least three years, Guillermo has been raising money from Cubans on and off the island to buy houses for the homeless. The country currently has a deficit of 862,000 properties, according to data from the National Statistics Office (ONEI). However, unofficial figures suggest that there are some 1.2 million homeless Cubans, while thousands more reside in overcrowded or almost-marginal conditions.

Rodríguez asked Sosa, his right-hand man in Santiago de Cuba, to locate Vicente immediately. After finding him, he turned to his Facebook followers and told them who Vicente was: a disabled, unmarried man with no children, who had been in a wheelchair for more than 10 years. Vicente’s parents — his only support system — died a long time ago. He lives on a monthly pension of 1,500 Cuban pesos (a little over $5) from the state, enough to eat just once every two days.

It took three days to raise 210,000 Cuban pesos ($583). Rodríguez subsequently allocated 180,000 pesos ($500) to purchase the house. With the rest of the funds, he’ll furnish it with appliances that Vicente has never had. Rodríguez did the same thing over a month ago for Benito, a single father living in the center of the island, in a house made of planks with a dirt floor, and his 10-month-old baby. With 1.6 million pesos (more than $4,400), the volunteers acquired a two-story home and everything the father needed to start over.

There are days when Rodríguez searches for medicine for a mother, who is frightened by her daughter’s scabies. Sometimes he tries to get a wheelchair for a sick person, or a rice cooker for a housewife. He and his team are the ones who show up with a bar of soap or a package of spaghetti to give away, or they offer to carry a donated mattress for an elderly man who has nowhere to sleep.

It’s a silent solidarity movement. “A chain of favors,” Rodríguez notes. “Yesterday, two people went to pick up donated nebulizers for their children with asthma: they arrived with medicines to give to someone else, in case they needed them. The number of vulnerable, abandoned people is numerous. In Cuba, a network of support and empathy has been created […] in a country so devastated, people cling to that. In Cuba, only neighbors can help each other out.”

For several years now, Cubans haven’t waited around for their government. The state has left them orphaned, deprived of everything. Some say they feel betrayed, as if the authorities have turned their backs on them. Those who receive remittances from abroad are freed from depending on the increasingly scarce rationed food that the government barely guarantees. Those who manage to get into business are navigating shortages of all kinds, in a country with a collapsed, dependent economy that ended 2024 with an inflation rate of 24.88%. Tourism is increasingly depressed due to the lack of travel, while the private sector is impeded from growing. Today, in Cuba, according to studies, around 89% of families live in extreme poverty. In many cases, activists or civil society organizations fill the gaps in the ever-increasing space left by the government. And, after stepping in, almost all of them end up targeted by the political police, or are forced to abandon their work.

“The help I give is a way of denouncing the system”

“I need Clonazepam for my daughter,” says a desperate mother, in a WhatsApp group named Manos a la Obra (“Let’s get to work”). Soon, someone offers to share theirs. Groups of this type are increasingly popping up on social media. In these online forums, Cubans often share, distribute and exchange medicines. On the island — as the government itself has acknowledged — more than 460 medications are in short supply in the state pharmacies. Some people, faced with the possibility of death due to lack of treatment or surgery, launch GoFundMe campaigns to request humanitarian visas, or financial donations to cover a patient’s transfer to a hospital beyond the island.

Art historian and activist Yamilka Lafita — who has helped launch some of the most visible campaigns in recent years — asserts that, without knowing how or since when, it’s Cuban civil society that has united to survive. “In Cuba today, there are no supplies, treatments, reagents… there aren’t even doctors to perform operations. And these campaigns are a way to denounce the public health system, which is just another cog in the wheel of this failed state,” Lafita laments. She has helped transport children with cancer or in need of transplants to hospitals in Spain or the United States, so that they can receive treatment and surgeries. “Some people tell me: ‘You’re putting Band-Aids on the dictatorship.’ But I’m not putting Band-Aids on it, because my help denounces the system. Every contribution you make — whether it’s getting a humanitarian visa, or donating two syringes — helps a Cuban survive in poverty.”

Some Cubans attest that this is the greatest crisis of all time, even worse than the so-called Special Period (1991-2000), which began following the collapse of the Soviet Union. They base their testimony on the lack of hope people have for immediate change, but mostly on what can be seen on the street: an emigration of almost two million Cubans in about three years; people dying without medical care; retirees whose pensions are insufficient; or people seen sleeping on the streets, something they say was unheard of in the 1990s. The Cuban authorities acknowledge some 3,690 people “displaying wandering behavior,” but this is believed to be an undercount. José Daniel Ferrer, a renowned political leader from the eastern part of the island, knows this firsthand. Since his release from prison at the beginning of the year (following negotiations between the Cuban government and the Vatican), he’s been feeding hundreds of people. Every day, they come to his house, looking for food. With aid that he receives from abroad, Ferrer and his family distribute more than a thousand hot meals each afternoon, handing them out to people who don’t receive state support. The difference, according to the opposition leader, is that Cuba, today, is a place where there’s food for those who have money.

“In the early 1990s, the situation was such that, even if you had money, you couldn’t get much. You couldn’t move from one place to another, because the roads were deserted and there were barely any vehicles moving,” he recalls. “Now, if you have money, you can’t go to bed without eating, because there are products in dollars — very expensive — and there are MSMEs (micro, small and medium-sized private enterprises). But for those elderly people who live on a thousand-something pesos in retirement, the hunger is as terrible, even worse than what we suffered from during the Special Period. They depend on what arrives at the grocery store… and almost nothing ever arrives. So, some people are faring worse.”

In Cuba, there’s also talk of the “new rich.” This is in stark contrast to what the Cuban government denied for years: social classes in a country where everyone was supposedly “equal.” These are people who come and go from the island; they often run businesses. Many of them can be seen in the increasingly common luxury cars — such as Mercedes-Benzes, Audis, or Chevrolets — that roll through Havana’s streets. However, what nobody is spared from, what affects everyone across the board, are the blackouts, the almost-daily power outages across the country. This electricity crisis is due to the lack of maintenance at the aging thermoelectric plants, as well as the reduction in fuel arriving from allied nations, such as Venezuela.

This is something that Cubans have also tried to take control of: in the absence of a state to resolve the energy crisis that has worsened since last year, some in the diaspora send light generators, small solar panels, candles and flashlights from abroad. But the truth is that these, too, are running out. Life becomes dark for everyone, equally. In this case, it’s the Cuban government that has sought help from abroad. And, once again, it’s relying on Russia to finally pull the country out of its massive energy crisis. But that, according to economists, won’t be enough, so long as the government persists in its centralized economic model.

“Cubans have remained stuck in the Cold War view of trade relations. They believe that Russia, China and others should help them, because they’re confronting the United States and are an important player for the great powers,” says economist Ricardo Torres, a former researcher at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana and a professor at American University in Washington, D.C. “I’m not sure the Russians see it that way. Such support would be very important for Cuba, but [the Cuban government] has never been interested in doing what it needs to do with its economic model to become a more reliable counterpart.”

More than six decades after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, it seems clear that it won’t be Russia that saves the country, nor activists who will heal the sick and provide housing for all the homeless Cubans. According to the Cuban Constitution, the state is responsible for ensuring the well-being of the population. But people believe there’s one thing that the government — which has stopped taking charge of almost everything — does handle perfectly: control. It maintains a heavy level of repression, allocating all kinds of reinforcements to ensure this. In a country that’s unable to guarantee food, electricity, or medical care, more than 1,000 political prisoners are held in its jails.

“In Cuba, if a person suffers from a medical emergency, it’s likely that an ambulance will take hours to come, if it arrives at all,” activist Carolina Barrero sighs. “But, if that same person shouts ‘Down with Raúl Castro!’ in the street, police patrols and state security agents will appear within minutes to detain and interrogate them. This shows that the regime’s inability to provide basic services isn’t simply due to scarcity, but to a deliberate political will. Castroism has always been in the hands of an extractive elite, who are more interested in maintaining [Cuba’s] international facade than in the well-being of the people.”

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The ramping up of global trade tensions has ceased to be a peripheral concern and has become a central issue for the decision-making boards of central banks and multilateral organizations. What began as a threat by the Trump administration quickly turned into an escalation of levies between the U.S. and China that has led to a spiral that could well change the world order: a trade war with systemic effects, capable of altering capital flows, supply chains, and inflationary forecasts.

Faced with this new scenario, institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and central banks have begun to revise their growth projections, and also to redesign policies and plans that seemed untouchable until a few weeks ago. The international economic playbook now has less predictable rules, making it necessary to recalibrate strategies in real time. Even the WTO, traditionally distanced from monetary dynamics, is warning of an increasingly fragmented environment that threatens to blur the frameworks of global cooperation and to undermine the exchange of goods and economic growth.

In a prelude to the meeting to be held by the IMF next week in which macroeconomic forecasts will also be revised, the organization announced on April 17 that there would be a wave of “significant downgrades” in the growth projections of many countries. For the time being, the fund rules out a recession, but does insist there will be hikes in inflation forecasts.

“Uncertainty over trade policies has reached unprecedented levels,” explained the managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, in a speech foreshadowing the organization’s official position. The Bulgarian politician and economist warned that prolonged uncertainty raises the risk of tensions in financial markets, as has been seen with the dollar and U.S. Treasury bonds. “These shifts should be taken as a warning,” she said. “If financial conditions get worse, everyone suffers.” She added that the longer the uncertainty persists, the greater the cost to the global economy, although she avoided any specific mention of U.S. president Donald Trump.

Speaking at the organization’s headquarters in Washington, World Bank president Ajay Banga recently warned that greater uncertainty and economic instability will weigh down the world economy. “Trade tension is causing economic agents to be more cautious, which can slow down investments and the purchasing decisions of companies and households,” he said after calling on countries to sit down and negotiate as soon as possible to establish a clear and lasting trade framework.

The situation is alarming and may yet escalate further. After declaring a universal general tariff of 10% and a melting pot of additional rates for countries with which the U.S. has a larger trade deficit, Trump announced a 90-day pause in order to negotiate with nearly 70 governments and reach an agreed solution. The only one not spared from the armistice is China, which has retaliated in kind.

So far, meetings with the other countries can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Spain’s Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo has just met with his U.S. counterpart, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. There was also a meeting between Japan and the U.S., in which no agreement was reached. And April 17 saw Trump hobnob with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — the first meeting with an EU leader since the beginning of the trade offensive, with a vague promise of some kind of deal down the line.

With no clear rules and constantly shifting policies, multilateral organizations and central banks are walking on eggshells, adopting a wait-and-see approach, though they have already begun to project scenarios and redirect monetary policy.

Monetary policy

The U.S. protectionist stance has prompted the European Central Bank (ECB) to cut rates for the sixth consecutive time, to 2.25%, in an attempt to counteract the negative economic impact of the tariffs. It is a clear signal that the eurozone is facing a period of stagnant growth, in line with the IMF’s general forecasts. The president of the organization, Christine Lagarde, has acknowledged that the overall picture is being shaped by “exceptional uncertainty” and that the increase in tariff disputes threatens to further dampen exports, one of the main drivers of the European economy, so that “growth prospects have deteriorated.”

The IMF’s glum tone has overshadowed any positive impact that the rate cut might have had on the stock markets. Contrary to the typical response to a more lax monetary policy, all markets fell. The Ibex 35 closed 0.19% down, the German Dax fell by 0.53%, while the French stock market and the Euro Stoxx 50 fell by more than 0.6%. The Italian Mib, for its part, limited losses to 0.24%.

Although the rate cut has not boosted the stock markets, it has reinforced the difference between the monetary policies of Europe and the U.S., where the Federal Reserve is being much more cautious with rate cuts. Its chairman, Jerome Powell, has just insisted on the inflationary risks of the tariffs imposed by the White House and has shown himself in favor of waiting for greater “clarity” from Trump before moving the price of money. His words have been taken by analysts as confirmation that the entity will not make a move at the next meeting scheduled for May and that a 0.25 point cut will not happen until June at the earliest.

While the ECB has cut rates by 1.75 percentage points since last June, the Fed has only applied a one percentage point cut since September and has maintained a more contained stance since December. This divergence is mainly due to the fact that Trump’s protectionist proposals bring with them an inflationary risk. By contrast, Europe is grappling with the impact of the war in Ukraine and a greater dependence on foreign trade. The recent strengthening of the euro and falling oil prices are also contributing to a slowdown in inflation in the eurozone. With the tariffs already imposed, the bloc faces significant levies, such as 25% on steel, aluminum, and the auto industry.

The WTO, which regulates trade rules, has also reassessed the economic landscape. The institution chaired by Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has cut its growth forecast for trade in goods by almost three points, from an initial increase of 2.7% to a fall of 0.2% by 2025. This is based on the current scenario. In other words, if the tariff offensive intensifies, the decline would be 1.5% this year and the global economy could fall by 7% in the long term.

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