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Interview
4 November 2018 2.00 h

Mike Duff

Entrepreneur

Sustainability and improvement

Watch the interview at:
http://ves.cat/enDs
Barcelona became an icon for me, where things were done in an innovative way IF PEOPLE COME TO IMPROVE THEMSELVES WITHOUT DAMAGING THE PLANET, WE’LL HAVE THEM!
Tell us about your back­ground. You’re Cana­dian, but you’ve lived in many places. Why Cat­alo­nia?
I found out about Cat­alo­nia on a road trip, when I was liv­ing in Nice, and my girl­friend’s fa­ther drove to Por­tu­gal, drop­ping us in Barcelona on his way, for a week­end. I re­mem­ber hav­ing a fan­tas­tic time in such a beau­ti­ful place. Later, when I was study­ing a Mas­ter’s in Urban De­sign and then Ar­chi­tec­ture, Barcelona’s work for the 1992 Olympics kept com­ing up as a shin­ing ex­am­ple. Being some­one who wanted to de­sign cities, Barcelona be­came an icon for me, where things were done in an in­no­v­a­tive way. It al­most had a myth­i­cal sta­tus. Years later when I had a health scare and sud­denly needed brain surgery, I needed in­spi­ra­tion while I was re­cov­er­ing for seven months. Hav­ing lived in Lon­don for al­most 20 years, look­ing out of the win­dow and see­ing grey clouds was not help­ing. I had had a few pro­jects in Cat­alo­nia by then, and my wife and small child and I began to ex­plore the idea that in­stead of my work­ing in Cat­alo­nia, we should all live there, and go back to Lon­don a few times a year, and that is what we did.
Now, in the small vil­lage of Púbol, in the Baix Em­pordà, you and your fam­ily run a villa hotel called La Bruguera de Púbol. Tell us about this pro­ject.
It’s in­ter­est­ing: a three-hectare es­tate in a pro­tected for­est. The neigh­bour­ing es­tate was owned by “Cap­tain” Peter Moore, who was Dalí’s busi­ness man­ager. Moore man­aged to ne­go­ti­ate the land for two es­tates; his, El Castillo de La Bruguera, and La Bruguera de Púbol, for Francesc d’Assis Casade­mont. Casade­mont was a land­scape painter, who won the Sant Jordi Cross. In 2015, we bought the es­tate from his widow.
Peo­ple who spend time at La Bruguera can do a num­ber of ac­tiv­i­ties, right?
Yes, we took Casade­mont’s art gallery, and turned it into a stu­dio space for yoga, dance, pi­lates, the­atre, pop-up din­ners. We get tour op­er­a­tors who bring clients for yoga, we had a Swiss com­pany last week who brought cy­clists. We have had African dance, chil­dren’s paint­ing work­shops, you name it. If peo­ple come to im­prove them­selves with­out dam­ag­ing the planet, we’ll have them!
The hotel runs en­tirely on re­new­able en­ergy. You’re in­ter­ested in sus­tain­abil­ity and sus­tain­able de­sign, so how does La Bruguera work in en­ergy terms?
We gen­er­ate a lot of en­ergy from solar pan­els and we have a stack of lithium ion bat­ter­ies in the base­ment. Our heat and hot water is from air-source heat pumps, and a bio­mass boiler. We have two hectares of for­est to main­tain so we have lots of logs, for ad­di­tional heat. It’s all stored in gi­gan­tic water tanks in the base­ment. We also grow a lot of our own food.
Are you pleased with the re­sult?
Well it wasn’t cheap – that’s prob­a­bly the biggest prob­lem. But for us, it’s about the phi­los­o­phy. We wanted to make sure that our guests weren’t dam­ag­ing the planet. Two years ago when we started, I don’t think we had any clients be­cause of the re­new­able en­ergy. Now we have tour op­er­a­tors ap­proach us who only use elec­tric cars, who are choos­ing us be­cause we are low-car­bon.
Cy­cling is an­other of your pas­sions. Tell us about Above & Be­yond.
Above & Be­yond is a new set of train­ing camps for ultra-en­durance cy­clists. An­other way of de­scrib­ing ultra-en­durance is cy­cling re­ally, re­ally far, for a very, very long time.
What does this mean in days?
Well, I met the other two coaches with whom I run the pro­ject dur­ing a ride that was over 500 km long last year, and in­volved climb­ing around 12,000 m, so about a Mt. Ever­est and a half. We rode from Geneva, to Nice, and across to San Remo, in 28 hours. No sleep­ing, no ho­tels, just rid­ing.
That is in­cred­i­ble.
It felt a bit crazy at times, but is a grow­ing mar­ket seg­ment in cy­cling. Now, as Above & Be­yond, we are run­ning train­ing camps for ultra-en­durance and bike-pack­ing at La Bruguera, and bring­ing peo­ple here to ex­pe­ri­ence the beauty of Cat­alo­nia while they suf­fer!
What made a big im­pres­sion on you when you ar­rived in Cat­alo­nia?
There was a cre­ativ­ity and an op­ti­mism that sold it for me. From com­ing here and work­ing on a pro­ject to de­vise a sus­tain­able arts ed­u­ca­tion cen­tre around the archive of Maria Lluïsa Borrás, co-founder of the Joan Mirò foun­da­tion, I met lots of in­ter­est­ing peo­ple. I was amazed at how for­ward think­ing every­one was, yet we were in Baix Em­pordà, which is like going back in time, it’s so rural. This idea that the coun­try­side didn’t have to be a throw­back ex­cited me.
How do you have time for all these ac­tiv­i­ties… What’s your se­cret?
As the say­ing goes, if you need some­thing done, ask a busy per­son. I don’t know why… I work quickly, and if it’s some­thing that I like and value, then I find the time for it.

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