Vicenç Altaió: "My system is not economic, it's the creation of knowledge"

The poet and essayist Vicenç Altaió (Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, 1954) grew up in a middle-class family with six siblings and a family business whose future was already decided. His twin brother was destined to inherit the business. He, however, occupied the space often considered unproductive: "nothingness, where art and literature meet." And he turned it into a way of life, freeing himself from the family's predetermined path. There wasn't always enough money at home, but Altaió always had the books he wanted: "I started at 14 to fall into the reading habit thanks to the good idea of ​​a grandfather who gave me books that shouldn't have been bought."

At work, he has found financial equilibrium by undertaking projects that, on the one hand, offered high salaries, and on the other, projects he did purely for the love of the profession: "I've been lucky and privileged to be able to work as a theater translator and get paid by the theaters. For example, I worked with Josep Maria Flotats, who was the top translator, but financially."

The writer entered adulthood at a time when the cultural sector was growing: "I've had the privilege that, as an artist and free thinker, I've been able to work on the development of exhibitions, seminars, and on what was the dialogue between the outsiders and the normative political system." When a sector that was precarious at that time wasn't so precarious.

Altaió has never considered economic reasons: "My system isn't economic; it's the creation of knowledge, and this is produced and exchanged. And, unfortunately, the supremacy of the economic system over the others has caused a flaw in the overall system. And that must be corrected." In this sense, his house has more than 30,000 books on its shelves; in fact, instead of looking at the wall, one reads the spines of many works: "With all the walls made of bricks and books, one has to wonder what all this is worth or what we learn from all this." "I believe this is the key difference." Altaió has books by renowned artists that, in economic terms, he claims are worth more than his own home in this public space. On the other hand, Altaió is very critical of the current system: "It has been a huge mistake for the Western model to overemphasize the cultural industry." Domestic economy with its exchange system isn't very complicated, but now knowledge has become fluid; art is very far removed from the principle of reality," he explains. He adds: "Those of us who had liberal professions and earned a living from them have been left destitute due to the exorbitant cost of our children's education, as they've been jumping from one master's degree to another." Logically, Altaió has opted for a different approach: "There isn't a single book I've written that I thought could be a creative product that would interest a large number of readers and consumers. Never. I've never toned down the intensity and the idiomatic and linguistic diversity so that people could understand it better. Therefore, the best investment I've made has been my lack of interest in the ease of easy money and easy culture."

In fact, when her neighbor wanted to sell her the apartment next door for a pittance, she advised her against it: "My mistake was not wanting to lower the price, but I could have kept something valuable, something of value."

Now she's preparing a second book of memoirs and, afterward, she wants to end as she began: "To dedicate myself to doing the most useless thing, which was writing poetry and doing it in artists' books."