0
Interview
nicole millar - 4 January 2015 2.00 h

Coming home

Germà talks about his decision to leave his native Argentina for Catalonia, the land of his grandparents

Germà Capdevila Born in Argentina, Germà was raised among the exiled Catalan community in South America. He is a journalist and has lived in Catalonia for 15 years.
- nicole millar
You were born in Ar­gentina, how did Cat­alo­nia be­come your home?
–My fam­ily his­tory is a very com­mon one here in Cat­alo­nia. My grand­par­ents went into exile from Cat­alo­nia after the Civil War. They spent a cou­ple years in French Cat­alo­nia and then de­cided to start over in Buenos Aires in Ar­gentina. My fa­ther was born in Ar­gentina a year later in a very Cata­lan en­vi­ron­ment, as the expat Cata­lan com­mu­nity over there was very strong. And, even­tu­ally, my fa­ther mar­ried a Cata­lan girl, too. Cat­alo­nia and the Cata­lan lan­guage were things that were al­ways very pre­sent for me at home all the time. Even­tu­ally, I de­cided to give it a try and so we moved here.
When did you move to Cat­alo­nia?
–Four­teen or fif­teen years ago.
You and your fam­ily? Who is still in Ar­gentina?
–My dad is still liv­ing there and I have a brother there in Ar­gentina. My mum lives here in Cat­alo­nia.
Was Cata­lan your first lan­guage at home?
–Well, es­pe­cially with my grand­par­ents! They have that Cata­lan feel­ing that we have a duty to keep the lan­guage alive. Be­cause here the Fran­coist dic­ta­tor­ship gave a sense that the cul­ture of the lan­guage was in dan­ger, we had a sense of duty to keep the lan­guage alive, just in case, by speak­ing it in the home.
What was your de­ci­sion to move to Cat­alo­nia all the way from Ar­gentina?
–Well, I worked in Ar­gentina as a jour­nal­ist, too, and I used to con­tribute to dif­fer­ent pa­pers and media here in Cat­alo­nia. Even­tu­ally one of them of­fered me a job and gave me the op­por­tu­nity to work here as a jour­nal­ist. I started with the El Punt Avui news­pa­per in 2000, and with one or two oth­ers. I don't re­mem­ber much about it now.
How dif­fer­ent is Cat­alo­nia to Ar­gentina?
–I am sure it is some­thing that you feel, too, when you move from one coun­try to an­other. Of course there are lots of things that are fa­mil­iar to me, start­ing with the food and the lan­guage. I had been part of the com­mu­nity be­fore­hand. But I have to say that the Cat­alo­nia that my grand­par­ents de­scribed to me was com­pletely dif­fer­ent to the one I dis­cov­ered. Theirs was the Cat­alo­nia of 1939. And, of course, you find lit­tle dif­fer­ences that make things fun­nier. Things that are im­por­tant and things that aren't. For ex­am­ple, do you find that peo­ple here have a big prob­lem with round­abouts here?
Ha! Yes, this is a prob­lem! And I have spo­ken to some­one about this. Ap­par­ently, round­abouts were only in­tro­duced some 20 years or so ago, and so no one knew how to use them prop­erly! It would be like throw­ing a round­about into Amer­ica, no one would know what to do!
–That's it! That is a funny ex­am­ple of things that are dif­fer­ent. But at the end of the day, things re­ally aren't that dif­fer­ent.
And you had the lan­guage when you came over, so adapt­ing was quite easy for you. Had you vis­ited be­fore you moved? You must have done?
–Yes, sev­eral times be­fore, vis­it­ing friends and fam­ily.
It is a big change though, bring­ing your whole fam­ily across.
–Yes, but in Ar­gentina it isn't a big deal to start over. Every per­son or fam­ily has a story of im­mi­gra­tion, of start­ing over in a dif­fer­ent coun­try.
Where in Cat­alo­nia do you live?
–I live in Girona, I think it is the per­fect place. It is the place I moved to when I was of­fered the job. They gave me two op­tions, to move to Girona or to move to Barcelona. But I set­tled on Girona; it is a small town with the fa­cil­i­ties of a big one. A nice place to raise your kids and easy to meet peo­ple. In a big city it is al­ways more dif­fi­cult to make friends. I am very happy. There is also an­other im­por­tant el­e­ment to liv­ing in Girona, you are just an hour away from Per­pig­nan, where you can go to rugby matches!
You are big rugby fan. I did not re­alise rugby was so pop­u­lar in Cat­alo­nia.
–It is re­gain­ing pop­u­lar­ity. It used to be huge, with a big fan base. The Cata­lan rugby fed­er­a­tion was one of the founders of the In­ter­na­tional Rugby As­so­ci­a­tion at the be­gin­ning of the 20th cen­tury. But after the Civil War, Franco thought that rugby was too Cata­lan and banned it here and dis­solved the Cata­lan rugby as­so­ci­a­tion. Slowly they are re­build­ing it. They are doing well but don't have the same level as the French or Eng­lish clubs – yet!
How often do you pop across to Per­pig­nan?
–Every time I can, every fort­night or so. USA Per­pig­nan play rugby union in the sec­ond di­vi­sion. And the Cata­lan Drag­ons are play­ing in the Eng­lish Super League up there. Per­pig­nan is just an hour's drive away, so it is very close.
You have some new and ex­cit­ing pro­jects going on, tell me about them?
–Two years ago with a group of jour­nal­ists from Cat­alo­nia we started a new ven­ture with a mag­a­zine called L'Es­guard, which is a weekly in­for­ma­tion mag­a­zine, pub­lished only for mo­bile de­vises, smart phones and tablets. We are very ex­cited with the re­sponse. Even with the cri­sis peo­ple are still buy­ing smart phones. We are grow­ing in read­er­ship and in down­loads and we have started an­other monthly mag­a­zine about food and wine, which is also doing well. It is also great news for jour­nal­ists after years of dis­cus­sions about what is going to hap­pen to our pro­fes­sion, wor­ry­ing that it is going to die or that news­pa­pers are going to close, see­ing tech­nol­ogy as a threat. But we now re­alise that we can de­liver good con­tent to read­ers with these plat­forms. You can add videos, slideshows, you can see so much more. We have be­come well-known for our an­i­mated front pages. L'Es­guard has a dif­fer­ent in­ter­view every week with a well known per­son from dif­fer­ent fields, for ex­am­ple, sport, pol­i­tics, so­cial life, the­atre and cul­ture. The food and wine mag­a­zine is called Sen­tits.
What a great topic!
–Yes! We all love food and wine; it is the na­tional sport!
Can you give me a top rec­om­men­da­tion for a restau­rant in Girona? Apart from Celler de Can Roca?!
–Well, the hid­den trea­sure here is Can Roca. The fam­ily Roca started a fam­ily restau­rant which is still open and you can get a 10-euro menu there. The mother and fa­ther cook and it is ter­rific, Cata­lan food, made with local pro­duce.
Be­fore we fin­ish can you give me a top tip for some­one vis­it­ing the Girona area?
–I am sure you have ex­pe­ri­enced every­thing that I am going to men­tion. Cat­alo­nia is a very invit­ing place; noth­ing is ex­pected of you. The peo­ple here don't even ask you to learn their lan­guage, but my first piece of ad­vice would be to try any­way, so that you can show ap­pre­ci­a­tion and be part of it. It is a coun­try with peo­ple of dif­fer­ent ori­gins. It is a land that has wel­comed new peo­ple since the Greeks ar­rived on the Costa Brava 2000 years ago. They are very used to wel­com­ing new ar­rivals. So I have no rec­om­men­da­tion of what you shouldn't do!
Thank you, Germà, for com­ing to have a chat with me, it was won­der­ful to have you here!
Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.

Published on

Most Viewed