![La plaça Mercaders, al cor del Barri Vell, on està ubicat El Foment de Girona.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 16 9"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The cultural magazine "El Foment" will be distributed free of charge in shops and restaurants in the Girona region and, starting this week, can also be found at newsstands throughout Catalonia. It is another "national tool" of the El Foment Foundation, a meeting point for promoting Catalan culture, gastronomy, and language, centered in Plaça Mercaders in Girona's Barri Vell district. At the helm of the project, which began five years ago, is entrepreneur, patron, and activist Candi Granés, with two gastronomic projects—La Fonda and La Taverna—as well as L'Escola and El Centre. Like a "matrioche" (wooden nesting box)—as Andreu Mas spoke yesterday, Tuesday—the El Foment project has grown, weaving together different pieces that fit together. After five years of consolidation, the El Foment magazine cannot be explained from behind closed doors, but rather as a cultural tool for the entire Països Catalans. For now, it's only available in print, but plans also include the launch of the digital newspaper Elfomentdigital.cat.
Valtónic, on exile: "I thought about committing suicide many times."
In a lengthy interview in the new cultural magazine 'El Foment', Josep Miquel Arenas explains why he left music: "I'm broken."
GironaAfter in July of Last year he announced that he was leaving music And after months without giving interviews, Josep Miquel Arenas, known musically as Valtònyc, opens up in a long conversation in the new cultural magazine The Promotion, presented yesterday, Tuesday, in Girona. The quarterly, 114-page publication was born in the "record time" of just four months after the president of the El Foment Foundation, Candi Granés, entrusted journalist Andreu Mas with the management of the project.
In the interview, Josep Miquel Arenas reflects on the impact of exile and the depression he suffered, and explains that he considered taking his own life. "I even thought about committing suicide, I really thought about committing suicide many times," he notes when asked if "in order to find yourself you must first lose yourself." The rapper links the situation with his family background, since when he was eight years old he left an adoptive family and grew up with his sister, who was ten years older than him. When he found Spring 2018 in exile, from where he did not return until The San Narciso Fairs of 2023Valtònyc admits that "it was the first time" that he couldn't go out alone.
He explains his decision to leave music by the personal change he has undergone in the last five years. "It's not that I've grown tired of the Valtònyc character, it's that I've grown tired of who I was five years ago, as everyone should," he explains in a 12-page interview with Andreu Mas. "If you look at how you were five years ago and don't come to the conclusion that that person from five years ago was a asshole is that you are going wrong." Now he assures that if one day he wants to make music again, he will, but with another name: "People should not prejudge, because this character is very politicized."
Now he feels very far from what is considered urban music in the Països Catalans and from musicians like Lildami and Figa Flawas, and fromautotune. But he reflects at the same time that he can no longer sing the same way about social injustice. "In the end, what's happened to me by living in a more developed European country than Spain is that I've taken the social elevator. I have a lot of things to sort out, but I try not to be a hypocrite. I don't want to rap that Renfe doesn't work if I actually travel by car every day. I have a good life now, but I tell them. I prefer to retract my thoughts by reading Marx, Dostoyevsky, or Gorky than by writing a song," he summarizes.
In defense of honesty
It is, then, in reading that Joan Miquel Arenas says he has found a new space for refuge and creation. The interview avoids the political situation, but Valtònyc does thank Lluís Puig for giving him advice for the first time. "No one had ever told me, 'You're about to make a mistake; don't do that.' I burst into tears," he recalls. But in the end, when asked whether the ultimate goal in this life is to lose one's freedom or one's dignity, the rapper calls for "honesty."
"You have to say from the beginning how far you are capable of going, not infantilize people, you don't have to play with them; because if you promise something and you don't keep it, people get discouraged, disillusionment and impotence set in. Then you have to go until you are there you are where you are there you are where you are there you are where you are where you are. In a few years I would have lost my freedom. Now I would prefer to say: "No, up to here"", he concludes.
