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Interviewed August 9, 2017 for Catalunya Barcelona docuseries.

Who are you?

Conrad Son.

Where were you born?

In Barcelona, in the Nou Barris neighborhood.

What’s your job?

I’m a producer, director and actor

of material for adults.

What they call pornography.

Now I’ll tell you some historic events to see if you can tell us some anecdote. Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship?

No, nothing from this time.

The second Republic?

Not much.

Very little stuff, it’s hasn’t been talked about at home.

The CNT?

I’ve never had any relative that was…

or any acquaintance that had much of a relationship.

The bombing of Barcelona by the Italians?

My grandmother would tell me sometimes,

but it was… My grandfather was in the war for a long time, in the war

they called the battle of the Ebro.

And he came back quite affected, with asthma and so, it was… from there one, negative topics weren’t dealt with much. And of course, then…

And not… They only talked about that they would hide,

that they had… that they went to the subway,

that they heard the sirens. But then didn’t talk, specifically, about that bombing. They didn’t talk much about the war at home.

About the civil war?

It wasn’t talked about much because my grandfather was… left-winger.

Completely,

and then, well, it was… it didn’t make for a great topic.

Of course, he didn’t win the war, so he wasn’t in much of a position to talk about it, right? It was, it went okay, because actually, my grandfather,

Antonio, became a watchman. He was one of these watchmen from back then, a night watchmen, called ‘serenos’.

“Sereno!” they carried the keys and so, my grandfather carried all the keys.

They didn’t talk much about the war. He didn’t want to. He did talk sometime…

He had anecdotes about the war. I remember one.

It’s not fun, but it’s a bit like that.

He was with a… They both were in the Ebro war, they were by the river.

And he was in so much pain in his molar that he went out to get killed, right?

I do remember that this was like… Damn, that’s heavy. For a molar….

Your molar hurts and you go out… Because it hurt so badly that the guy stood up and was gunned down, right?

I do remember that.

But they didn’t talk about the war, it wasn’t a common topic.

About the Francoist dictatorship?

Yes, of course, let’s see,

of course, the dictatorship…

I remember that my grandmother cried when Franco died

and he was the one that had gunned down her family. I mean, there was a moment when

grandma had developed a sort of fondness

out of seeing him so often, I suppose, in pesetas,

in television, everywhere.

So, of course, we didn’t understand that this asshole,

that grandma cried when he died, right?

She said, well, we knew him so much…

of course, that gets you thinking, right? You think, damn, there’s a moment sometimes when people earn,

I don’t know…

Maybe that’s why in these foreign dictatorships that they put pictures everywhere, I suppose there’s some of this

to try to make people become sort of fond, because they are like family, right?

Like watching on Telecinco, you see them so often

that in the end you know them all, and actually you don’t know anyone.

I remember this anecdote,

that actually at our home we didn’t like him at all, of course.

A great part of our family celebrated it, in a way, and my grandmother cried and his husband was left-winged and miraculously didn’t die in the war.

That’s life, right?

Could you tell us how Nou Barris has changes since you were born?

A lot, it’s a neighborhood… it was a working class neighborhood and still is working class.

But, of course, the means are different. Actually, when I was twenty I migrated, so to speak, to the Raval.

Because my grandma was a bit deaf and I played the guitar, which suited me. We had a thing, since she couldn’t hear I could play guitar.

I left when I was twenty. But of course, when I go back, it has evidently changed a lot, on an infrastructure level, the streets…

it has changed, we could say, the looks. You remember things but sometimes feel out of place because everything is so new, right?

So, let’s see, I left when I was 20 and now I am 50.

So, in 30 years, of course, it has changed. It has changed for the better.

I think it’s a neighborhood that has changed for the better.

It still has this working class spirit, middle class, a bit low, depending on the neighborhood you visit,

but… it has changed, substantially, for the better.

Could you tell us what you did as a kid to have fun?

When I was little I had fun playing with the Madelmans.

I was an enthusiast of Madelmans. So, I would play… I had many, I would ask them for my birthday, for my saint’s day, for Christmas. I always asked for Madelman, I had a lot.

And I’ve always had good care of toys. I had my toys very well kept, it was all well organized,

and them, well, I would set up… I would spend long times setting up things as if they were tasks or the like around the place

with the toys, I played a lot with Madelmans. Later I played with Famobil’s clicks.

I loved playing with toys, I played until I was quite old.

I was fourteen or fifteen and still playing.

That is, I was a child until quite late.

Could you tell us how Barcelona has changed from the 78 until now?

Well, Barcelona sure has changed. The most extreme change comes since Pascual Maragall gets the fever of the…

Olympiads. It changed a lot, it changed for the better too.

Everyone believed him a bit crazy.

It was sort of an excessive project, let’s say, for the city. It was a sort of huge effort for everyone,

but it transmitted something… as a sort of positive collective hysteria,

and everyone thought it was good, they said, well, that,

we won’t be able to, it’s too much for us, maybe, I don’t know, for Munich, for…

We remembered back then, the others…

I say Munich because everyone would buy the sneakers and remember things and damn, it was like,

a bit of, whatever we will do her? We’ll be fools. We have no idea, we don’t speak English.

It will be a disaster.

Of course, now, those of us who spoke English, did so with a 3, let’s say, back then nobody spoke any English.

Those who spoke English was because they studied English or were English philologists or something like that, but wasn’t common, right?

And we thought, this is a disaster.

And actually he did it great. In that moment I was working with the red cross, I remember being in a volunteer group, bringing disabled people.

So, I worked with all these people who were in wheelchairs,

and well, with the Guttman institute, with all these people they worked with, let’s say, in that moment, I was there.

And well, I watched it with some volunteers, I had a good time watching.

I liked the way it ended up. Of course, it was a very commercial montage,

but all Olympiads are, right?

And well, it changed the city a lot, of course. It changed me too, my neighborhood changed. Everything… Everything became…

I think they have been, comparatively, and forgive me if I say so, but I remember I went to the Sevilla Expo.

I came back. And barely anything was used afterwards, right? That with the Cartuja, all that.

And here the infrastructure that was built on purpose was later used a lot, then they were able to, maybe not all of it, I don’t know that much about it,

but there was, let’s say, the challenge was useful to reach a higher challenge, that the city had a better infrastructure level

and that the city was better known. I remember that Barcelona had some serious tourism. Maybe it was 3, 4 or 5 million people, now we’re over 30.

Maybe we overdid it in some things, it’s starting to look a bit like Venice or New York.

But it is true that the Olympiads marked a turning point to people being aware of Barcelona. Actually, people, when they went to Barcelona, I don’t know if you’ve seen those people who go to Barcelona and buy Mexican sombreros, right?

Of course, because when the first souvenir stands came, it was foreigners usually,

they bought Barcelona things and, well, there’s a city called Barcelona in Mexico.

And of course, the typical thing of Barcelona were Mexican sombreros

because they thought they were in Mexico.

Then, you’d see everyone with Mexican sombreros

and, what are they doing? Of course, that’s typical of Barcelona, yes, but Barcelona,

the Barcelona in Mexico. That’s why, I’m not sure if you knew, that there was lots of people with vulgar Mexican sombreros

-vulgar because they weren’t from here, right? Typical from here were, at most, the flamenco dancers.

And they were relatively typical, and those bulls you see on top of tv sets, right?

And well, now it is true that it has changed,

Barcelona changed. I think that the Mexican sombrero was already a bit set aside by Cobi. Which was…

It also looked a bit like Pascual Maragall.

He… He took, I think that this man….

I didn’t agree much with all he said, but he did have something positive, he was someone with energy, right?

Maybe by himself he wouldn’t have managed anything, but he was a good orchestra conductor without playing any instrument.

I think that, he was a smart person, he was able to positively influence

maybe in a moment when we weren’t in an economic crisis per se, as recently

here, but it wasn’t a great moment, so to say. It lacked a certain… I don’t know.

I lacked… as if it was lacking some light to see something. And this was, well, an excuse

to build infrastructures, to make Spain invest, for example, in Catalonia.

So that the name of Spain would grow. But actually, people remember Barcelona.

People don’t say Spain, they rather say Barcelona, they are the Barcelona Olympic Games.

Could you tell us about the nightlife during that time, the 80s?

In the 80s, nightlife was full of life.

I went out, but, let’s see, back then there were the neo-romantics, there was Duran Duran, there were many foreign bands that here, well, had great popularity.

During that time I was 20, in the 86 I was 20.

I remember because in that time I started going out late, in my 16, 17

and there was, in the 80s was in the Studio 54, which was a bit of a copy of Studio 54 in New York, which was in Paral·lel.

I remember that during that time was starting, let’s say, the gay thing.

It was like latest, being gay during that time. Now it is too, but it was like something the latest.

There were the drag queens, for example, there were people livening it up, there was some fun people…

Drug moved around in a, let’s say, happy way, but I never saw horrible drug scenes.

I’m talking about… Later I found out there were people who died from it, right?

But in that moment it was like that.

There wasn’t an awareness of drug addiction. There wasn’t either an awareness of AIDS. There wasn’t an awareness

of, let’s say, that going out at night was horrible. It was the usual. Everyone went out, there were some who drank more, some who… I didn’t drink, but there were people who drank a lot.

I went to dance.

Me and my group were very into going dancing, and we danced. Then, I had the group that went to dance later Break Dance,

which was, of course, I went to the gym and then, of course, we liked, well, you went a bit to show off your half practiced arts.

But on the other side I liked, being a neo-romantic. Then, of course, I had to be dressed up…

You couldn’t be wearing a suit track, it was impossible, right? It was horrible. Then we were dressed as neo-romantics, I had, now I don’t have any, I had a quiff.

We went with hair, I had blonde hair, then, well, I looked a bit like a singer of the time, of that time. Then, we all went, a bit,

imitating a bit the groups of the moment, right?

Then, there were tendencies. There were, in Barcelona there were like teams. There were people who liked Rock’n’Roll, like Loquillo and that people.

Inhelo [??], who played the sax, had a band. This band that sang the song “Mediterraneo” and all that time,

let’s say, there was then this group of Rockabily, that were more like classic,

the punkies, who were very punkies. They were the children of the Sex Pistols, so to say.

And there were bands that were in back then.

And then, every band, in a way, that back then was as if they were urban tribes, as they were called,

then, we went to different clubs. There were conflicts, into which I never entered,

but there were conflicts between the punkies and the rockers, the neo-romantics would fights, well, didn’t have a good relationship with the goths.

Then there were clubs, I remember there was the club 666,

which was more, let’s say, towards Poblenou.

Others went more towards the style of Costa Breve, which was posher. There was the Nick Havanna.

There was the Trauma which was for very old people, back then. An then, well, we went, depending on how we dressed, we went one style or the other so that nobody would bother us. Then, we adapted a bit. Actually, I went to a punk music gig and got my boots stolen. A huge drama.

I was defended by some who were friends with others. I went to a concert of Decibelios, which was a quite… blunt band, because I liked the music.

Of course, I’m very eclectic. I have CDs from Julio Iglesias, from Decibelios, and from bands that aren’t related at all, right?

Because I like music in general. And there were songs I liked.

Come on, with some friends, come on, let’s, that. We went there, well. Of course, I did drugs and well, I danced what was called the pogo.

The pogo was jumping up and down, now they do it different, right?

But well, I suppose that all the generations have a moment and I never really adapted a lot to any group. I liked a girl, then I was into a style, then you dressed up a bit.

I mean, you’d dress up, I mean with this. Then, usually I didn’t dress the same.

And well those were times when, well, when you’re twenty you’re not that sure about how to dress.

You also let go with the trend of the moment and, well, there was also back then Alaska y Dinarama, which we also liked.

Of course, I liked all music that could be danced to.

So, they would get the songs in style, the, you liked that band for a song. And we went to the club and asked for songs.

I’ve always hanged out with many girls.

Always. I was, let’s say, everyone thought I was gay.

Normally. I had, let’s see, I had a look, let’s say, that I could be, and everyone thought so.

And, really, I saw myself great because I wasn’t gay, never been, actually I haven’t liked guys. But I have many gray friends, but I’m not that close to them.

I have a relationship like I have with my sister.

Then, of course, with them I was great because I didn’t bother them, I didn’t take their boyfriends away, wich suited me because I went with the girls who went with the gays because they were looking for bars, as they were called before.

let’s go to a gay bar, they said.

Gay bar meant that there were affairs for the guys who were into guys and girls who weren’t bothered often. Then, I was there, not bothering either, and well, I took a bit of advantage of the situation

which really suited me. It was a really good role.

Could you tell me about the feeling of freedom when Franco died?

I didn’t feel a thing.

That’s first. Because I was too young. In the 75 I was still nine.

I was aware that Franco died because they talked about it at home and I knew some relatives of mine had celebrated it a lot.

But at home they always been quite… let’s say, quite Catalans.

All of my surroundings were Catalan. My parents were ‘sardanistes’, we went to ‘sardanes’, we went to the cathedral.

A very Catalan family in every sense.

Then, I heard the conversations between the grownups, let’s say, the parents and so. Bet I, so to say, had quite a clear idea that that couldn’t last long, and it showed.

And I lived it, let’s say, with a lot of calm. There wasn’t a stress…

I was in a scout group, ‘Mossen Puig i Moliner’. When I say ‘Mossen Puig i Moliner’ means that I was already linked to church.

I had a good relationship with everyone. For people form there, of course, Franco was a monster. But he was a bit of a monster from the past.

Then there were Francoist people, who were, let’s say, the post-Francoist, who is people who, “life was better with Franco”

Because, of course, things always happen in life. Not everything always happens as one wants. Then, it’s always, “any past time is better”.

There do stick, many times are sentences like that, which you speak in Spanish even though back then it is true

that we began speaking Catalan. That could be felt.

But well, in my circle we already spoke Catalan. But well, television, for example, there was no television in Catalan. There was, I remember there were ‘regional things’ as they were called.

Things like that, small pieces. The Miramar studios, which are here. But I don’t have…

If I told you know, it’s because I checked Wikipedia. Then, I don’t really like talking about things I haven’t lived, and it looks like I’m giving certain data which

isn’t real in my brain, they’re real because that’s how it is, right? But in that moment, I didn’t live a great… I remember that my mother, well, didn’t change the way she dressed. My mother was very sexy, at all times.

My mother always came, to pick me up at school, dressed up in red, with some kickass coats, she always was… My mother was always very well dressed. I’ve never seen my mother without makeup, in all my life, ever.

And she’s over 70. With shoes, with her, I remember that she wore seamed stockings, that the kids, “oh, your mother’s so hot, your mother is so hot”. I remember this, the “your mother is so hot”, I’ve remembered for many years.

And of course, my mother was then the most gorgeous of all the women in school, with a clear lead.

Of course, she was very built up, so to say. She dressed up a lot, and all very prepared, she was like that,

and maybe she did let herself go a bit more. But that’s all.

Could you tell us about the ‘Junta Superior de Orientación Cinematográfica’?

This reminds me, reminds me of the issue of censorship.

I remember the censorship. I remember that as a child there were songs that weren’t sung.

Or that they were sung with different lyrics. Of course, thanks to censorships, which is one of the few good things, like the reservoirs that Franco built. There were things done right, right?

Some were done right. Well, people became smarter. Then, of course, we had a different reading of things. ‘La Gallineta ha Dit que No’, by Lluis Llach, is, after all, a song that

obviously says something in place of something else. Then, of course, a censor, “the chicken has said no”, what does that mean? Well, that the chicken says no doesn’t matter, right?

I mean, there are these kind of things that began to appear in lyrics, there appeared

movies, and appeared… People had to do many… They had to contrive a lot things

to say whatever they wanted. Or Raymon…. Of course, back then I also remember that at our place we only listened to Victor Jara, for example, George Moustaki. There was a mixture of songer-songwriting and protest song.

We sang songs of the ‘Cau’, which is the name of the band. American songs, from singers that back then were… Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, who had, let’s say, a certain protest, the so called protest songs.

They were songs that were, so to speak, more universal, right? And then they were adapted to Catalan and then maybe, these translations, were carried out so properly that we could so whatever we wanted.

That’s all I have. Cinematographically speaking, of course, we… I was very young and I don’t… I remember, for example, that there were the two rhombi, for example,

and I do remember that there was a movie

that, with time, I realized that I hadn’t understood anything about the movie because they, who were ignorants, changed the script and what was the lover became the sister. Or the other way around. And you will never know how the movie was.

That is, they changed everything so much so that they wouldn’t say something that in end you didn’t understand it. Because of course, it’s as if we finish here and I don’t know, but this girls hasn’t appeared in the movie, what is this, you know?

It was something a bit strange. I remember these comments they made, but I wasn’t too conscious of all that. I saw the stuff they played on tv. When it had the two rhombi I couldn’t watch it. At eight and a half I went to bed.

At nine… Before, they sang a song, ‘Vamos a la cama’, there were this little drawings. The Telerín family were called.

And my mother would sing the song, we all went to sleep, and it’s all over. I mean, we didn’t live, I mean when I was young, eh. Of course, this is the 75, right? You’re talking about…

later, I think that the business also gained room with transition. When there congressmen, well, luckily all this was lost, luckily.

Could you tell us about sexual repression under Franco?

Well, I remember the sexual repression in a way that I’ve realized now, right?

Back then I wasn’t aware of anything. I remember that they said, well, auntie whatever hasn’t had luck with men.

Auntie hasn’t had luck with men. Luckily she’s with whoever and well, at leat, the two together can go on.

These were two lesbians from our town. The things is that, of course, she hasn’t had luck with men, then… but people didn’t say it with bad intentions.

They said it because everyone thought that men had to go with women and women with men, and that’s it. It was, there wasn’t a third option.

A threeway impossible, a man with a man, horrible, two women, they would have to be very frustrated, many times, to end up… You say, well, fine, in the end…

But, so to say, that was a bit the feeling there was. Of course, it also happened that when a guy was very effeminate,

it was like…. Damn. Fag. It was… there weren’t gays back then. Here there were fags.

Of the water kind, of the fish kind, they always used a word like that, but deep down they were fags, which was like…

it was super despective. Fag the last, for example. That is, you started running and the last one was a fag, which was the worst of the worst, right?

Then, at school, I remember I was with a kid, who was deaf-mute, who was gay. I know that now, back then… I’ve always been very naïve.

I mean, I’ve never had the feeling… I remember that at some end-of-year celebration I danced to ‘In the Navy’, we all sang, and nobody knew it was a gay band.

I was dressed up as the indian, another as the policeman, the other I don’t remember, all… Of course, let’s say there wasn’t a collective LGTB awareness nor anything like that.

We didn’t have any animosity. But we didn’t know what we were singing either. To begin with, we had no English. We didn’t know what a gay was. And when AIDS came, we were all left without knowing a thing.

Let’s say, there was… Not a freeing, there was ignorance. You can’t get free from what you don’t know.

Then, there wasn’t…. It’s true that if you jerked off they’d tell you that you’d go blind, haven’t you notice that it is… they’d say, can’t you see what comes out? It’s the white of your eyes, they’d say.

Imagine, everyone checking their eyes. Ah, it does look grayer now, eh. It looks grayer because, of course, if it was the white, if you jerked off and it was the white of the eyes, imagine we would all end, right?

I was thinking, damn, my eyes must be this big, because this keeps leaking, right?

Of course, and it was, you did mention it, but it wasn’t… we didn’t… Of course, there was the Cau also, you started having relationships with girls,

but I never felt… My parents have never told me, “Don’t do that!” I never was, personally, repressed. Of course, I say this often,

if you’re white, you’re not gat and, so to say, don’t like anything that a normal man shouldn’t, the way normal is understood, you’re a lucky man.

Now, imagine that you’re black, you’re gay and you’re into fashion. You’re screwed. Luckily, I had filled all the conditions that people thought had to be. So, it was social luck.

Of course, luck is something that can happen. I would have been born, maybe, elsewhere, and I would have been unlucky, right?

I mean, I think luck also depends on where you go live. And in that moment, well, we had that luck. And that’s it.

But luck, that said now feels out of place, right? I mean, now it doesn’t matter if you’re black, if you’re not black, if you’re gay, if you like fashion, if you like….

Which is how it should be. But back then, of course, I didn’t go through it because I didn’t like men, well, I didn’t suffer any repression.

Since I was the same color as everyone else, nothing there too. Had I been Chinese, I would have been the weird one in class.

Of course, I was in a, let’s say, very favorable position. Then, of course, when it’s favorable you don’t notice that there’s people who aren’t. For example, I’ve never hungered, luckily.

So I can’t know what it’s like to starve. And of course, when you see on tv you think, fuck. You feel your hear sink, you say, damn, imagine dude, being 20 or 15 having had to leave

Africa, and having go walking I don’t know where, and suffer… Of course, now you see it with another prespective.

Could you tell us why Barcelona becomes such a sexually free city after the transition?

Let’s see, the transition meant that, deep down, let’s see… Barcelona is located, it’s a very important capital, and is located to the north

of Spain and then, Catalonia as such, as the Catalan Countries, have a bit of Spain and a bit of France. Of course, there were deep bonds. The Pyrenees are in the middle, but there are linguistic bonds.

And we have the Mediterranean besides us. Then, you don’t need to be that smart to realize that you’re in a very Mediterranean place, very cosmopolitan,

where Franco couldn’t have avoided people from other places coming. Of course, if you’re from Orihuela or Aranjuez or you live in Valladolid, it’s more difficult to get tourists to come.

Then, here came a lot of foreigners. Actually, I remember that on the 75 or 76 opened the Bagdad, which is just around the corner. It was a porno theater.

Porno theater it was called, porno theater. They bbegan to publish magazines like the Private, which was already selling by then, in the 69. There was, back then in Spain began to appear magazines that were published here, appeared the Playboy, the Playmate.

In ‘les Rambles’ there were magazines. There began to appear, later, video stores, where there was a zone where you could rent movies.

It started to appear, bit by bit, on Canal Plus. That is, slowly here we saw that all we saw existed. And of course, there were many beaches, there was Lloret [de Mar], there were some things that helped. In Barceloneta, people didn’t wear as many clothing. Of course, the cold isn’t the same here as in León.

The temperature, foreign girls, foreign boys. Everything was easier. Many French people, for example. I remember that my parents went to watch movies in France because you couldn’t watch them here.

They would go, would go to Perpignan, which is really close by. Then, let’s say that, to say it in a way, this transition brought that all those, so to say, normal people, in a way, saw, adapted normality with all that. What is true is

that maybe, since there wasn’t anyone slowing us down, slowly began to appear the first Pride, let’s say, that took place in Barcelona, in Rambles.

It didn’t… It had, well, a relative repercussion. Everything was very politicized. It was like, I don’t know, gays are smarter. They wrote, they composed poetry. They were like smarter, in general.

Yes, that feeling, girls who liked girls were like smarter. The feeling from the outside was that they went to university… That is, they were like a class above, in general.

They were more handy in everything, they knew more about everything. And that also projected an image of ‘non-negative’. Of course, we were finding out some singers, Elton John was gay. Damn, we realized later.

It turns out that after a time, it turns out that George Michael was too. That is, all those icons from the 80s. Then, of course, with this… I don’t know if I’m wander from the question, but let’s say, we started to discover that from outside…

There was Madonna, ‘Like a Virgin’, the church’ hegemony also began to break down. Of course, the church was untouchable. Madonna began be a bit of a pain in the ass with that.

There was the ‘Fura dels Baus’, they were also doing things. There were ‘Els Joglars’, there was many people making fun of the classic values.

They began to air on TV3 comedy where they laughed a bit of that classic Spanish class, which was… Later, once you leave, you travel around. I travel around a lot, in Murcia, due to my work, in Alacant, I go to Almería, I travel out of here.

And truly, there was also a perception from here a bit old and outdated of people from Murcia, for example, that actually…

There was a movie called ‘Un Señor de Murcia’. I think it had… I don’t remember the actor, he was very well known.

Which was also far [from reality?]. That is, the stereotype began to break down. Of course, the advantage we had here is that we had many foreign people.

I’m sure that the sexual explosion here isn’t the same as in Lleida. Then, Barcelona was a place where these things could be done.

Speaking of this sexual explosion, could you tell us about the Swedish tourists phenomenon?

I do remember, let’s say, that my parents talked about it, they talked about when Alfredo Landa feia moltes pel·lícules. There’s a bit of myth to it, right?

Of course, let’s see, a blond girl, showing… To begin with, Spanish women, the image was that they were brunette. All they sold you, Lola Flores was dark haired, and gypsy.

The famous ‘folclóricas’ from back then, who acted in movies, like Manolo Escobar, who had stage partners, let’s say, were…

I meant that the whole Swedish women thing began a bit on the movies. That is, it’s like now that they talk about tourism because it’s on tv.

Otherwise, it’s the opposite. They made movies… and for most people, the tourism took place in Benidorm, Torremolinos. Marbella wasn’t as in vogue. I remember that on tv it was… they would give you and apartment there in the ‘1, 2, 3’. An apartment in Torremolinos

for four, and it was all like… A journey to Majorca, I remember the million, there was the millionth visitor. The millionth visitor to Majorca, so the trip was for free.

There are some things that I remember. There were many songs back then. And bit by bit began to appear some women who weren’t brunette, didn’t have brown eyes, didn’t have the skin as, a bit less tan, too.

And they were the Swedish women, they were pale, blue eyes and long, blond hair. So they stuck as the pre-hippies. They came here and didn’t have anything against showing their breasts. That, here, well, you can imagine, right? Your wife all covered up with swim suits and so, that woman came, boop.

And well, the, that’s it. It was a bit like the black African people from the female erotic fantasy. A black African man was, then, I remember they were the ebony stallions.

In porno magazines there were the ebony stallions and the superblondes, with tits as big as bells.

Then, of course, that was all a bit…

Of course, now black people are workers who pick up carnations in the Maresme, so they are assimilated, and now being black is being Catalan, not foreign, right? There’s many black people who speak better Catalan than I do,

and well, it has nothing to do with it. But back then the image of the black man was the stallion. If he was black, he fucked great, that’s for sure. And if she was Swedish, she was a woman to whom it’s all the same, she went there and fucked everything that walked.

Of course, there were this two very associated ideas in the movies. Then, Emmanuel, for example, toyed a lot with that, with stallions. And Spanish movies, Alfredo Landa toyed with the ‘suecas’. And of course, it’s also true that, in Saint Tropez, with Louis de Funes, I remember that his movies

were prosecuted because they took off their bras in the beaches of Saint Tropez, which wasn’t allowed. Driving along the ‘Costa Azul’ all those things they used to do. Then, all this became a bit of a myth, but it is true that girls came who weren’t Swedish, but rather Dutch,

they were Finnish, there were even girls who came who were Argentinian. They became hippies. Then came the time when they came here, damn, the sun in Spain, the Catalan sun, Barcelona is so pretty, but damn, it’s cold in winter.

They went to Ibiza. They started to set up, there was this story, that was also tied to the time of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, of how beautiful sex is, we live a cool life, everything is so pretty. Time of LSD, the music, those wonderful CDs that came out, Joplin.

It was all very mixed, let’s say, here we copied the Americans a lot, right? Americans were something to copy in many ways. And it was when we…

here we, a bit… I remember that there were music bands. Here the Beatles were very well established. When I was born, the Beatles were already very famous.

I mean, people danced to the Beatles which was old music, it wasn’t contemporary to me, it was a bit old.

There were other bands that appeared with the Beatles, that brought this vibe of let’s smoke something, nothing is anyone’s, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, all those kinds of things.

And slowly, of course, that affected music too. They started to put chill outs in clubs, afterhours…

The timetable was broken. Before it was, we go out at 10 pm. No, people went out really late. At 2 am maybe there was someone at the club, not before.

So, it all broke a bit, it was a time of… Well, I remember pieces of it, I don’t remember all of it that well.

Could you tell us about ‘El Maravilloso Mundo del Sexo’?

What time? In general?

I don’t remember anything, so it’s possible. I’m not sure.

As you like. I can talk about the topic, without talking about the movie.

Well, talking about the wonderful world of sex, to give it a name, of course, it was… When, in the 69, 70, the pill begins to be around, and in Spain it arrived a bit late, like everything.

Because here there was Paquito too, slowing things a bit down. Well, Paquito, the church, they all agree, the woman is the one that has to keep the Spanish household, that has to generate.

They also tried to make sure not to mix with other ethnicities. There was a lot, maybe rather than racism, which maybe isn’t the right word, classicism. I mean, they couldn’t lose Spanish spirit as a class.

I think that the ‘Spanish race’, apart from the movie that this man did, wasn’t so much a race, but rather belonging here. Being from here. Actually, at most, my grandparents were immigrants. My grandparent was from Tíjola, Almería,

and the other from Sesa, which is a town in Huesca. It was a lot, it was like a great immigration. Imagine a guy that came from New York, a guy that came from Germany. It was the bomb.

Of course, at most it was a Spanish immigration. It was the internal immigrations, to give them a name, right?

Then , the topic of, let’s say, the wonderful world of sex, is discovered, as we said before, with the ‘suecas’ topic, and with that excuse,

they begin to film this movie, Torremolinos 76 I think it’s called, or 73, I don’t remember right.

Then, there was a sort of boom, besides the baby boom, there was a boom of finding out things that had already been found out on the 20s, like vibrators, a series of elements that were already there,

it started to be allowed to talk a bit, but always from a pedagogical view. Always. In all the books. I have a few books.I have books about sex, I like the old ones, some of them, because I find them hilarious.

For example, ‘El Sexo y la Família’. It was all about marriage and sex. It was all set up. Of course, they couldn’t avoid the dicks and cunts, because you can’t avoid that,

but they could make rules and dress it. Well, there are dicks and cunts in a marriage. Man and Woman marriage. Of course. Then, they would always say, for example, have you consumed marriage? Have you fucked? Have you consumed marriage?

That is, all this began to be skipped and that’s where began to appear the ‘exchange clubs’.

Which were the famous swingers. There weren’t many, of course.

Many times, foreigners came with their wife, the guy was German and the wife, I don’t know where from.

They were already beginning to have foreign partners. There were Germans who had Venezuelan or Argentinian friends. People who were in this in style atmosphere, of new… they were like millionaires made hippies.

A bit like that, right? They weren’t actual hippies, they were like neo-hippies.

So that helped a bit too that there was this kind of feeling, to say it in a way, of sexual exclusion, right?

Could you tell us about the history of porn in Spain?

Let’s see, the history of porno in Spain is a bit long. It begins when there are some brothers who make movies, they have a royal command – royal from the king.

And they begin making porn movies a long time ago. But, of course, pornography can only be considered as such when everyone can watch these movies.

Then, of course, until Franco’s death pornography cannot exist as such. It doesn’t exist. There are things, there are movies, filmed stuff. They filmed things in Italy, things in France, in the United States.

But it was a bit hidden. It wasn’t a big… There was no big boom here. It couldn’t be sold. Then, when it could be sold, was when it started. First with movies.

Then in movie theaters. There were specialized theaters, X theaters they were called.

Then came the stalls There were the stalls, and after the stalls came the video stores. And in the video stores there was an X-rated section.

Then came the movies vending machines. You could rent a movie for hours with a machine that would hand it to you. And, incidentally, they realized that at noon there was a boom of gay movies.

It was when the mothers would leave the children at school and they would gram movies to see handsome men. Because, as a rule, hetero actors weren’t. Then, during all this time there were people who began to excel. Actually, recently it was the 25thanniversary of the Barcelona festival, which was organized by Mr. Ponce.

And if it was 25 years ago, it’s not that much. I mean, it’s not so long ago. I mean, there was an boom of sex-shops. There were… It was all very expensive, at first. Then, the sex-shops were doing pretty well, there was quite the benefit margin.

In the world of pornography, there were then 4 foreign super mega stars. Here there were no porn stars. It was impossible, I mean, you became a porn star and your parents would stop talking to you for life. I mean, it was so tough.

Then, it isn’t until the 80s, so to say, that begin to appear some stuff. It’s when the 80s end that began to be porno cinema things. In the 90s there’s a huge boom, here specifically.

Here there were important companies. I do… I was the director of International Film Group, I remember that in the 90s it was a very high grossing company, they worked a lot in Canal Plus. There were many other companies, there was also Taxon back then, which is a company that is still important, but back then was quite significant.

Private, from the year 69 had began to do thigs. They did…

magazines at first. Porno began, first, in magazines and pornography as such kept being made in cinema, and the cinema reached the general public via DVD.

Via the VHS and the DVD. There were CD-ROMs too.

Websites, internet and all that, didn’t work up until then. Evidently, Spanish history took its place.

There was a time when some artists were in style. Then a few directors. And from here, until now, until internet, when everything was very global.

It was very difficult, but now you can find on the internet an American website, a Russian website or a website from wherever, before all this was tougher to find.

Before, everything had to be paid for, and now there’s plenty of free things. Actually, since not so long ago, there are webcams. You can tell a woman, touch your ass. And the woman does that.

Of course, before you couldn’t talk with the tv. We are now, let’s say… From being part of the public to being stars with amateur porn

and from stars in amateur porn to movie directors. Now I want you to get on your four. Now have that guy besides you fuck you.

You keep paying, of course this is paid for, and the of course. We’ve moved to [I’m not sure of the word, something like make more amateur], just like reality TV, right?

Before, on TV, the host of a show was a journalist. They had studied journalism. Now they’re someone famous.

Why are you famous? Well, because my boyfriend was a bullfighter. Or because my boyfriend is a football plaer or because my sister did whatever.

And then… or I’m the daughter of a singer. Then that, also added, to call it that, this feeling that everyone can be a part of it. That’s why here amateur movies were so successful.

So, there has been an evolution and now, well, I think there will be a moment when, well, we’ll see how it goes.

But of course, what people want is, basically, as in television… Porno and television go hand in hand. That is, there isn’t anything that pornographically, to give it a name, has been invented,

that television doesn’t also do on another level. That is, now participation for people is very important.

And now, just like in music, we’re saved by live acts.

People doesn’t sell CDs anymore, they sell gigs. Then, live acts give you an edge, because nobody can plagiarize a gig.

However, a CD can be copied, you can put it in a memory stick, right? Then, you get lots of porno, in a 64 [GB] memory stick , you have it, you can have 40.000 movies,

and before you needed to have a movie in CDs or VHSs. Then, I think that all this has made it hard for Spanish porno. Just like it had a great moment,

a golden age, now it has reached a moment where it’s not clear in what direction it will go, they aren’t sure if it will be webcams, or maybe it is…

The new stars are virtual. Why? Because you can talk with them on social networks. I’m going to talk with my great star on twitter. And she answers.

Of course, before you would speak with an actress you liked a lot, for example, and couldn’t talk to her. You could send her a letter. They had fan clubs.

Then you’d write a letter. Dear Jame Jameson. I love you a lot, I don’ know, this and that. Now you send her a twitter, right? Then, this has changed a lot too. And Spanish people,

and of course Catalans too, and in Europe in general, social networks have tied up closer people.

Now you see porn actresses, ah, just up, a picture.

Of course, Jane Jameson is always perfect. She’s never just out of bed. And she already woke up all dolled up.

Then, all of this has also got our feet on the ground a bit too and now, thanks to social networks, maybe we know the person better …

The myth has gone down, so to speak. And maybe with that I’d finish it up. History has brought it here. Nowadays, any girl bold enough can be a porn actress. But not before.

Could you tell us about the time of the transition?

Yes, well, there are many… The transition has many facets. It has many… It depends on where you are, right? Of course, here the transition was a Catalanizing transition, to give it a name, because…

from being basically unable to speak Catalan in any important context, to being able to talk it, well… I remember, in the 60s-70s there was Catalan. A subject, Catalan. As if it was Chinese, right?

Catalan. And it was something that was done once a week and that’s it, right? It isn’t until the 80s, 85-86, that it is a strong subject. And further it has been regulated that, of course, they are ruled in Catalan.

Then, of course, during all the transition this was felt. This is one of the things, for example, right? There’s also, during the transition, well, it was also felt that people could already say, for example,

well, at least in my surroundings, if one was gay, barely anything happened. If… Barely anything in the sense that they didn’t kill you. I mean…

I remember there was an activist called Jordi Petit. He did a great job, he was a very powerful dude. He explained everything great, right? Then, began to… Sitges began to appear, too, as a non-hostile area.

The gays didn’t kill children anymore. They weren’t terrible. They weren’t junkies. They weren’t a bunch of… Of course, before being gay was, let’s say, you were under miscreant law. You were a miscreant.

Arrested for homo sexuality. That’s it, t was like having robbed a bank, it was something horrible, right? Of course, we also need to keep in mind that our cultural level was really low.

Then in Catalonia, maybe because there were so many foreigners, we began to understand before that it was absurd, right? What a stupid thing, right? What did that poor guy do? Because he’s into men?

Then, there’s, “No, no, because he sodomizes him”. Of course, sodomizes the other one who doesn’t want to. He was always the bad guy who sodomized the other, who didn’t even want to. Some absurd stuff, right?

Then, all these things alse the church realized that maybe their radical role wasn’t working as well. The issue of the condom was very tough, we had a very outdated pope, it was hard that the pope saw condoms…

Dude, go to Africa and hand out condoms, for fuck’s sake. This people can’t handle the children. There were children everywhere. I remember during that time Rhodesia, the horrible hunger, I remember that they started to hold some concerts so that people wouldn’t be as screwed,

but let’s say that sex, during the transition, was when people started to realize that there was a world here.

That English was a language, not a man with a hat. That you could watch a movie subtitled. In movies, everyone spoke Spanish. That’s why we can’t speak anything.

All the movies were dubbed. Adapted so that they say what they are supposed to, you get me? Then, of course, nobody watched, nobody bought books in English, books in other languages.

People who studied English wasn’t…. Oh, you’re studying English because you want to go live in the United States? No, I study English because….

I can work from here. The transition also allowed to understand that a woman could have a child and work. That the man could begin to perform women task, inverted commas, right?

At the very least taking out the trash. Sweeping wasn’t as poorly seen. In the transition there weren’t any more of these horrible adds. “When my husband comes home, I pour him a glass of Soberano.”

Of course, my father smoked many years because smoking was a man’s thing. They smoked, wore a hat, and rode a horse. It was the Marlboro, you’d stop there and everyone….

Smoking was an act, right? A very social pose. All of a sudden, bam, cancer. Fuck, it was so cool. Women began to smoke. Which wasn’t good news, but it was equality news.

Women began to choose whether they wanted a boyfriend or not. My wife… My daughter is marriageable, they’d say in the villages. Marriageable was like, come on, if you don’t hurry up it will be too late, right?

Of course, people began having children at older ages. It’s not the same to have a child at 18, which is the moment to have it, between 18 and 25. Now everyone has children… You have a child being 19 and you’re crazy. With 25, you’re nuts. People have children when they are 35 and 40.

My sister had a son at 38 I think. I mean, I don’t have any. What I mean by this is that not having a child real fast wasn’t normal. It was also normalized that people lived better.

That is, that youth lasted until you were 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 years old. Before, youth was over at 19, you got married and were an adult. That’s it.

That changed too. The transition brought good things. The best of all is that they couldn’t say, or they couldn’t throw you to jail for being they way you were.

People also began to dare dress different. They wore more colors. I think that Agatha Ruiz de la Prada wouldn’t have triumphed, for example. It was tough. But people looked at themselves through foreign fashion.

I remember Jean Paul Gaultier, who was very weird. He was like a weird dude. There was Andy Warhol, who did something with Marilyn, some pictures, some colors. It was a bit like that.

And well, all those characters began to be normalized. They began speaking about the Guernica, which many people thought was a painting.

Just, a painting and that’s it. It didn’t mean anything. I mean, there were many people, there was culture that wasn’t known. People thought that Catalonia stopped in the Pyrenees.

And they say that no, there was a north Catalonia. They also found out, for example, that there was… They noticed that trains in Spain were slimmer. Then, that’s why we couldn’t go out. And people were surprised.

I don’t know, we began to discover things that we thought were normal, but weren’t. And it was like, damn. We began to have Satellite Television. You need to keep in mind that people, when they aren’t informed, deep down…

What these people who want to go back 500 years do, honestly, is misinforming. If you’re not informed, if you’re not, well, informed, deep down you don’t wish for what you don’t see.

And then, of course, we began to say, damn, it’s cool to have cash. Because they aired “Dinastía”, a tv series. Transition brought all these series. We saw the life of Americans. We also started to create, to call it that,

on one side, people who really disliked Americans, really really disliked them. Because of the Vietnam war and all that.

And people who, like me, began, wow, they aren’t doing it too bad. Damn, those motherfuckers, that’s cool. That is, we began to meet other people.

We met bands like Supertramp, Pink Floyd.

We saw, for example, I don’t know, well… Peope like… In Germany there was interesting people. The Kraftwerk, for example, which was an odd band.

There were German groups that sang in English and you like it back then, I don’t know, there was AC/DC.

I discovered Australia. I mean, it seems stupid, but we didn’t have… We were like the old Vikings, right? We thought that where the sea ended, the world ended, right?

I think that the transition brought this feeling too, and it gave voice to characters like Felipe González, for example, Adolfo Suarez, all these people

who, well, had different Ideas. They seemed… it was odd that a guy on a corduroy blazer, which was like the classic unionist. The trade unions gained strength, women gained strength.

Television began to bend and started airing images from the world, not all of which were positive.

Well, many things changed. It opened a bit people’s eyes.

How do you remember school during the Transition?

The same. I mean, school is a reflection of society in the end.

People began to be more interested in studying other things. Girls studied things that only boys studied.

And before… It wasn’t so… I, for example, went to a high school, which it was the first year that is was mixed. It was, before there was the Juan de Austria, for boys,

and the Infanta Isabel de Aragón, for girls. That’s where my sister studied. I went to the girls’ one the first year it was open for boys.

I mean, boys and girls couldn’t study together. That, for example, was an important change for me, right?

And, of course, I was a child, but I had always sort of been around women, all my life. There’s my sister, my other sister, my mother. I’ve always lived more with women than men.

Then, of course, it was easy for me to move around in a class of all girls. It was me and three more, and on the other school, well, high school, it was all boys but for three or four girls who were

the sisters who attended there because their brother studied there or so.

And it was during that time that came the BUP, that is now called ESO, and all that. Then, of course I felt that. I felt that there was, let’s say, the way how…

That it wasn’t easy for people, but you began… now you begin to realize, wait, maybe that friend was gay.

Now you realize. Or that girl, maybe she was into girls. Or maybe… It’s these things… I’m talking about my field, more sexual, right?

But sexuality in the end reflects a lot the reality of the moment, right? Now you go to certain places and…

It’s not that you don’t notice, but that there’s a complete mixture of everything. I suppose that in your school there must be people from 5 nationalities, or 10 or 12. Back then, everyone was, in the ID says Spanish.

There wasn’t, I can’t remember a single foreigner. An Argentinian, but since she spoke Spanish you couldn’t tell. You could tell by the accent, but…

There weren’t foreigners. There were before… Before they were foreigners. Then they were called, pejoratively, immigrants, which was like demeaning, you know?

That’s an immigrant, immigrant meant from the south.

And foreigner from the north. If you are from, I don’t know, Finland, you’re a foreigner. If you’re from Morocco, you’re an immigrant. There was this pejorative voice if one came from elsewhere, right?

Then, at school there weren’t immigrants, foreigners, or anything. And slowly they’ve been mixing up. But, when I ended…. I was studying on the night shift, because I studied two things at the same time.

I was studying FP and BUP to end faster. I wanted to do two things at the same time. I remember that it was back then that… What were saying before but in the past, let’s say, at my age, right?

How do you remember the teaching of Catalan at school?

I remember it as a subject. I don’t… I’ve never been taught anything in Catalan.

It was a subject and that’s it. We were all speaking in Catalan, the class began, all in Spanish.

When I was young, we sang at first. We sang, we prayed. Of course, this was long years ago.

I went to the school ‘La Palestra’, which was in my own stairwell. I mean, I’d go down, I lived in the fourth story, I’d go down three stories, and school was there.

I’d just go down, I was never late, of course, I was just there.

And we sang. We had a picture of Franco, a picture… well a cross with the Christ there and such. We sang songs.

But we didn’t handle it poorly. It was normal. We all sang together.

I don’t remember, ‘Las Montañas Nevadas’ and songs. A bit of everything. We sang stuff. It was a bit old fashioned.

But deep down, the teachers were normal. Actually, the director was gay, which we found about later.

I would have never guessed back then, of course. The gay phenomenon didn’t exist. There were men and that’s it, men and women.

Then, when we went down… I was very young. The only thing I remember is that if I misbehaved… I was naughty or anything, the thing is that…

For example, older kids would say me spit… I had a great ease to, we called it gob before, gob on it. To gob was to spit. I would gob on stuff that it almost looked like a specialized frog

and I hit Franco’s picture right in the middle.

Who was it? [I’m not sure what he says here]

They, well, of course, I wasn’t even I aware who Franco was, what did I know, I was five.

Or four, I don’t remember. I started very young in school, four years or so.

Of course, back then us kids started school when we were 4 or 6. There was no P1, P2, P3, none of that existed.

There was the pre-school and school, that’s it, there weren’t so many things. Well, they threw me in, I remember, into a room in the middle of the courtyard, full of Christs and old things. Locked in there.

“You’ll stay in here!” I do remember that it was a bit like Harry Potter, a bit old fashioned.

As a punishment for having…

But of course, I had been… I mean, a kid of 4 or 5, what the heck does he know who Franco is? He doesn’t know shit.

I put it in there, in the very middle. Everyone was looking, I said, damn. I triumphed for about 30 seconds, because the teacher arrived.

Then they would hit you with that ruler. My mother came downstairs, “how could you do that, he’s so young.”

Of course, I was completely thoughtless. Then, everything I was told to do, I did.

I was bold, let’s call it. But, of course, you’re bold because you’re not aware of what you’re doing. I didn’t dislike Franco, I didn’t even know who he was.

I knew he was a guy who was in a peseta, well, the guy in the peseta, I don’t know. We didn’t care much, right?

I haven’t really lived the repression. School repression, but that’s a normal repression, I don’t know. If now you gob on the president of the Generalitat, I suppose they’d do the same. Not the same, but surely they would say something.

It wasn’t okay to do, right? But well, that’s it.

Are you in favor or against independence?

I’ve always been a pro-independence person

The main issue is that things have not been done…

It is a very complex subject, to begin with

Well, I’m independent as a person already, I don’t like dependency, to begin with

Then, I believe independence is born from one’s heart, then, I wouldn’t like that any neighbor of mine manages my money, to begin with

Therefore, imagine that your money is managed from a place that is 1.000 or 600 km away, it is not very funny, actually

On the other hand, I believe that before, it was more about a political independence, and now it’s more of an economic independence

But of course, also one has generated interests, for example, I work more in Murcia than in Barcelona, or in Alicante or Almeria than in Barcelona, right?

And so, it is a confusing situation because I think there was a particular moment in which things could’ve been done differently

Without the Xirinac’s period and all that, let’s say, well, more of a guerilla movement

I believe that it is fine to get down to one’s rights sometimes, but I think the thing is that almost everything has been poorly explained

There are many people, like me, that has turned apolitical almost, because well, I kept things clear at a particular moment but the way things have been done…

For example, [Jordi] Pujol’s issue… it has been a general double game, right?

Because whether you like it or not, one always has to attack the part that hurts the most, right?

And [Jordi] Pujol has done a lot of harm, the fact that they explain us all this…

When actually, many others might have done similar things, so to speak, right?

Or at least, they have created doubts, right?

Then, of course, when you have a series of values, you go like well, deep down, independence is nothing more than being responsible for your own freedom, right?

Then, of course, there is a moment in which they draw a picture of fear, when actually, for example, I perfectly remember that I was working at a company, I won’t say names… and I suggested to make the first porno movie in Catalan

And they literally said to me, ‘go away, you shitty supporter of independence’, because I wanted to make a porno movie in Catalan

And I started my own company, and I made a better living thanks to that

I mean that many times, as it is said in Spanish, I have many Spanish references, every cloud has a silver lining

And I believe independence needs to be achieved from town to town, from person to person, so to speak

Well, of course, if you have a forceful but short speech, there are people that don’t understand it

And what about pensions? And this other thing?

There are many fears, the same fear my grandmother had when [Francisco] Franco died, ‘what’s going to happen, now?’

Actually, it was a bastard, that guy, and my grandmother started crying

But of course, ‘we’ve had him for so many years…’

Right, we’ve been Spanish for so many years and what will happen now?

Then, there is a fear that people ‘from the cavern’ has created that many times, people from here also contributes to that same fear, when actually, it’s not that complex, it’s fine

With Brexit, will they lose money?

Yes… you also lose freedom when you have a child, right? Or when you get married or when you buy a house… ‘I’m still paying my mortgage…’ or when you buy a vehicle

I mean, freedom is curtailed when you’re the responsible person behind it, so to speak

Then, of course, the ones that are pro-independence or independent, call it as you’d like, I believe them to be autoresponsible people, many times

Well, I pay for my own freelance workers, I live out of my own job, I create my own, and so, I don’t have any dependencies

Of course, those who work for the State, for example, I’m sure they wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about that, or mail carriers, ‘oh, and now who’s going to run all this… right?’

Or ‘I work at the Internal Revenue, or ‘I’m a policeman’, there are national policemen who live here too

I mean, there are many people… so, I think it is a fear of changes, while I think that many times… I lived well with my parents, but as I have an independent personality, I moved when I was 20

I wasn’t hungry, nor in nor out of my house

And I started to brighten up, I fired me at one company and I created a new one

I don’t know, I mean, I think we have to take advantage of… The thing is that we’ve tried to be independent but a certain way of behave has been used that I don’t share, for example, I don’t have anything against Spanish people, but I don’t have anything against French people, nor the US, nor Italian people neither

Then, it goes like ‘right, you want to be independent because you have it in for us’, no, I don’t have it in for my parents, but I don’t want to live with them

If I had to live with my parents, it would be because of force majeure, not because I want to

I don’t want to wake up everyday with my father and my mother, and that doesn’t mean I don’t love them, I don’t have it in for Spain, I love Spain, my grandfather was from Almeria, and to be more Spanish than from Almeria…?

And my other grandfather, he was from Sesa, a little town in Huesca, I mean, he was Aragonese

I mean, I don’t have it in for it, but I want to manage my own infrastructure, and if I have to pay for a Brexit, I’ll pay for it and I’ll be on my own, so to speak

And it is true that many times it [independence] has been sold like… it is true that Spain robs us, or that Spain manages us in a bad way, call it what you want, or maybe Spain hasn’t valued us… I mean, you value your child when he moves away, you go like ‘oh, he was the one that brought money home, he did it really well, and we didn’t say anything and now… he would walk the dog everyday, and he’d cook dinner, and he’d wash the dishes, he was a great guy and now he wants to go, right?’

Well, he wants to go because you’ve never appreciated anything he’s done, right?

Then, there’s a new radical pro-indepedent people’s point, and I’m a radical in the same way that I could be a radioactivity radical, it doesn’t matter, or because it is fashionable

And there are other people, like me, that think that usually, smaller countries work better, with a good external relationship, obviously

Well, Andorra… how many countries are there in Europe that are smaller than Catalonia?

More than four, and they work perfectly, Monaco is not very big, ask people from Gibraltar, how many of them want to be Spanish? None

Why? Well, because it is quite easier, I mean, you don’t need to be so generous, you don’t need to be so supportive of people that think differently, perhaps

That’s why, I wouldn’t put a bomb in Madrid, nor attack it, I wouldn’t kill anyone, I’m not against Extremadura, for example, they have always spoke bad of us there, about holy men and all that, I wouldn’t put a bomb there, I don’t have anything to do with that

But, on the other hand, we have to recognize that maybe the Catalan discourse towards Spain has been a ‘you steal from me’ discourse

Of course, if you tell your mom ‘I’m moving because you hit me’ or ‘because you…’

Of course, you should tell her ‘listen, mom, I love you very much but I need to be alone, I need to, why? Because it is an existential matter, I want to be on my own, I don’t want to be with you, what, what have you done for me? You’ve bought me this?’

So I’ll pay for that, we come to an agreement and you let me move, why?’

Because I have a different external policy, because creativel, I want to grow differently, because I don’t want to be in the shadow…’ Spain is a very important shadow

Thanks to the Olympics, Spain has a name, but actually, Catalonia has had and still has a shadow because of Spain

The Spain Brand is a brand

And so, if you want to be a trader, somehow… I don’t want to leave Spain badly, it doesn’t make any sense, I didn’t move from home like ‘look dad, pim pam, I hit my mom and I thrown my sister out of the balcony’, it’s not necessary

Nor rant and rave, but I don’t need, as a country, to be a part of this infrastructure that you’ve created at a social, economic and televisual level for so long

I watch all the ‘cavern’ channels a lot, as people say, I watch them all, and a lot of news… I think it may be the only thing I watch on tv

Then, I see how people from the channel 13 think, for example, many people that have information but they don’t have it all

And then, they have that feeling… and it is when you say, of course, if you say you’re pro-independence, it’s almost as if you belong to the Kale Borroka, or… there is a violent connotation

And that’s the other day why I got so angry with those four kids that spray painted and did all that stuff because well, there’re not aware of the damage they’re doing because actually, one tends to remember bad things over good things, when you talk about the US, ‘oh, Vietnam War’, they’ve done good things too

Ah, Vietnam War and [Donald] Trump is subnormal, and all that…’

Well, they’ve done some good thing there too… ‘no, no, no, the Vietnam War…’

I mean, there is a fixation with bad things, then, I think that Catalonia doesn’t need bad things, bad stains, at this point

And there’s no need to say you’re better than anyone, neither

Then, there is a midway point, I think that we tried to sell something that was very hard, well, the current Esquerra Republicana’s president is quite an open to dialogue man, he’s a historian, well, I like how he behaves, and I voted for him more than once

On the other hand, I don’t believe we’re… I mean, we’re speaking in Chinese to a Japanese person, it’s quite similar but it’s not the same language and we don’t understand each other fully

Then well, the solution… ‘I go away because you don’t understand me’, maybe it’s not the best solution, neither

And also… I think that if the big independence campaign has been carried by [Mariano] Rajoy, he’s the one that has done the most important campaign

If [Mariano] Rajoy had said ‘well, you can vote’, the ‘no’ would’ve won and we’d be in Spain, for sure

I mean, two, three, four years ago, they said ‘listen, we want to be independent’, ‘go on, come on, put the ballot boxes and now, how many are you? 27’, there were very few back then

Now, you say no… it is not allowed to smoke, everyone wants to smoke here, ‘I cannot smoke? I’ll smoke a cigar’

Then, why people that weren’t pro-independence before, now they are, why? Because they’re not allowed to be

Then, negativity usually generates solidarity… As they don’t let us… and why not? They get into it and so…

I mean, that was the real thing, what has done the big campaign on this, right?

Then, well, I don’t like that, deep down, the big campaign on independence has been done by the Popular Party, thanks to the Popular Party, independence is more strong, more important…

And, deep down, they have put us against… you’re pro-independence or you’re not, right?

It’s like there is no place for a middle point, well, yes, the Federation, we’ve already tried it, that’s very difficult

And then, somehow, you’re like a frustrated independent person, you think that maybe it has been your fault too, I’ve been part of pro-independence acts, I’ve collaborated in many places, but maybe I haven’t done it right

I believe we should admit a ‘mea culpa’ too, well, you cannot blame the others, they aren’t clear… that politicians are disgusting and all that…

Well, we all take a part in politics, when I go to Murcia, I’m doing politics constantly

And people say ‘well, you’re a good guy and you’re Catalan’, and you go like how can it be, this guy? He bought me a coffee, a Catalan guy

And also I make jokes… for example, there is a hugh ignorance, I’m talking from what I know, for example, there’s an ignorance of how a person from Murcia behaves, or someone from Alicante, or other places, and so, sometimes, by getting to know your enemy, you realize that you don’t have one, so to speak

If I’m poked or a guy from Murcia is poked, the same thing happens to both, everybody suffers because of the family, because of money, everybody has a mortgage to pay, everyone wants its own freedom, everybody has a gay friend or a gay relative, everybody has a friend or I don’t know… Everybody has the same social issues, right?

And then, somehow, there are no great differences, I think that right now, independence is more of an economical, macroeconomical matter, rather than a matter strictly as it was before, right?

Before, we were like the ones who danced ‘sardanas’, it’s not forbidden to dance sardanas, but young people don’t want to do that, now they do ‘castells’, and so, there are castellers, it’s fashionable, it’s fine

I think that the solution is more related to macroeconomical matters, that’s the path we need to go through, rather than an emotional matter, in my opinion, right?

It’s like being a Barça’s fan or not, you can be a fan… There are a lot of Barça’s supporters in Almeria, for example, I’ve been there recently and there are

I mean, all these things that are seen as ours, ‘ok, come on, as we’re Catalans, we are Barça supporters’

I don’t know… Listen, Neymar is a bastard, he has won 220 milion [euros]… I mean, you can think many things, ‘Messi is Argentinian, that guy is not from Olot’, well, because Barça is more a business than it is a club, it’s a business that sells t-shirts, I think that’s fine but I mean, all this…

Pujol… All that symbology, let’s say, I think it has to be a more internal thing, It’s not necessary to be… Then, what, do you need to be religious in order to go to Montserrat?

I don’t know, do Catalan people have to eat bread with tomato and…? I mean, I think things have not evolved a lot and they’ve stayed like Catalinos, that place in the middle, those Catalan people haven’t…

I think there’s a point, right? That the point has not been modernized, I mean, there’re not enough modern people as a change like this would need

It’s like they were the same as before, for example, those from PdeCat, it has been named in a different way and all that, you have the feeling they’re right-wing parties more than they are leftist, or center parties, it’s not that I find that bad, right? But they’ve stayed there

Then, they fight for something as if the rest didn’t exist, and we have more foreign people every time

Of course, a man that has been here for two years, I don’t know, for him, independence may sound a little… I don’t know, a Pakistani person, if you don’t explain that to him very good…

Listen, if you were here, things would be better for you…’ I think there has been a lack of this feeling, and still is

I think that talking bad of the competition is called being a bad seller

I’ve never said ‘those from Private make shitty movies, mines are more good’, because it turns out I’ve worked for Private too, you know?

I think it’s not necessary, I mean, one is good for what he/she’s good at, the thing is that it is true there are moments in which you’re fed up and you say ‘well, dad, I want to move from here, and that’s it, right?’

But of course, if you have to move with your siblings, maybe you need to come to an agreement with all of them, it’s not that easy

I mean, what one feels is one thing, and a different one is how one behaves

I mean, I’m a Barça supporter, for example, but I won’t have sleepless nights if Barça loses, but I prefer to win an impressive match by 1-0 than winning one by 10-0 and do a disgusting match, because players of the other team had a limp

Then, I think things need to be done correctly, I don’t know, I don’t know if I explained myself clear…

Could you talk about the failed coup d’etat in 1981?

Yes, I remember, my father was all nervous, I was at school, it happened during one afternoon, he said ‘come home’, and so, I went home, my father was worried because well, there were no mobile phones back then.

My father was very worried because I was at the street, then, he had the feeling, as he experienced war when we was a kid, my father was a post-war kid, he’s 80-something, and well, he was a war kid, then he felt like the same was about to happen, right?

At home, it was rough, we were very tense, it was really bad, we wouldn’t go to school, wouldn’t leave the house…

I remember that difficult feeling, ‘ui, if the conflict comes back… you’ll see… it’ll be better if we don’t make phone calls…’

You know? So to speak, there was a point in which we thought ‘that was lasting too much’, that meant that from ’75 until ’81, ’81, right? It’s not a lot of time, somehow it was like, uf… something like that

And in that moment, everyone was a Juan Carlos’ supporter right away, ‘Go Juan Carlos’, he was the national hero, he was a part of Marvel, right? There was Captain America and well, Juan Carlos was a little bit…

It’s what they told us then… Then, some time after that, we found out about other things, but in the beginning, he was like a hero, and well, suddenly, the peseta currency lost a lot of value and for the first time, monarchy… we were like ‘oh, the king has done something useful, right?’ That’s the memory I have

Do you remember the Hipercor’s bombing?

I remember the bomb, yes, rather than a bombing, I remember that explosion

I remember that because my grandmother called because we used to live nearby

Well, I lived in Nou Barris and well… I lived in Fabra i Puig, and this happened at the Meridiana

And well, we were in pain in case some relative… It happened very near from us, right?

But well, I had a really bad time, this happened back in ’87, right? Something like that…

I remember it was… I had a rough time

Well, in that moment, young people, we liked ETA more or less, more or less

I never really liked them, but a little

They’d killed rotten guys, people… I remember the time in which the ‘Ogre Operation’ came out, and that man… Carrero Blanco flew out, well, those things

And it was a little that feeling and you said ‘well, what can I say…?’

Pf… He asked for it somehow, right?

There was that feeling… I’m not a violent person and so, I’ve never liked it [ETA] a lot, actually, that thing those four tourism kids did, I don’t like that, right?

I mean, I’m a peaceful man, I thought ‘wow…’

But when they did that [Hipercor’s bomb] I thought, ‘fuck off…’

I mean, I believe ETA died that day in Barcelona, if there was already a part of the population that from time to time thought ‘well, ETA was partially right because it was pro-independence in its own way…’ It was a little bit what Catalan people would never dare to do because we don’t, we’re not… There was Terra Lliure but it barely lasted, we’re not pro-violence, so to speak

I don’t know, there have been complex fronts in Ireland…

And at that point, it died, I mean, there was no one that… I still get goosebumps, it was terrible because one thought ‘what does this woman have to do, she was shopping… and this bastard comes here and puts this bomb in the wrong place…’

And here it ended, Basque people started to rub us the wrong way, they used to be liked in Catalonia, and they also had to do a very powerful campaign so people wouldn’t mix up ETA and the Basque Country, they had done a very powerful campaign with all that

And obviously, ETA died in Barcelona

And the Civil Guard and all these people started to be more liked in some ways, they [ETA] did a favor to them [the Civil Guard], regarding their image, and it was a real drama

I think it was one of many mistakes that ETA made, it was a serious mistake and nobody will ever forgive them and although prison is for people to redeem, everybody, including me, had this feeling of ‘let them languish in there [prison], I don’t care, whatever… it’s done, right?’

I mean, and well, I was lucky no one in my family was hurt, if not, things may have gone differently

Because my life… I mean, sure, if something like this happens to you… I don’t know, the way in which you see life changes, and maybe you change completely and you become a GRAPO member

Of course, people don’t understand things until they happen to them, and that’s why I’m saying I was very lucky, as I said, I’m lucky I’m white, and so, no one has ever hurt me for being black, because I’m white

Of course, terrorism victims… As it [terrorism] doesn’t affect me because no one I know has died…

Then, at that point it wasn’t just about Civil Guard’s wives, nor soldier’s wives, politicians’ wives… It was about people that didn’t have anything to say, somehow, right?

And before that, it was… We kind of justified them, many times… this fixation other people had for it [ETA], and it was… It was the end of ETA, I think

I believe no one ever liked them in Andalucia because there were many Civil Guards there, right? Also in the Basque Country, because it was a binary thing, you liked them or you didn’t, I mean, you were there

And they were quite likable here, middle point, here, people…

They were half justified here, so to speak

And then it was like, ok, the excuse is over, go away

Do you remember the Liceu’s fire?

Yes…

The Liceu’s fire, let’s say, it was quite the opposite of all this

To begin with, no one ever believed it was a real fire, well, at least I didn’t, that it got so burned… I don’t know, weren’t there alarms? I have alarms here, and you don’t have anything that notifies you in case of fire? That there’s smoke?

And at a hotel room, you smoke and it rings… How can this be possible, right?

There’ve always been interests

On the other hand, as the Liceu was the ‘crème de la crème’ during a specific period of time, you didn’t have acces to that place

I don’t know, it was as if you didn’t care

It’s not as if that happened at the Palau de la Música, maybe it was more integrated in society, but it [Liceu] was more about aristocrats or snobbish people having economic possibilities to go but there was also people very into music, people…

I had many friends that had learned to play piano at the Liceu, I’m a musician, and many friends of mine had…

But well, the Liceu’s school hadn’t die, the theatre had been burned and as of that moment, I don’t really know if it works with sponsors… if there are many people that pay… I didn’t know how society worked there

And well, they’ve won with the new remodeling, I think they have a better Liceu, and maybe it didn’t work so bad for them

But well, I wasn’t really affected, I felt sad but I wasn’t like ‘wow… it’s so unfair…’, maybe I would’ve felt worse if it’d happened to the Palau de la Música

How do you remember the city changing with the Olympics?

Oh, I remember that very, very well

Noise, drills… everywhere, everything was closed, now the subway, now the bus, now an other street, you couldn’t park…

Well, I remember a really, really important change

I remember many of them, a lot of tv, of commercials…

I was also active, working, I was with the Red Cross back then, precisely, and so, I was involved in things regarding voluntary work, taking courses… I mean, all that

Then, well, I remember about facilities that weren’t finished on time, there was like a city for athletes that was roughly on time

It was about creating the Roman empire, it was very big and they didn’t have much time, I think it was very well measured but sometimes, reality goes different as what you’ve planned, right? And they had measured everything and it was hard, from the outside, because well, I talk from a citizen’s perspective

But from that point of view, we had the feeling it was a hugh project and we accomplished it and when that man said… well, it’s done, right? Now, everything is fine

And well, that feeling was also quite… I think we all broke free too… He said, well, it’s over, buf… Now we start it

I went to a lot of those activities they would give, they were free, no one would go, and there were soccer matches of teams that didn’t have much… Ireland against Macedonia, or I don’t know…

Countries that don’t have big leagues, I mean, it was not a Germany – Holland, or things like that, because we didn’t have enough money to go everywhere…

I went to two or three soccer matches with my wife and many of them were for free

Archery… I’ve never seen archery in my whole life, or sports that you see on tv, and as they were near, we went to see them because it was in Barcelona and you thought, well, if I don’t go, we’ll never go, and so we did

And we saw sports that we didn’t know at all, funny things, and well, I was excited with the city, I think it changed people’s mood, it was the most important thing…

And the fact that the Barcelona Brand achieved high standing

And Cobi won over the flamenco and the bull, it totally won and I believe that Barcelona took a step forward

Could you tell us what the Catalan ‘seny’ is?

Well, the Catalan seny is a little bit, well, it’s the common sense, right?

The seny, I mean, there are many things that need to be done because they do, and that’s it

It’s very simple, there are things that need to be done and that’s it, and things cannot be done in this way, that’s it

The seny would be, more or less, like the non-Catholic part, right? That they tell you ‘as God intended’, right?

When they tell you that things have to be done as God Intended, that mean they need to be done right, right?

So the seny is the same for people that perhaps are not so believers, or like me, that we… well, he are Catholic because we were baptized but we’re not churchgoers

I think the seny is basic for everything, is basic to win the elections… to support a family, to drive, the seny is necessary for everything, right?

I believe it is a little bit like the common sense, like, well, you cannot drive drunk at 250 km/h at the freeway, well… you’ll surely die, right?

And the Catalan person may have been related to the economical subject, too

I mean, the Catalan person won’t spend more money than the necessary in something that won’t give him/her money back, probably

Therefore, the seny with investments, with public relations…

Catalan people… for example, many nations like Germany, you won’t see many Catalan people misbehaving, it’s hard to see them, and you run into them in a foreign city, well…

You go to Berlin or to Mallorca and you see them there… singing those military-like songs, and you go there and don’t see that

I mean, maybe they go with the flow but actually, the Catalan person himself/herself, he/she’s not a very partier person, at least the ones I know, and I know hundreds of them, not just four, I know a lot of them…

They are silent guys, let’s put it like that… maybe they are more boring, so to speak, but this feeling of saying it’s not necessary to wake everybody up and to honk the horn…

I mean, well, we’re more of live and let live, let’s say

I think that’s what the seny is about

There was a radio program in 1942 to celebrate Franco’s birth where some childs appeared and they thought that Franco was a member of the PSOE [Spanish Socialist Party], why do you think that happened?

Well, as it was thought that there was a spacecraft in the US, right? That it happened because a man did a very good broadcast and people believed it, and Orson Welles made all those stories and so…

People… normally, we are credulous and so, a very young person without any notion of history, that he/she has never been interested in politics, actually, well, I can believe that, I mean…

Well, it’s not that I find that good nor bad, I think it’s practically a type of move, because well, I don’t know if that got somewhere… right?

That’s it, I mean, I believe they are that kind of things that are made to be funny, but well, I think that’s stupid, directly

Some years ago, El Mundo published an article that said that Spanish people were quite ashamed of the Francoist period, do you agree?

Well, I think that one of the things that we’re clear about is that looking back has never been too interesting, we just need to look back in order no to repeat our mistakes

And I think there’re not many people interested in that, Franco is not interesting, I think he has went down in history already, you stay with the peseta, with swamps, we try to forget things…

Well, the fact that now there are opening a series of tombs… they’re opening old wounds, but there are many that have been healed too

Then I think that well, as nobody I knew died during the war, it’s what we said before, as I’m white, and as I… I mean, right, you’re heterosexual, you’re very lucky, let’s put it like this, and I was lucky no one I knew died during the war, as I haven’t experienced it…

I think that people with a given informed consent is the one that talks, normally, it’s like it’s not important

And well, obviously, people whose father had been executed by firearm, whose brother, who was gay, they did him I don’t know what… people that had their business shut down, those that couldn’t speak in Catalan, I mean, people who suffered a sexual, social, labor, military repression, well, those people they’re more far away from forgetting it, obviously, than people that has watched things from the sidelines, right?

The one who’s in the middle sees things in a certain way, so to say, and I’ve been from the sidelines, and then, I haven’t suffered the Francoist repression consciously

Of course, people who have suffered it, well, it’s hard for them to forget… a guy that had my current age, and that they wouldn’t let me do certain things, well, it’s rotten luck…

Sure, you remember that all your life, when you’re 5, 6, 10 years old, you don’t remember that for all your life, luckily

And that’s why, people get older… and old people don’t want to talk about that shit, sometimes, and young people don’t remember about it and they don’t want to remember it either, they’re not very excited about past history, so to say, it’s not that it [history] is amazing, and then, it’s a little bit like this

Then, there’ll always be Francoist groups, or that they celebrate their own things, but you see them and they’re quite sad… Old people singing ‘Facing the Sun’, four radicals, three people with a swastika as a tattoo and I don’t know… poor people, too

I don’t know, it’s like this neo-Nazi group, I don’t know, I think they must see they’re quite obsolete, right? It just doesn’t fit in with anything, there’s no one that…

No one is going to hurt them but they’ll let them there… It has a psychiatric touch, I mean, all that people that talks about all this it’s like… what can you tell them, now?

Maybe that lady… well, you have to think that someone that says ‘things were better with Franco’, sure, why? Because well, you were 40 and now you’re 90, because you scored then and now you don’t

But well, maybe you were 23, I mean, sure, you need to think about when was that person born, maybe that person scored more when Franco was alive but… no, it’s not related, because he’s relating both things

Maybe he was richer because the peseta was better than the euro or because… ‘this couldn’t have been like this with Franco because now a flat has been squatted or because look how many black people there are now…

And you know? This machination, because well, there’s a moment in which young people lived better when Franco was alive, obviously, why? Because they didn’t have a prostate cancer, because… sure, I mean…

There’s a moment in which it’s logical, right? So to say…

And sure, I’ll probably be able to say ‘I lived better with [José María] Aznar’, yes, because I was healthier than now, I was 15 years younger

But if you relate your health to Aznar, then yes, it was better with Aznar

But if you know how to separate things, it won’t be like this, probably

I think that people only think of the photo finish, right? At the end, you take that photo finish, and how was it? This one won, but you don’t know the whole journey

And probably, this person was happier then, he/she was happily married, or had kids that loved him/her a lot, maybe now she/he’s feeling lonely, her husband has died, therefore, things were better with Franco, and she’s right

Could you tell us about the relationship between Spain and the army?

Well, Spain’s army has always been quite poor… It has always had some good…

I know many, many people that are in the army, I know a lot of them, for many reasons and here and out here, it is a well considered army in many ways

Here, in Barcelona, it is not, here it is still a Francoist executing arm, let’s say, obviously, for peaceful people, the army is still a part of human disaster, so to speak

Then, their propaganda is not good

Someone from Podemos, for example, these leftist parties they always talk about the army as people that kill people, right?

And as you know more people, you learn more things and see more things, things are not black or white, right?

Many times… if the army exists it must be because of something, it’s like the church, they exist because of something

And so, are there any countries that don’t have an army?

Yes, but they’re dependent, they pay for an army, ‘hey, if they come for us, you come here’

That’s why the OTAN and NATO exist, all these things are done for a reason, right?

And then, well, there is a certain moment in which if you need someone, you say ‘that’s it’

Of course, you can have an argument with your neighbor, but well, if he has a knife, what do you do?

Do you close the door and don’t get out ever again?

Because human nature does not always react in the same way, so to say

Then, well, what do we do with this Korean man, right? He’s making up these missiles, for example, right? What do we do, now?

And suddenly, we’ll al be Korean people because this man says ‘no, no, if you’re not Korean, I launch a missile at you’

And well, there always has to be a rescuer, someone who says ‘that’s it’, and that’s the army

Then, I’m not a pro-army person but I’m not someone who attacks either

I think there are things that are useful at certain moments. Why does someone have a baseball bat under his/her counter?

Because if someone doesn’t want to pay, he gets angry, but if he wants to rob him, then what?

There’s a point in which, well, it is a defense mechanism

Goodness is nice but there’s always someone taking advantage of it, then, there’s always someone saying that everybody is bad and that we need 75 milion missiles, and there’s always someone saying that is not necessary

Then, well, this Ghandi’s touch, if you’ve hit me, I show you the other cheek, there are moments in life when you say ‘well, I don’t know…’, you need to think about it

Then well, there are moments when you’re 20 in which you’d put flowers inside guns, and that you’d be a little bit like John Lennon or Yoko Ono, and life is fantastic

Now, if those who are coming here from everywhere do actually come, for example, and they tell you ‘no, now you’ll have a different name, you won’t have access to internet, and your house is not yours anymore, and your wife, she’d better cover up because we don’t want that…’ well, what do we do?

Of course, someone should tell him ‘no’; but no? Pam, a shot in the head, well…

Then, there’s this… that’s why, many times, people say well… how can one say this and being a leftist, right? It’s hard, many times

Because not everyone is good, not everyone understands things…

Actually, if we look back, the world has been created by different empires, and what was an empire?

I come, I kill everyone, and now it is mine, this is an empire

Roman people would get to a place, and if you weren’t Roman, that was over

Well… So I’d better be Roman, because they’ll kill me if I’m not

But well, there’s a moment in which you say no… I don’t want to be Roman, there you go

Someone has decided that you have to be Roman

Of course, not everyone agrees, then, well, if you say ‘no, I don’t want to be Roman but I have an army behind me…’ then, you tell this to my boss, well…

And that’s why Russia, for example, and the US, it’s about ‘let’s see who’s stronger’, and as they knew they would do a lot of harm… well, let’s leave it at this, right?

Then, deep down, the army is useful for these things

There are particular moments where things happen and someone that has no rights and no say, they need to do those things that the Parliament orders

Listen, this has happened, you go there and solve it, how? Like this, and it depends on its ideology

Of course, if you politicize the army too much it’s when you’re done, there are coups d’estat, and it is when the military wants to behave as a politician and it is when they’re done

Because they haven’t studied to be politicians

They don’t have a democratic infrastructure, so to say, the army cannot be democratic, it has to follow the rules

And then, well, the army is related to the one who’s governing badly, many times, and we have that picture but we can also remember all the times that the army has been the solution to many complex conflicts… right?

At a particular moment, the thing is that the relationship that we Catalan people have with the army is repressive because we lost

Then, well, you see the army as the oppressor, and this…

But deep down, if you think about it, when something has happened… I remember there was a strike of those who control planes… right?

Well, air traffic controllers, right?

Well, what do we do? We’re all over, right?

Now, there is a strike of four men that, I found out today, that in order to hire a man that must cost like 1.300 euros per month, well, many families have lost thousands of euros and holliday days because some men have not come to an agreement in order to hire a fifth person that costed 1.000 euros, so to say

Well, maybe we have them all out, we put four militaries, they manage it and when it’s solved, we put the others again

I mean, I believe the thing is that people connects the military to war

I believe we need to make a distinction between both things, I believe that the fact there is a military doing something, it doesn’t always have to be a destructive activity, or something against life

And then, why? Because, unfortunately, we’re seeing that everywhere… There are many religions that are going crazy, I’d say the correct word is that they’re hurting people consciously or unconsciously, but they do it because of a religious reason

And what do you with them? With this guy that wears a belt and it explodes?

I’m gonna kill him’, no, he’ll already kill himself

Sure, I mean, when someone doesn’t appreciate life, he’s very hard to debate with, and I understand that it is a problem for both of them but well, deep down, you want to live but I don’t, as I don’t really care…

You need someone in the middle who says ‘calm down, I’ll get rid of him for you’

Well, there are many people who make a living in a shaming way and it multiplies these defects

For example, you don’t know how many jihadist people are there, if there’s one or 30.000, you watch tv

And what if they use those videos, for example, to make more rockets than needed? Or more tanks than the needed?

Then sure, it is when we enter the corruption world, everywhere, in the US, in Russia, here, everywhere

Of course, peaceful people, deep down, we’d want a world without bombs, a world without armies, but when you grow up, you realize it is not possible

Because the human being is like that, and there has always been people that wanted to be everything and people that couldn’t have anything

Well, I was here, I watched a report the other day, I had already read it, as everbody has, but well, I don’t know, the empire, for example, everyone knows about Hitler, it’s obvious, right?

But I don’t know, so the Japanese went to China and they did a hugh slaughter, they killed all the Chinese people they wanted and well, they didn’t stop until it all exploded

And now everybody goes like ‘well, American people have put a bomb, what a bastards, everybody’s dead’, well, man, but the Japanese had killed millions of people in China, people that was working in their houses

Who stops this? A bomb, we’re that stupid

Well, sure, these people, there is a moment in which it is used and that’s why our relationship with the army is a real oppressive one, but right now, ‘oh, if there’s independence, we’ll bring the tanks’, for example, right?

Or when the coup d’etat… ‘we’ll bring the tanks’, sure, it is scary because you connect it to… well, the army gives you a bad feeling, to begin with

But maybe, it is the best bad feeling among all the possible bad feelings

Because you thing, well, what do you prefer, tanks all over the street or that these men come to you and tell you that from now on, you have to pray the Koran and if you don’t do it, they’ll cut your neck?

Well, of course, it depends on the moment, deep down, if you look things in perspective, Greek people did it… well, the Ottoman empire did it, everybody knows it, is not that they were a handful of people

I mean, no… no one is innocent

Spanish people are not either nor Catalan people, I think

I mean, no one is innocent, everybody has been a bit imperialistic, a little bit

There’re people that has been more [imperialistic] and they succeeded and people that ended up very bad

And sure, actually, those who hadn’t had an army or people defending themselves, they’ve lost over the oppressor, deep down

And so, it is a helping tool, whether you like it or not, the rescuer is there, right?

And actually, well, everybody has a taller cousin than other, and they’ve hit you when you were younger and your mother, your father or someone would come, so the army is a little bit like that

I think that it is bad, not just the Spanish, but it is bad because I don’t think the army would be necessary if we were all intelligent, it wouldn’t, but in my opinion, I have to tell you: there are bad people

And there are sick people too, right?

I don’t know how would you see it but this thing that is happening with this man from Korea that is making those rockets up…

That feeling that everyone is dancing, everyone is happy, those videos they make, those armies that are moving around and with the banderoles and all…

That feeling, we see it as an other planet from here, it’s like, ‘well, let them do their thing’, but no

They launch a rocket here and that’s it… then, who stops that?

They’re the only ones that can stop it, not us

Could you tell us how Barcelona has changed from the economical crisis?

Well, the economical crisis has affected us and Barcelona has changed

But it has changed with fear, money is a coward thing and it has changed with fear, people are afraid of invest, ‘what if we lose it?’

But well, also in ’29, that was when people were jumping out of their balconies because of the crisis, right?

I think that life is always the same, then, it keeps being like ‘now this is happening but you look back and it has happened before’

Everything is cyclic, it is like now I’m wearing these pants and two days from now it will be fashionable to wear them more loose, and now this cap is like this and then it’ll be like that…

I mean, it is like fashion, I believe everything comes back

Then, deep down, it was a period that changed Barcelona with the prior crisis, we’ve had more than one

Now, this one has been a crisis with a real part and a theatrical part

I mean, there have been many people that found useful using the word crisis, very useful

And the crisis, the crisis…’, and well, if you keep saying there are nits, your head starts itching

If we talk about nits, your head itches, if you talk about disgusting stuff, you end up wanting to vomit

I mean, there have also been, so to say… it’s a feeling…

Yes, I’ve suffered the crisis but well, I have because I dedicate myself to something like pornography, like sex in general, organizing festivals and all… and people say ‘well, I have 20 euros to go, but what if they’re my last 20 euros?’

Of course, if you’d have a policy of living hand to mouth, maybe you wouldn’t notice

Then, there are people that have suffered it… Spain and Catalonia are two countries that live of the service and so, if people don’t spend money, we don’t earn money, that’s why I get angry with that thing about tourism

I mean, if you want to go to a porno webpage and you have to pay 9 euros for that, if you’re afraid they’re your last 9 euros, you say ‘no, I’ll watch a Tube video because it is free and I’ll masturbate with a Tube video and so I save 9 euros’

Then, you start with a saving policy, and in the end, what you do is not generating anything

As you don’t pay, there are no new things because the person who was going to create new things cannot do them because he/she’s not earning money

Then well, it is also a creative crisis, a general crisis and maybe more creative and economical things start to appear, but those things that already had a level are lost

And then is when recycling appears, it’s not that it’s bad, right? It is a change

I think that Barcelona has just realized that we need to recycle, surprise

Or it has just realized that there is a high-energy consumption, and now it seems they have just invented energy-efficient light bulbs, or that we’ve just invented leds, what happens, couldn’t we use that before?

No, before, people wanted you to have a lot of bulbs, all these, all these lights I have lighting up here, they’re leds, 5 years ago, they were regular lights that had a really high-energy consumption

And no one told me ‘no, no, no, a led it’s better because it will consume less energy’

No, no, they told me ‘consume, consume, that you’ll pay me’

Now it turns out that as a commercial used to say ‘if you can, Spain cannot’, right?

Well, more or less, that is what has happened, I believe there is a part of truth and a part of lie

Then, there are people that have won a lot with this and people that said ‘no, I cannot, we’re in crisis, it’s not convenient for me because of the crisis…’

And they took advantage and there is a part of truth and a part of lie

And Barcelona is a very hypocritical city in many ways, well, we usually give a very modern, cosmopolitan, Mediterranean impression, well…

But in the end, it’s no big deal, whether you like it or not, there is a hidden part, right?

I mean, not everyone spends all the money they have, so to say, right?

There are many people that keep up appearances, then, there’re two kinds of people…

Of course, not everybody is the same, then, there are many people that live…

For example, I have many neighbors that come from Dominican Republic and they live hand to mouth and they don’t suffer that much

It’s also people’s nature, Catalan people, we are sufferers, then, we suffer much more because of everything…

Barça is winning 5-0, there are two minutes left, ‘well, imagine they come back…’, ‘well, come one, let it end already, they’re asking for time… it’s ending, it’s ending…’, ‘come one, let it end already…’

We are sufferers, then, the crisis has made us even more savers, and many times, when you’re saving, it is more creative, but you tend to live worse

You say ‘oh, let’s not do this… let’s se… it’s not necessary’

For example, I bought this the other day, I already had one, and why did I buy it? Well, to change a little bit, because well… ‘No, because it was on sale, or because…’, you know?

It’s like you always need an excuse to buy something, when actually, maybe…

Well, I didn’t mind buying this, I could’ve bought it or not, ‘yes, but as we’re in crisis…’

There’s like a singsong, deep down

It is true that there are people that has ended up really bad, in my area, there are many people that had to close their businesses, but there’s also a point in which someone has reinvented himself/herself, and also a little bit of theatre…

Could you tell us about the current situation, the problem regarding tourism?

As we were talking about the crisis, I think tourism is an other invention

Not many years ago, tourism was the best, ‘thanks that tourism exists…’, now we’re in a crisis, people are unemployed, how do you make a living? It’s a service country, you make a living of tourism

And suddenly, even the own City Hall or similar places, they’re talking about tourism as a problem

It is a problem, well, it is a problem to live with tourists, but it is a problem everywhere, it is a cohabitation problem

Well, if you live in Sagrada Familia[‘s neighborhood], it is quite hard for you to live calmly

You have rights but you live in Sagrada Familia

Then, well, I live next to the Apolo… There’re many people that go there at night and…

And of course, things need to be reconciled, obviously

But when they want to making fashionable a problem, they do, it’s like… tourism is a problem in order to cover something that’s actually happening because Barcelona is a souvenirs’ city, tourism has never been a problem

Unemployment, wars, famine are problems

I think women abuse is a much more important problem, or child abuse… than tourism

Now, there are some laws and well, are there people that are renting a flat to some crazy guys that make a lot of noise? Well, let’s call the Civil Guard and so, they’ll arrest them and fine them and that’s it

And if there’re many of them, well, maybe that’s because we’ve looked forward to it, maybe the business model of tourism can be changed, all businesses need to mutate, to adapt

But I think that they’ve been fashionable, then, it turns out that four kids make a spray paint and now my city gets dirty, and now we are…

I mean, we’re a refuge city, we cannot give this shitty impression because it is not true

I’ve gone to the Samsung’s place today because of an issue of a mobile phone of mine, and today I’ve walked from here to Plaça Catalunya and I’ve heard from ten to fifteen different languages

No one hits anyone in the streets, ever, the tourist takes a cab, the tourist eat at a restaurant, the tourist sleeps at a hotel, the tourist buys clothes, the tourist buys newspapers, the tourist buys popcorn… it’s us who does that

Then, there’re people that maybe loses with this? For example, I’ve had some neighbors here that I had to call the police over four times, right next to here

Well, I had bad luck that it happened to me… but if you have a general idea of things, tourism…

Spain’s a service country and Catalonia in particular, it has turned very tourist

I have an appartment in Tordera, next to Blanes, it’s three minutes away from Lloret [de Mar], and they make a living there… that they wish they had tourist as the Blue Coast, of course, who wouldn’t like to have only Japanese people taking photos, that don’t make any noise, that don’t get drunk, that spend a lot of money…

Everybody’d like to have Russian tourists that spend a lot of money and…

But no one is ever happy… people don’t seek the common good

Common good is that I don’t earn anything out of tourism at a particular level, but there’re many people, many families that do

They see things, they sell things, they own hotels, how do we make a living? Barcelona doesn’t create anything, Barcelona sells Barcelona, we don’t make anything

We had people here making things… and where is the textile industry in Barcelona? There are none here

What do we have? Supermarkets, malls, and what’s that? Things to buy

We’re able to sell among us… We create our own product, we’ll buy our own [Antoni] Gaudi’s figurines, the lizard… No, all that is for foreign people

And who’s making that? Well, there’s probably a cousin of yours, a neighbor that makes a living of tourism

And tour guides, bus drivers… the media…

Well, that is making a lot of people not being able to leave their houses? Do I agree with that? No, I don’t… Am I happy about that? No, but I prefer fixable problems than realizing there’s no one here, that nobody comes here, ever

I know many towns that I won’t mention, because I know many of them… And they told me ‘Conrad, nobody ever comes here, to our town, and you complain about tourism? We’d make anything up in order to people to come here’

Because I talk to people from Murcia, from Alicante, there are many towns in between, towns that people don’t know about, and well, they’d love that something happened there so people would go…

And here we have that, we got 30 milion people coming here from around the world, what do we do in the US? The Statue of Liberty is French, it’s not American, everybody sees it, they take photos there, photos…

And they buy the figurine, they spend a lot of money…

Then, life is a middle point, a little bit of seny, as we said before, a middle point

But it’s incredible that you say wow, we’re the country, Italian people are like ‘we cook pasta, mozzarella, and well, pizzas…’, and that’s it

We don’t do anything, what do we create? Espetec? What are we selling? We don’t have a gross domestic product to sell things that you say like… well, we do things, there’s Inditex, Zara, all that, and they’re all in Tordera because I see them there everyday

And they go to the Corte Inglés and everywhere, but they’re all things to sell, also, who wears them? People that buy

Then, I think that attacking a bus, where there’re families, and making a scene… it’s pathetic, directly

And this is just because there’s someone older behind, because they’re kids, someone older that is 45 or 50 years old that says ‘tourism is a problem’

Then, there’s someone who believes it and says well, my life’s cause, and against tourism

And they start making stickers, tourism kills the neighborhood, tourism… Well, and what about all the profits that tourism has generated, where are they?

I mean, we cannot be like this, the thing is that well, everybody speaks for their life

I’m not affected by that, I’m ashamed, it is different, I’m ashamed

I think we should fight against people hurting animals, there are many hurted animals here

And these bastards that buy a dog and abandon it in the summer, well, let’s go after that people, people that misbehave, people that makes noise at night, people that plays music whenever they want, anti-social people, people that don’t recycle, people that don’t know how to live in a community, so to speak

But saying that a tourist is a problem in Barcelona now? I think that’s pathetic, directly pathetic

A different thing is a man that comes to Barcelona and creates a big fuss, so you arrest him and sends him to prison, that’s it

I’ve seen more normal people than morons, in Barcelona

I’ve seen people taking photos respectfully, not throwing papers in the street, buying things, people are confused

Now, I’ve been the manager at the Barceloneta’s civic center for four years and I know the Barceloneta perfectly, and so I spoke to many people, to associations

Well, they used to have many restaurants at the Barceloneta and as of the Olympics, they suffered a lot because they didn’t see things clear, it is a pure neighborhood, and well, they loved it and were afraid of what was going to happen

And they restyled their neighborhood and it’s very nice

Now, it is true there’re many people that sold their businesses but in specific areas, very specific places

But in general, 90% of tourism… there may be a 10% of bad tourism, yes, I see pictures of guys having sex in a children’s playground, I’ve seen that on tv

Drunk people naked in the street, I’ve seen it on tv, but it’s one out of a milion, not one out of one hundred, it’s not 1% of the population, it’s a 0’0001%

Now, is it a problem for some people? Obviously

It’s like that traffic campaign they’re doing now, right? That says ‘how many people have to die? One person? Well, it wouldn’t be a lot…’ well, what if he’s your husband? He’s everything you have, right?

And so, obviously, I respect people that have a problem because I’ve had problems right here, they were foreign people, I won’t say where they’re from so I’m not racist, they were foreign people making noise

I told him one day, I’m not racist, I just want you to turn off the radio

Oh, you’re telling me this because I’m not from here…’ No, no, I don’t care, it’d be the same if you were from Igualada, you turn off the radio, it’s 4 o’clock in the morning

Well, because it’s a flat they’re renting… Well, I’ve been trying to tolerate it, but on the other hand, you cannot say that because of those bastards, everybody is the same

And many tourists pass through this street, it’s a very crowded street for tourists and I think that we need to think of the common good

And so, I think it is a social, political fashion that is cool, tourist abuse is fashionable now, yes, because you haven’t seen it…

Well, the neighborhood where I live… there’ve been many things like these but I think that the overall profit… But of course, things could’ve been done better, for sure