I have had to wait a few days to see myself with sufficient spirit and a clear mind before dedicating my fortnightly column in La Vanguardia to Toni Batllori, with whom I had the immense privilege of working, side by side, on a book that we published together: satire economy A billion mussels (Today’s Issues, 2010).
I wrote the text, an absurd story about the shipwreck of a luxury liner that leaves the main leaders of the world on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean and they are forced to build, from nothing, an economic system where the currency goes to be the mussel. They will live as protagonists a small reproduction of monetary history and will suffer the consequences, on a small scale, of sometimes disastrous decisions, reliving episodes such as hyperinflation, bankruptcies, or liquidity traps. Toni accomplished a feat that still seems incredible to me today. Illustrate the great economists of history and the not so great politicians of that moment on that supposed island, living together, arguing, starving, cheating, sometimes deceiving and trying to seize power.
When I presented the structure of the book to Toni, prior to writing it, Toni, who was not an economist, but knew much more than he claimed to know, told me: everything is fine, but something is missing: Africa or, at least, someone representing the Third World.
I had focused on the developed economies, with the current dispute between China and the United States as the final climax. But he had forgotten the forgotten continent. Toni told me that, in addition to representing the world economy and spreading the word about monetary history and money, we could not tiptoe over those people who are often forgotten by money. When writing or drawing, it is not only necessary to explain, but also to denounce, he told me.
Toni Batllori was an authentic person who, above all, valued the uniqueness of things, authenticity. He preferred a broken and old chair, which he would later fix, to a mass-produced designer chair. And from the economy he expected that same authenticity.
For Toni Batllori, in economics, authenticity meant social justice, solidarity and equity. From that project a relationship was born that we could well call discontinuous fixed friendship. Here Toni would have smiled. He caught them on the fly… Great friends who see each other from time to time because time doesn’t matter when the appreciation is authentic.
