“My mother always tells me that when I was four years old they took a coin out of my ear, and I was obsessed with it for a lot of days, touching my ears and hoping to find more. They brought me a magic book and that’s where it all started,” explains illusionist Antonio Díaz, known as El Mago Pop, in a new chapter of Mucho por Hacer, CaixaBank’s financial culture program, created with the aim of increasing knowledge of the population in basic concepts of personal finance.
“I was doing magic all day so the transition from a hobby to a profession was very smooth and long in time because it was the only thing I had done my whole life,” he says. “I am a very shy person and very introverted. I needed to create a character and it was very convenient for me to have a stage name”, confesses Díaz. El Mago Pop is his alter ego and, unlike him, he is someone daring and outgoing who connects with the public. His character is the result of his own television program that he gave in the United Kingdom, in which he surprised many well-known faces and pop icons from around the world with his magic.
The illusionist, whose shows break box office records, is clear that magic must be in keeping with the times. “The world is constantly changing and magic has to adapt. It is an ancient, classic art, but when technology does incredible things, magic has to be even more advanced”, he maintains. This desire to go further has helped him to learn every day and to know how to reinvent himself.
For him, one of the keys is to surround himself with the best as scientists and engineers. “I look for new illusions and challenges, that circus thing that is still the most difficult. I have already teleported, I have flown, I have disappeared… What can you do then? For me it is very gratifying to get closer to science, technology and art ”, he comments in the Mucho por Hacer video.
Behind his magic there are many hours of work and a lot of attention to detail. “In our shows technique is very important. You have to rehearse a lot to anticipate all the things that can go wrong in the execution of a magic game. Each hour of a show requires hundreds or thousands of hours of rehearsal”, explains Díaz. How to prevent unforeseen events? “I always like to talk to my team about the world of aviation. Because an airplane cannot fail. Well, then a magician cannot fail either ”, he assures.
Being cautious is another of the essential aspects in your profession. “The control, the checklists and that someone checks the person who checks is very important. We have to lower the error rate of each magic game. Because, in the end, as we do five hundred shows a year, you have to try to ensure that a game never fails. If a show has a one percent error, it will fail five times a year, and you have to ensure that it never or almost never fails”, reveals this expert in the art of surprising
In the same way that the Pop Wizard is aware of all the details and is very cautious so that his secrets are not revealed, when we are in digital environments we must take certain precautions to navigate safely. In the next chapter of Mucho por Hacer, Xavier Puig, Professor of Economics and Finance at Pompeu Fabra University – Barcelona School of Management, will talk about how to move online confidently and carry out our operations safely.
Together with the Mucho por Hacer program, CaixaBank has created a hub, through which it disseminates all the basic financial concepts linked to the most frequent life projects of the population, which can be accessed free of charge through caixabank.es/muchoporhacer , located within the entity’s global portal.
CaixaBank continues to work on a daily basis with the aim of disseminating knowledge and making everyone aware of the importance of acquiring a good financial culture. In addition, it promotes training activities that cover the specific needs of young people, the elderly, entrepreneurs or people in a vulnerable situation, through specialized workshops, training courses and conferences.
