It is wrong to say it but I have good memories of the Democratic Tsunami, not of the movement itself, obviously, but of its collateral effects. One of the days when the protesters blocked the Barcelona airport I had a trip to Japan; Airplane schedules were disrupted and connections were lost due to the inability of passengers to access the terminal. As a result, the kind people at Qatar Airways put me on another flight on the Doha-Tokyo leg and, in addition, on another seat that turned out to be first class. I will never forget.
I traveled in a kind of cabin for myself with an armchair converted into a bed, with his sheets, his duvet, his pajamas, his toiletry bag with toiletries; all kinds of drinks and food; a panoramic TV; bathroom (shared, not everything is perfect) with shower included and so much attention that I would have stayed and lived there. And, the best thing, I had no contact with any other passengers, although perhaps I would have been interested in socializing with the neighbor who, if he had paid for his seat, must have been someone with means or perhaps, like me, was a low-class person.
Because of this my profession, which among other things allows me to tell my adventures in this space as if they mattered to someone, I have lived beyond my means and I have met people and places that could never be imagined although, following the monologue of the Blade replicant runner, all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Of the almost two hundred countries in the world, I have visited more than half; I shook hands with Elizabeth II before dinner in the gala dining room at Buckingham Palace; I had a rum with Fidel Castro; I have sat in the Oval Office of the White House; I have dined at the House of the People, in Peking; I sank in the snow at the Juan Carlos I base, in Antarctica; I flew over the Serengeti in a small plane with a handsome military man, as if I were Meryl Streep in Out of Africa, and Julio Iglesias even invited me to fly on his private plane. I said no and I will always regret it. Who knows where it would have gone.
