Spending four years sharing the desk with Manolo Estapé was an adventure. I did it in the Economics section of La Vanguardia, from 2011 to 2015.
Manolo Estapé was a circus and a journey to knowledge, all at once, in a 1.85m body that seemed not to age. I never saw him lose hair, I barely saw him go gray.
Manolo Estapé applied common sense to microeconomics, in the same way that he processed macroeconomics with encyclopedic agility. He devoured books and underlined them with red ink, and I asked him:
–Why do you emphasize? For rereading?
And he answered:
–To emphasize.
Sometimes, Manuel Estapé Tous (this is how he signed his pieces in the newspaper), son of Fabián Estapé, legendary economist, would get together with Jordi Goula, Jordi Palarea and Miriam Josa, and between the four of them they would have magnificent parties on the 7th floor. On Fridays They had a snack and the cava and wine flowed, and ironic comments, sarcasm and laughter rained down: the editorial office, silent today, came to life.
Other times, Manolito chose to remain silent. He took refuge in reading and thinking about it and that’s it. He could only be heard in his surroundings, when he sighed very loudly, he seemed to moo, or when he protested because someone had raised his voice, or when he shared a reflection. He favored divine justice, even poetic justice. Joaquín Luna reminds me that sometimes he would hum:
–Lamb of Diooooos.
When he had to write, he shone: there appeared a surgeon dissecting the last meeting of the European Central Bank, Draghi’s messages, Ben Bernanke’s decisions at the Fed and Varoufakis’ appearance in Greece.
Manolo Estapé played on Varufakis’ team: oblivious to the digitalization of newspapers, he had decided to live on the periphery of the mainstream. When rap was a minor genre, he listened to it. He was from Espanyol and Joventut, he loved basketball, he gave his opinion on Scariolo’s movements on the bench, he complained about the parasitic vocation of Barça, football left him indifferent, nor did he care too much what others thought or said about him , you cannot be more noble or coherent.
He was boiling inside, injustices made him angry. Over time, she grew tired of human contact. He made his fuss and we lost track of him. He abandoned the newspaper, isolated himself in a town on the Mediterranean coast, like a hermit, although very few forgot him. “Does anyone know anything about Manolito?” the word spread through La Vanguardia, increasingly tense and silent.
This week we woke up to the news of his death.
Damn 2023, Malay drip.
