This is one in a series of interviews I conducted in 2004 for a now-defunct digital magazine based in Barcelona, where I spoke with around thirty cultural figures from the city.
Josep Ramoneda (Cervera, 1949) was then director of CCCB, an arts and urban culture center in Barcelona. The interview was conducted to mark the tent anniversary of the center.
There is no other goal than the emancipation of people
A decade ago, when the CCCB was inaugurated, many of the cultural facilities that are now in Barcelona did not exist. Today, the CCCB has to share the city’s cultural offerings with these new entities. What space does the Centre occupy now?
Indeed, many of the facilities that are here now were not there back then, and in fact, all of them were Olympic facilities that eventually became post-Olympic. It’s paradoxical that the only one that wasn’t Olympic, the CCCB, ended up being the first one to be inaugurated after the Olympic Games. Being in almost a monopoly position at that time probably made it easier for us to establish ourselves in the city, and very quickly we became quite central in Barcelona’s cultural life. The emergence of other institutions has indeed given us more freedom because now we can be more true to ourselves without the anxiety of thinking that if something isn’t done here, it won’t be done anywhere. Now there are institutions with more resources that can do certain things better than us, allowing us to focus on what truly distinguishes us as a cultural creator: creating original exhibitions. The same goes for the associated groups we host. In the past, refusing someone felt bad because it meant they had nowhere else to go. Now, if you say no to someone, it’s not a problem because they can go to many other places. Therefore, we have gained freedom and a higher standard. We need to do better and invent more. Every time we see that someone has done something we used to do, it means we need to come up with something new.
By the way, what will happen to the graffiti wall in front of the CCCB when the new UB faculty being constructed is inaugurated?
When the faculty is inaugurated, the wall will obviously be removed. But we are working to create another wall at Plaça Coromines, nearby, so that these well-organized groups of artists can continue their interventions. Graffiti appears with surprising regularity, and after a few days – I suppose it’s a pre-set time – someone else comes and paints over it. No one complains and no conflicts arise.
A few weeks ago, you stated to El Periódico: “I advocate for developing a certain Catalan cosmopolitanism, even if that sounds like a contradiction.” Could you explain this contradiction a bit?
My position on this subject has always been the same. I am not a relativist; I believe in universal values and, above all, that there could be some universal shared rights. I don’t believe much in multiculturalism, but rather that fundamentally, there is one culture with different variations of it. None of these has exclusive rights, nor does it obligate anyone to anything. That is, no one is obliged to anything by belonging to one culture or another. In a country like ours, where there is sometimes a certain tendency to navel-gazing – a certain fascination with oneself – maintaining a global perspective is very necessary. More than that, it is necessary to make a voluntary effort to have a voice and be a player on this global stage. At the same time, this doesn’t mean we forget that we are in a specific place and that some things from this place undoubtedly affect us. Starting with the fact that we are in the Raval, continuing with that we are in Barcelona, and further that we are in Catalonia. This was the idea I wanted to express with this play on words of “Catalan cosmopolitanism.” In much of what is considered Catalan, there is a certain interesting skepticism. To put it another way, when Catalans are not too formal, there is a skepticism to them that I find interesting in these times.
This must be the best way for the CCCB to find its place on the international scene of cultural centers…
We have been carving out our place through our activities. Initially, our main concern was to position ourselves on the map of Europe. For various reasons, we managed this quite early; the profile of a center working around urban issues helped us. Now, a basic strategic line is to open ourselves to territories that are less cultivated here, like the former eastern countries, Africa, or Latin America. This doesn’t mean we stop maintaining relationships with the traditional metropolises of Western culture, but we make an effort to engage equally with everything that comes from any origin. Curiously, it’s probably in Spain where we are most behind, but that’s part of the vices; we know each other, and it’s always difficult for a Catalan thing to easily enter Madrid, and vice versa.
Excuse the question, but what does culture mean to you?
Phew! I think there’s no other concept with more definitions… From Hegel’s classic definition: culture is the way a group speaks, works, and desires, to understanding culture as those symbolic milestones that mark the reference points of a person, a citizenry, or a community. It’s difficult to provide a strict definition. I would be happy to slightly reverse the roles and say that I believe societies should strive to understand that culture is a basic need. Perhaps by saying this, it might seem I’m narrowing the term culture a bit, but it allows me to do something very important in my view: to link culture with an absolute priority: education. I believe education should be the primary political goal of a country, especially in a small country like Catalonia. This should be its distinguishing feature. If you have a very strong educational level, everything else, regardless of the definition, will be given in abundance, starting with creation. If you have a country with a very high educational level, the level of creativity will also rise. But well, I acknowledge that evaluating the level of creativity in a country is very difficult, it’s complicated to have objective criteria because there are many things in many different places, unrelated to each other. It’s not as easy as it used to be when media was very limited and the people who accessed it were too. One could create a bubble around a literary gathering, for example, and everything seemed much bigger than it was. Another important element is: we assume that creativity is in very specific places: art, literature,… And this is the first thing we should question: Where is cutting-edge creativity? And then go find it. Perhaps it’s in art and literature, but also in laboratories,… In many other places. There are many clichés to overturn in the topic of creativity.
I believe education should be the primary political goal of a country
In a recent interview with El País, you warned about the danger of Barcelona’s cultural centres becoming mere tourist attractions…
I think it’s great that tourists come and that Barcelona becomes a city of cultural tourism, but it would be a mistake for tourism to become a guiding criterion for programming. That’s the idea. There are things that will be tourist attractions no matter what, like La Pedrera, Parc Güell, or the Picasso Museum; it’s good that they work and people come to see them, regardless of what they program, they will continue to be a tourist draw. But there are others, like the CCCB, where it’s very good to have foreign audiences, but the programming criteria should really be cultural, not thought so much for an occasional visitor but for the real consumer of culture: those who are here all year, come back, and look for certain things. The criterion should be creation and dissemination, thinking in cultural terms much more than in terms of “what can we do to attract the maximum number of tourists?” Fortunately, we already have enough things in this city for tourists to come; they will always come to the Gothic Quarter, we don’t need to condition everything else to that. On the contrary, the more authentic the cultural life we offer, the better the complement, and the more likely it is they will stay longer.
It’s now been a year since the anti-war demonstrations, some of the largest in the city’s history. Is there anything left from that?
A lot. Surely there are many dispersed organizations that we don’t know about, with people who have continued to see each other and do things after that. For these types of large conjunctural demonstrations that unify very diverse people around an important and serious issue, one shouldn’t ask what they can’t give. That is to say, all those people couldn’t stay together for more than a week or fifteen days. They are people with the most diverse possible worldviews and interests. There were, from system-radicals to absolutely representative liberals of any right-wing European or American party, and among them all kinds of people. This, obviously, beyond a point of agreement which is not wanting an absurd war; it ended there and started there. Therefore, to be surprised that, despite all those mobilizations, Mr. Aznar managed to tie in the municipal elections is to misunderstand reality a bit. Surely there were a few thousand people who went to the demonstrations and then voted for the PP. Why? Well, because they were against the war but when it came to voting there was a sum of factors that for them was more important, especially in municipal elections where the mayor factor is important. Will the PP win the next elections? It’s possible, but if they do, it won’t be thanks to the war; on the contrary, the war will have made things a bit more difficult for them than they would have been without it. I’m convinced that all this leaves a residue, and also that the idea of a European public opinion is more affirmed than before. The day after May ’68, the French right won the elections by the most overwhelming majority it had ever seen, and no one doubts the influence May ’68 had on the second half of the 20th century. But there is a very frustrating point for the public, which is the feeling that the opinion of a vast majority is not enough to determine government action in a democracy. I am very clear that governments must govern as they see fit and not based on a conjunctural majority but, that said, when this conjunctural majority is so large, for the sake of democracy itself, it should be expected that the government would somehow become a spokesperson for it.
At the time, you published an article where you stated: “We must preserve the honour of reason”; a few months later, Aznar made a statement saying: “more than the causes, what should concern us about terrorism are its effects”…
Yes, this is an example that confirms that the honour of reason must be preserved, because if we start addressing problems without wanting to understand their causes, we are on the wrong track. I don’t doubt that the effect of a terrorist act is important and that, therefore, the victims are a priority from a perspective of respect and human proximity, but I also don’t doubt that if the causes of why certain things happen are not understood and investigated, it is very difficult to tackle them. This is when a military war is waged to fight it as if terrorism had anything to do with a conflict between two armies. This doesn’t solve the problems, it aggravates them. What has happened is that the term terrorist has been improperly used to do things that had nothing to do with the fight against terrorism.
In the book “Después de la Pasión Política” you show understanding towards a certain disenchantment or scepticism of many young people towards politics. How will this sentiment translate into the future when this generation is adults?
Well, I don’t know, it’s hard for me to imagine generations that have had a significantly different life experience than mine. What I am clear about is that the fact that they have lived in a kind of disenchantment and disinterest towards politics does not have to be decisive for anything. Ultimately, politics appears when people understand that it is a good – or the only – way to solve problems that concern us all. Maybe politics has not proven to be efficient enough for this demand for a certain period of time but, as long as the problems continue to exist, maybe those who now see politics as something distant will understand that either the issue of politics is faced in a more decent and efficient way, or we will fall into a chaotic situation, either towards a dictatorial side or towards an uncontrolled side. I have a feeling that if we’re not careful, the world will head towards a kind of apartheid; and we know how apartheids always end. The current world reminds me a lot of South Africa; there’s a 20% that has almost everything and an 80% that has almost nothing. Moreover, this 20% sells and exports human rights values and the 80% neither touches any of this nor any kind of wealth. This is sustainable in a limited way. When 20% has everything and 80% has nothing, either the 80% rises up and turns the situation upside down, or the 20% sends in the civil guard. This has always been the way throughout history.
In the preface to another of your books, “Del tiempo condensado”, there is a strong phrase, you wrote: “the greatest ideal that humanity has set itself is still the same: that each man and woman be capable of thinking and deciding for themselves”. Do you still believe that?
I am absolutely convinced of this. This is the ideal of the Enlightenment defined by Kant and I am absolutely convinced of it. Of all the ideological, religious, and political projects I have heard of until today, none has seemed more worthy or noble than this. For me, there is no other goal than the emancipation of people. The emancipation of people means that everyone is capable of deciding and thinking for themselves.
*The interview was originally conducted in Catalan (on February 19, 2004) and has been translated into English.