Do you have more marathons or doctorates?
I have completed eight marathons and have five doctorates, almost already written a sixth.
Technical tie, would you say?
But they win the Sanfermines running of the bulls.
How many lockdowns?
Over fifty.
More than fifty!
Running of the bulls in Pamplona, ??from the age of 16: look at this photo,
Some youngsters before some horned…
The divine, me on the horns: year 1964.
I was 20 years old, and without fear?
“Are you really going to run?” my father had asked me the day before. I had it in my blood. I confirmed that he would run.
And what did his father tell him?
“Well, run close!” I did that, always close to the bull. This is a religion.
Has nothing ever happened to you?
Nothing. More danger she had to run against the grays in the Plaza Universitat, at the age of 18. Running in a crowd has the technique of it.
Which is it?
Fists for bumpers, elbows at right angles, eyes in the neck. And to run.
And be Navarrese.
Navarra has been the first nation of Spain since the 10th century. We are persistent, yes.
You have to be to run marathons.
I started with some Victoria sneakers, there was no material in the seventies. But few pleasures compare to crossing the finish line.
Was it well positioned?
Always among those in the middle.
He says it proudly.
Greatest pride is to have been on the board of Real Club Deportivo Español. And another immense pride is to have presided over the Catalonia bookstore and Selecta publishing house.
In Catalonia I buy so many books…
We hid prohibited political books, Ruedo Ibérico, in the seventies… Books, another passion: I had 17,000 volumes, I’m left with 9,000, lack of space.
Readings for their doctoral theses.
And for pleasure, like this bound collection of Carlist works, or these books about caganers…
Caganers, he says?
With years, patience and illusion I have assembled an important collection of caganers, one of the largest, two thousand figurines!
You never cease to amaze me!
They represent our connection to the earth, its fertility. Shameful, Joan Amades never wrote the word caganer.
Oh, and what did he call the caganer?
“Senor que fa las seves necessitats”. This little figurine made its debut in the 18th century in a Christmas nativity scene in a Catalan farmhouse… and in the following centuries it spread.
What will you do with this collection of yours?
Donate it to the Camilo José Cela Foundation, in Padrón, his hometown.
He was very scatological: he would love it!
His collection of toilet seats hangs on one wall there: the collection of caganers will look good on the opposite wall.
I see here a thesis of his… about Cela!
Yes, it corresponds to one of my five doctorates. I am a doctor in Literature for this thesis: The last two novels of the Galician cycle by Camilo José Cela: ‘La cruz de San Andrés’ and ‘Madera de boj’.
Ugh, I tried to read St. Andrew’s Cross and it just fell out of my hands.
I don’t blame him. It was a bizarre text in its genesis, with the mediation of various people, as I detail in detail in my doctoral thesis.
Count, count…
Keep in mind that this dense novel was composed in only six months.
Doctor of Literature… and what else?
And a doctor in Law, and a doctor in Economics, and a doctor in History, and a doctor in Humanities, and soon in Ethnology…
Doctor of Law, with what thesis?
The governing bodies of savings banks. I worked for two decades in the legal department of Caixa Catalunya. There I mediated in the purchase of La Pedrera!
PhD in Economics from…
Concepts, ideas and economic contents in ‘Don Quixote’. Cervantes was a tax collector. Every night I take Don Quixote from my bedside table, open it and read three or four pages at random, and then go to sleep!
PhD in History by…
The archive of the Casa de La Canicouba de Tuy: it is a pazo from 1547 that I inherited from my deceased wife, Julia García-Valdecasas, with an archive of 18,000 documents and numerous collections of old books.
Doctor of Humanities from…
San Francisco Javier, life, mission and devotion: patron saint of Navarra, founder of the Jesuits, in one of whose schools I was trained. About him I own 1,221 books.
And he will be a doctor in Ethnology for…
The cultural importance of pesebrismo. Special analysis of the figure of the ‘caganer’.
