One Way Ticket Roots Novel EN

«Con Billete de Ida. Raíces» / «One-Way Ticket: Roots» is a free, open-access novel of about 150 pages, published in Spanish and English. It was written to promote youth participation, mobility and solidarity through Erasmus+. It is a dissemination output of the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in the field of Youth project ROOT – Rural Opportunities and Outreach for Tomorrow (No. 101243317, ERASMUS-YOUTH-2025-CB).

The story
In Arrieta, a small town in the Basque Country, Lucía has always believed there are only two kinds of people: the ones who stay forever and the ones who leave and never come back. Then a youth exchange, a black notebook and her grandmother’s fifty-year silence about her own one-way ticket in 1964 change how she sees it.

From Gipuzkoa to Belgrade, Ajlun and Porto, Lucía and her friends live Erasmus+ as it really is. There are youth exchanges, the European Solidarity Corps, adult learning and partnerships with rural communities in Europe and the Mediterranean. There are also the hard parts: scams, visas denied to some participants, local politics and the responsibility of travelling with public money. In the end Lucía discovers a third kind of people: the ones who come back.

What the book includes

• 23 chapters with a prologue and an epilogue, illustrated with stills from the audiovisual series #ConBilleteDeIda
• “What Is Real in This Fiction”: accurate, accessible facts about Erasmus+, youth exchanges, the European Solidarity Corps, Youthpass, Capacity Building in Youth and the ROOT project
• “Talking About It Afterwards”: 10 discussion questions for youth groups, classrooms, NGOs and book clubs

Who it is for
Young people aged 13–30, youth workers, teachers and vocational colleges, youth organisations, and anyone curious about what Erasmus+ means for rural youth and for migration.

Use of artificial intelligence
The text was written with the help of Claude (Anthropic), based on the idea, characters, scripts and direction of the author, who reviewed it and is responsible for its publication. The illustrations are stills generated with Artlist AI for the #ConBilleteDeIda series. None of the people shown exist. AI was used as a creative tool to start a critical conversation about Erasmus+ and its reality.

Related works: the 9-episode drama series #ConBilleteDeIda and its photo-comic adaptation, both by ABARKA ONGD.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.