Joan Lluís Bozzo: “I had played the whore and Ramoneta, but since 2010 Catalonia has no future within Spain”

BarcelonaJoan Lluís Bozzo (Barcelona, 1953) is one of the great names of Catalan theater. He has dedicated more than half his life to leading the company Dagoll Dagom with creations such as Antaviana, Nit de Sant Joan, Mikado, Flor de nit and the legendary Mar i cel. But this conversation will go down other paths: his surname, his voice, his great friend Pepe Rubianes, military service in Ceuta during the death of Franco, his conversion to the independence movement, his political foray into Junts pel Sí, his active retirement and his first 100 days of abstinent life. Bozzo has stopped drinking alcohol.

I remember that Pepe Rubianes used to call you "el Bozo".

— Yes, Bozo. It's just that before this Bozzo phoneme became fashionable, I was Bozo everywhere.

It sounds like a disease, “the Bozo”...

— Yes, boy, goll in Spanish is goiter.

Did you do your military service? They surely called you Bozo there.

— Indeed! I did my military service in Ceuta, when the Green March happened, which is very similar to what has happened now, and Franco's death.

When Franco dies and you are in the military in Ceuta, what do you do?

— I came from a generation of parents and uncles who had done very long military service, who had chained the war with the military service. I thought that would happen to me. We won't get out of this, we all thought. They forced us to watch the fixed shot with Franco's coffin on Spanish Television, still in black and white. They sat us all on some backless formica stools watching the TV for hours and hours. But we finished the military service when it was our turn.

Once your dear Jaume Sisa explained to me that for him the best years of his life were from 1975 to 1980, from the death of Franco to the arrival of Jordi Pujol at the Generalitat, because of the feeling of freedom that existed, as if no one were in charge. Would you agree with that?

— I would qualify that, because until 1978 the regime was completely Francoist. We were still living under Francoism. I was a polling station president in La Floresta, in the first democratic elections of 1977. I, who had never been able to vote and who had an authentic phobia of uniforms, found myself with two police officers standing at attention before me. "At ease, at ease," I told them.

When did you become an independence supporter?

— In 2010, when the Constitutional Court struck down the Statute in a bad way. Until then, I had been doing, like so many of us, what is known as playing both sides: yes, but no, but maybe yes, this seems better... From 2010 onwards I said: Catalonia has no future within Spain. I continue to think exactly the same. If we want to renounce the future, let's renounce it, but if we want to be masters of the future, we must break with Spain. I remember that my ears pricked up in 2006. We were performing in Valladolid, we were doing the revival of the Mikado. At a certain point, the protagonist devised terrible punishments for his condemned and one of the punishments was to listen to Cope 24 hours a day. In Valladolid there were shouts, protests, some people who got up, and the next day the theater director called me saying that either we removed the mention of Cope or we ended the season right there. And we removed it. Playing both sides, as I was telling you.

Since 2010 you wouldn't have removed it anymore, perhaps.

— It's just that from 2010 onwards they wouldn't have taken us to go for a week or a fortnight to Valladolid.

But with Dagoll Dagom you had done many tours around Spain, since the end of the 70s.

— At the end of the 70s they loved us very much. They had screwed us over so much that they said “oh, poor things!” and everyone was a friend of the Catalans. When we performed Nit de Sant Joan in Madrid, Sisa was praised so much that the poor man stayed to live there thinking that he would have everything paid for and then it cost him a little more.

How do you explain that this relationship between Catalonia and Spain has become worse and worse?

— I suppose the fact of wanting to divorce hasn't helped much to make them happy. They are that type of husband or wife who instead of saying "If we have reached this point, let's think about how we can do it without anyone getting hurt" take the mastodonic response of "Rather dead than free".

We are conducting this interview on the same day that the Constitutional Court has told the Supreme Court to withdraw the arrest warrant against President Puigdemont. Now it really seems certain that he will return to Catalonia.

— And the nine years they made him spend, how will they pay for them? They kept you there condemned for nine years and now they tell you: “It’s just that we hadn’t noticed it properly”. Somehow this has to be repaired, right?

How do you imagine the day of your return?

— Man, I believe that people will come out a lot because Puigdemont is an emblem, beyond whether you have sympathy for Junts or not. He is a guy who has maintained his dignity quite well, after the mess he made with the eight-second declaration of independence, for which I have read everything that has been published and I do not understand anything about that moment. How did you get here and then make such a spectacle? But what followed were nine years of pure and harsh repression, and someone should give a lot of explanations for that.

You have never been a member of any party, you have always liked to go your own way, however, on the other hand, at the time of Junts pel Sí...

— I actually believed it completely and I went on the list in a fairly modest place, I think it was number 73. But Pilar Calvo was 74 and try chasing her now.

Can you imagine yourself as a deputy in Madrid, like Pilar?

— No, clearly not.

But if Carles Puigdemont, for whom you have such veneration, were to ask you for it?

— Veneration perhaps wouldn't be the word. I consider that, out of the entire panorama of what was the Procés, he is the person who deserves the most respect from me. He and Minister Lluís Puig. But deputy in Madrid, not a chance. If I have retired from the theater, how could you expect me not to retire from this performance?

Where have you been happiest is on a stage?

— Yes, perhaps more than above, around the stage. The before, the after, the entire surroundings of the theater, which is what my life has been.

And is the stage not superior to everything else?

— Yes, it is the poison of the theatre, which is the poison of the applause, of the laughter, of when you can create one of those magnificent silences. The thing is that it is very demanding, it goes against all the rules of an orderly life. That is why I decided to dedicate myself more to directing.

Do you not regret not having acted more?

— No, and if at any point I felt like it, I would act in television series. But I don't miss the daily performance.

What relationship have you had with that nasal voice of yours?

— It just happened that way, I couldn't choose either. Now it happens to me a lot that they say to me: "Oh, I recognized you by your voice! What is your name?" Quim Monzó, they tell me many times. "You are Monzó, aren't you?"

You have a lecture in which you explain that theatre and life are practically synonyms.

— Being alive involves many theatrical situations. For example, children when they are six or seven months old: the famous game of "peek-a-boo". "The girl is not there! Where is the girl? Peek-a-boo! Yes, she is there!" The girl does this herself. She knows that she is actually there. She knows she is pretending and has a good time revealing what she already knew. Possibly this is our first theatrical performance. And in daily life, we are continuously creating small performances.

Someone might say that this is negative, that we cannot go around lying through life.

— The theater performed by politicians is spoken of in very derogatory terms, but it is almost impossible not to pretend... It is our nature to make out that we are in a situation that is not exactly the one we are in. What would be the other option? Absolute, tremendous, and unmitigated sincerity? We would all be very inhuman. Better a little theater.

Can you explain what you are drinking?

— I stopped drinking alcohol three months and ten days ago, that is 100 days ago.

Well, you have to take stock of your first 100 days without alcohol.

— Seven kilos less here on the belly. If you go to the store to buy seven kilos of bacon it's a lot, huh? And what I drink now is my own invention: half a bottle of tonic, half a bottle of Bitter and a slice of citrus. No ice, because the ice waters it down, and that's all I would need. At least let me drink and have some sensation.

Why did you stop drinking alcohol?

— In the same way that many years ago I quit smoking. You think about it and one day you take the plunge. With tobacco I did many twists and turns, many deceptions. For a time the strategy was that I could not buy tobacco but I could steal it. With alcohol, one day I noticed that I had to drive quite a few kilometers, I was very sleepy, I wasn't doing well and I said: that's it. I asked artificial intelligence what could happen to me if I stopped alcohol with the daily consumption I had had for 52 years. It exploded and answered that it was very possible that I would have delirium tremens. I was even expecting it, with a bit of excitement. I haven't had any. But I really like to cook and I had associated this act with taking sips of wine.

Do you think it is definitive, that you will not drink alcohol again?

— I don't think I'll go back there. Do you know what Pepe Rubianes used to do? Once every many months, when he had already given up alcohol, he could drink a whole glass, as if it were a Sant Hilari, and then he would continue his abstemious life.

You wrote a book about your relationship: Pepe and I. He died at only 61 years old. It must have been a shock for you.

— It was not his time at all, so young. But he contaminated himself so much with tobacco... I had seen him buy a pack of Ducados before dinner and by the time he left he already had to buy another one. There were times when he had two cigarettes lit at the same time.

How many people still approach you now and talk to you about what Pepe would say about the current world, about the far right...

— Even more than those who recognize me by my voice. Pepe didn't marry anyone and could say any atrocity. Supporting fascist options, I am totally convinced he did not. Doing unexpected things, that yes, and having gotten himself into trouble, too. It was very difficult to make him be quiet when he got going. What he said on your program about the unity of Spain were the same words that every night at the theater he dedicated to whoever had invented work.

Are you retired or are you still in the thick of it?

— I am retired. The trunk of my life has been Dagoll Dagom, and I have been graduated from that for eight years. But with my wife, we have formed an association called Enraona Teatre, which is focused on theatre and mental health. We have been discovering theatre as an extraordinarily good therapy for abused women, homeless people, autism spectrum disorders, and many other delicate situations. Aside from that, we are preparing a show called Les veles s'inflaran, a tribute to the musicals of Dagoll Dagom that premieres on November 15th.

You will be forever the creator of Mar i cel or would you rather be remembered for an entire career?

— The first thing would be for them to remember me. That would already be very good. And for how long would they remember me? With great-grandparents it's already a stretch if I ask you what they did, but what about great-great-grandparents? As if they had never been there at all. If they remember me for a period of time for Mar i cel and for Antaviana and other things, I'd be delighted. I also don't believe that wherever I am they will pay me any royalties.

What would you like to happen to you from now on?

— I feel very good, just as I am now. If this could last, without any trouble, it would be fantastic. But my mother used to say: “One does not grow old”. And another very good one: “We have life at the Encants”. She meant that we have life for sale, at any price.