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Why do you live in Barcelona?
I arrived in Barcelona in the year 2000 by chance and I stayed for two years; I went to Berlin, but I came back…
Why did he come back?
At first, it was a coincidence brought about by my wife, who is Catalan from Barcelona. Today Barcelona is my vital choice.
Are you not considering going back to France?
I go a lot and I have a house there; but my center of gravity is still Barcelona.
What does Barcelona have that Paris does not?
Barcelona is the confluence of many traffic: it is Mediterranean, essential for me, it is well connected. And besides, I am already Catalan, as Pujol said, I live and work in Catalonia.
What is Barcelona today?
It has three meanings at the same time that sometimes diverge: it is a great Spanish city, the capital of Catalonia and it is a great European city.
Three senses in conflict?
They are like three donkeys that do not go in the same direction, but sometimes they cross each other, and that tension generates the dynamism of Barcelona.
Other tensions in the city?
That of a historic left, consolidated in a century of workers’ struggle against a Catalan bourgeoisie that is always afraid of change and that wants to get rich without it being noticed. This tension also energizes Barcelona.
What did you like and what not about it?
I arrived at the great moment of the Barcelona brand: the Fòrum and what was seeded with the Olympic Games. And today, like sets in mathematics, it’s an intersection of all of this. What fascinated me when I arrived was its sense of the capital of Catalonia. And I learned Catalan.
You speak it perfectly… Why?
I am an Arabist and I am passionate about its medieval origins: Ramon Llull was also an Arabist and there is the renaissance of the Romance languages ​​in which knowledge is no longer only in Latin. And thus begins the rich mixture of Barcelona.
What goes beyond the Catalan in it?
Its identity tension continues to be revitalizing. In France, on the other hand, no one questions French and any identity other than the centralized one has been erased: Catalan and Provençal, as well as Breton or Basque, have been liquidated. Here they are still alive.
How did the process live?
It was interesting to watch him in his day. The conclusion today is that Spain needs dialogue and reforms in its institutions.
What tension prevails now?
Barcelona is a laboratory, to begin with, of architecture. For example, I live by the Sant Antoni market, and the Cerdà plan is still alive, due to its vision of the future, and continues to make Barcelona an international capital.
Doesn’t the urbanism of Paris fascinate you?
Paris has ended up being a museum; Barcelona continues to be a great living laboratory of ideas, urban planning, buildings, projects… And that spirit guarantees its European capital status.
We no longer have Islamist or nationalist terrorism… For now?
The causes are still… Now, latent.
Have the terrorists been defeated?
The intelligence of the states acts, and they no longer have money; but they will hit us again if the conditions of 2015 are repeated.
Are you interested in the European project?
People ask what we gain with Europe, because they forget that the EU is there to avoid wars and avoids them and has now been efficient in the face of gas cuts. You must move on.
Has the Arab world made any progress?
That question today is a provocation. All the hopes of 2010 have ended in catastrophes: Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia… And their young people have no future and emigrate.
Even health personnel emigrate here.
Now you take advantage of a generation of doctors and nurses who come to you; but by emigrating they drain the future of their countries.
Do you see an alternative to emigration?
Let’s create a great common space like the EU: another EU-Arab countries union; because if you only take away from the Arabs their best youth, you only leave them poverty and, in despair, terrorism. You make enemies.
Will prosperity defeat Islamic terrorism as it defeated the nationalist?
I have finished a book, Desertar, which analyzes this dilemma of the wars of the last century.
Would you desert?
I reflect: I tell the story of a deserter and that of a German diplomat who was a communist until the end, faithful to utopia.
A utopia that ended up being a prison?
And I tell the stories that Semprún told me about when he deserted communism.
In this section he demonstrated his lucidity…
I remember every one of his words.
But I wanted to do Paris in Madrid and the Von Thyssen collection took us there.
Even so, he was too French for Madrid and that is why he did not quite shine there.
What cause or war would he not desert?
The decision is not to die or not for a cause but to make others die for it.
If they are just enemies…
The cause may require that someone die. But she thinks: “If it’s not me, better.”
