At Tomàs Molina’s house, things are not thought about more than three times. If you don’t solve something the first time, you look for the reason. You give it another spin. And if you don’t get anywhere either, the third time you make a decision or forget about it. He says he is very square, and he used to read a lot. As a child, he would even faint, literally. He was tall, a little weak, his grandmother said that he had no virtue. He read all of Jules Verne’s books, even the lesser known ones. He spent so many hours lying down with a book that, when he got up, he lost consciousness. They subscribed to the Readers’ Circle and he read the novels that his mother bought. He was fascinated by atlases when he was twelve or fifteen years old, and also by The Inventions. Maybe these books would push him to study science.
From Larry Collins it passed to Sir Thomas Malory, and he still keeps the Arthurian stories published by Siruela on a shelf that he shares with his wife, Maria Antònia, next to the interior patio of the house where they have lived for twenty-five years in Badalona. When they designed it, one of the specifications they made to the architect was that La Vanguardia would fit in the mailbox so they wouldn’t have to go out and look for it. They have been subscribers since they got married in 1991, and they continue reading it in print. Curiously, he also preserves those books that made him lose interest in reading, such as the saga of The Sword of Joram: “They are trap books, constructed like series, they hook you with short chapters that end in suspense so that you continue, but they do not contain to nowhere”.
In no particular order, some in a double row, there are also titles by Rosa Montero, John Grisham, Pasqual Maragall, Molina’s own, such as Contes del temps, which was translated into Chinese, dictionaries. Or El costumari català, by Joan Amades, which served him so well in the magazine Bon dia, Catalunya, or in Espai terra, which won the 2012 Iris award; The award is along with the others among the books. Molina took the TV3 entrance exams when he was in the race, and he has continued working there for 38 years. His vocation was to be a teacher. He liked mathematics. He studied Physics, with a specialty in physics of the earth and the cosmos. He did not plan to be a “weather man”, meteorology did not even motivate him much, but it immediately sparked his interest. His first maps were still drawn by hand, with a glass table and fluorescent lights. He says that the algorithm is a meteorological concept and artificial intelligence comes from meteorologists, in the sense that finding the result and getting it right is more important than the method used.
Next to the television, there are books about the sea, the ocean, Badalona, ??two hygrometers. Some are gifts, like Cosmos, very worn out due to the number of times he has read it with his three children. It was a gift from motorcycle owner Rabasa, an astronomy enthusiast. Molina’s readings are very heterogeneous. Literature requires a state of mind and concentration that he now lacks: “You need order, time to be with yourself,” and his agenda, he jokes, is that of a minister. So he reads in fits and starts; Moron! , by Raül Romeva; before, Passar a l’ offensive, by Josep Manel Busqueta, with whom he coincided in the program Col·lapse. He normally does it during the day, with natural light, because he sees better.
His priority is to be a doctor before he turns 61, so he immerses himself in endless scientific articles. The books that he has liked the most in life are The Crusades Seen by the Arabs, by Amin Maalouf, and The Lover, by Marguerite Duras. He has it as a reference because “it condenses many important things into short sentences, and that amazes me.” He should learn to put more points when he writes, he says. When speaking, his way of constructing the story is circular. He uses this technique to organize the message: it begins and ends more or less with the same image. “One of the most important things when you make a speech is that people perceive that they have understood it, regardless of whether they have understood it or not; and if you want the message to be fixed, you start talking about fog, for example, and you end the same way, making circles.” It is ironic, when he claims to be square and does not turn anything more than three times.
