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Interview
1 March 2015 0.00 h

The right person at the right time

Miquel Calçada Every Wednesday at 6.30pm on El Punt Avui TV, Marcela interviews prominent English speaking residents in Catalonia or relevant Catalan figures. Here is her recent interview with Miquel Calçada.
You spent al­most two years study­ing in Amer­ica. Tell me about Eng­lish and your US ex­pe­ri­ence.
I started Eng­lish when I was 14 but I al­ways wanted to study abroad, es­pe­cially in the US. I couldn't study when I was sup­posed to, in my 20s. I started my uni­ver­sity stud­ies when I was 25-26, after fin­ish­ing the TV pro­gramme, Per­sones hu­manes, so I be­came a jour­nal­ist with an aca­d­e­mic de­gree only 15 years ago. Often when they're in their 40s, peo­ple want to change their ca­reer and this hap­pened to me. That's why I didn't want to do a mas­ters in jour­nal­ism – I chose pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion and in­ter­na­tional re­la­tions. The ex­pe­ri­ence helped me grow.
Did you act on what you learnt in the US?
I've been doing that for al­most two years since I was ap­pointed the cu­ra­tor for the Tri­cen­te­nary of the events of 1714. In my po­si­tion as a cu­ra­tor, I've been able to bring my ex­pe­ri­ence not only in pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion but also my ex­pe­ri­ence as a man­ager in a pri­vate com­pany.
Did you study these de­grees be­cause you wanted to be­come a politi­cian or work in pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion?
Yes, and also be­cause I want to help my coun­try be­come in­de­pen­dent. I started doing this by work­ing in radio, cre­at­ing two radio sta­tions, host­ing TV pro­grammes, and that's OK but now maybe it's time to do this from a pub­lic per­spec­tive.
What im­pressed you about the US?
What amazed me was the sense of duty. Even if we are Latin or Mediter­ranean, it is not an ex­cuse for not being ef­fi­cient and re­spon­si­ble. There are other things I wouldn't like to im­port, such as so­cial se­cu­rity or other so­cial items, though the vast ma­jor­ity of Amer­i­can peo­ple need to give some of their time to the com­mu­nity, so I think we need to look after the pub­lic is­sues more than we are used to.
You've been a pi­o­neer in radio and TV. You were the first voice on Cata­lan pub­lic radio and you did the first talk show on TV3. You also in­tro­duced new orig­i­nal and dy­namic for­mats.
I think I was the right per­son at the right time and place. I feel very proud. At that time it was not com­mon to broad­cast live shows – most were recorded.
Afers ex­te­ri­ors has lasted longest. You're now work­ing on a new sea­son?
I started this pro­gramme 10 or 11 years ago be­cause after trav­el­ling a bit I re­alised that our ex­pa­tri­ates had a much more de­vel­oped sense of being Cata­lans than here. They didn't have any prej­u­dices or com­plexes about show­ing them­selves as Cata­lan. Now we know the vast ma­jor­ity of Cata­lans want in­de­pen­dence, but 12 years ago that was not so com­mon, so I wanted to con­vey the idea that Cata­lan ex­pats live and work from a Cata­lan view.
How many coun­tries have you been to for the show?
About 75, and we'll prob­a­bly get to 100 soon. There are al­most 200 coun­tries in the world, so we'll have done al­most half.
Were you tempted to set­tle in any of them?
If we hadn't been going through this very spe­cial mo­ment in our coun­try, I would have liked to stay in the States, and there are two or three other coun­tries I re­ally liked, such as Ar­gentina or Mediter­ranean coun­tries. Al­though we might not know the lan­guage, cul­tur­ally we are close.
How has Afers ex­te­ri­ors changed your life?
When you travel you get to learn about many peo­ple's lives. The most en­rich­ing thing for any­one who has the priv­i­lege to travel around the world is to re­alise that in any cor­ner of the world every­body suf­fers, laughs and loves, gets angry, is happy or sad al­most for the same things.
Over one thou­sand ac­tiv­i­ties have been or­gan­ised for the third cen­te­nary.
We can be happy that 300 years later, we are still here stronger than ever. We think of our­selves as a na­tion – this is some­thing to be proud of. There are many com­mu­ni­ties in the world that don't have a state and an ad­min­is­tra­tive or­gan­i­sa­tion, and dis­ap­pear. So we are still here, stronger, and we've de­cided to go fur­ther.
Do you think you will see in­de­pen­dence? If so, when?
Ab­solutely. There are elec­tions in Sep­tem­ber, and if the ma­jor­ity of peo­ple vote for in­de­pen­dence, then the true process will begin. I don't know if it'll be 18 months, half a year or two days. In the case of Slove­nia, it was half a year, in the case of Slo­va­kia, just one day. The most im­por­tant thing is to have every­one cast their vote in the elec­tions.
If Pres­i­dent Mas of­fered you to be part of his can­di­dacy list for 27-S, would you say yes?
I would say yes; I've al­ways said that I'm here to help this process go fur­ther and even­tu­ally to see our coun­try in­de­pen­dent.
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