Alberto Gadel: "Barcelona blew me up. It was a mental short circuit"

Alberto Gadel (Santa Cristina d'Aro, 2004) became known on TikTok for creating content in Catalan when almost nobody else was. With a provocative touch and a language that jumps from masculine to feminine and from Catalan to Spanish and English, Gadel presented 3Cat's Espai Eufòria with Aina da Silva, and presents the Loft with Gal·la Castellfort. Like many people of his generation, the beginnings of his relationship with wine have a clear name: Vinya del Mar.Let's start here.

— It's just that Vinya del Mar is the go-to. When you're a university student and have one euro in your bank account, I think it's the perfect option. It's not my fault things have turned out this way. Although now I'm becoming a snob, because I'm starting to [makes a gesture of tasting wine and a grimace]... I'm a snob, I hate myself.

When did you start noticing this happening?

— This summer. We had a themed Italian dinner at my place with my friends. There were ten of us and I bought four bottles of Vinya del Mar to go with the small pasta with pesto we had made. We sit at the table, we toast and I say: “No! This wine doesn't deserve to be on this fantastic little table we've prepared. It just ruined everything!” Suddenly I had been transported to a big bottle party in a student apartment at midnight.

The ability to transport to places is very good, but precisely at a big party...

— I love this vibe and a pre-game with my friends is the best plan in life. But now that I was having a fun dinner, it wasn't what I wanted...

He made a video explaining that I had been to a wine tasting in Bordeaux.

— We wanted to go to a more professional tasting, and we ended up in a tourist trap historical. Very interesting, huh? A real binge. I don't remember anything.

Nothing?

— A wine that I think was from Georgia. It was very sweet. No, very bitter, sorry. No, very sweet. And it had to be compensated with dark chocolate. And they buried it to make it, and you really felt like that had been buried. It's just that wine... it's cool, huh? But it's true that I find it difficult.

And why a tasting?

— Do you know what a surprise trip entails? We got one to Bordeaux and we said: well, wine and cheese. And we spent all day drinking wine and eating cheese. And it was fantastic, really. Wine, cheese, and a bit of grapes... I think it was Ratatouille who said: "Grape with cheese tastes like a kiss", and I promise you that with a glass of wine, this is the best plan in history.

Some of favorite?

— One that I really like is El Perro Verde. It's super cool. I bought it one day because I didn't know what to buy, and now it's my go-to when I say: "Come on, today I want to show off a bit".

What did he/she like?

— The dog. And it was white. And its name was The Green Dog. I thought: “Wow”. I'm a little 22-year-old flea, I don't have any formed opinion yet.

Returning to the Italian topic, she also made a video making fresh pasta. Why does she have this urge to do things with her hands?

— It had been a while since I was planting little things, going to cut down a tree with my father… I wanted to reconnect with that. In the end, part of my family is quite rural – not to say very rural – and, as a child, I was more connected to that world. Then I said: "Fuck it, I'm going to Barceloca, I'm the craziest", and I disconnected from everything. But.

But.

— I saw a tweet that said: “Difficult times are coming. Learn to make bread”. And I said: "Understood, no need to be paranoid, but why don't I learn to make bread?" These are things that used to be everyday and now, for us, are folklore. It's like: “Wow, bread!” I want to avoid having that reaction of a person who is completely disconnected from planet Earth and only exists in the digital world.

What did his family do?

— My grandmother worked all her life with cork, and my grandfather was a sculptor. The rural part, more than their work, was their daily life: they lived in a small house in the middle of Romanyà de la Selva. They had their goats, the chickens… But they didn't think of the goats as food or as a resource: they had them out of a kind of love for animals, for nature, for life in general. My grandparents have taught me many things. More than theory – like when potatoes are planted in a certain month – about respect for plants or the fact that each animal has its own personality. It was a completely different point of view.

In what sense?

— There are many people from the rural world, but in a capitalist way: I have cows because I want to sell milk. My grandfather decided he wanted to have a female donkey and bought a female donkey to have it, because he felt like it.

Do they still keep any animals?

— My grandmother keeps the goats, the chickens, the goose... now we have brought some turtles. We also have a very cute little bird, which I raised myself, but when I left for Barcelona I had to ask my grandmother to look after it for me and she has even fattened it up a little.

Does it have a name?

— I will procrastinate.

Will I strum?

— My father's partner is from Tortosa. I saw some little birds throwing themselves out of a nest the whole time. I climbed the tree, I took the nest, I saw that four of them were dead and one was left, and I took it. My father thought it would die one more day, as always happens, but I gave it food and the kid grew. I taught him tricks, he has his own personality, he pecks you if he doesn't like you, he loves music... He lives life! And his name is Tarrearé because it's an expression from down there [he makes the gesture of hitting, arrear someone].

Middle of the countryside, middle of the city!

— I am Hannah Montana. My mother was a Barcelona girl; my father, a rural boy. I have the best of both worlds. I know how to navigate any environment. I think it's the best thing that can happen to someone. You can see much more reality.

In a video he said that sometimes he missed a more normal life. He also said he dismissed it after five minutes.

— I arrived in Barcelona thinking: I have to study a degree, live the life my friends will live. There are many realities, but my case was this world. And Barcelona, for me, blew my mind. It was a mental short circuit. I haven't quite understood what happened to me, but I completely shut down: I didn't understand anything that was happening, I wasn't vibrating at the same rhythm as the city. And I pulled myself together, because it was either that, or "I'll stay here." And from there I started to connect projects.

At a very fast pace.

— I notice that my friends have had many things to explore beyond the professional sphere. And that is something I envy: being able to stop for a moment and look at life from a safer point of view. Knowing that I won't mess up by saying this now, that I won't mess up by not accepting a project... These are foolish things, and I know that the job I have is a privilege. I never in my life had imagined presenting a show.

Never?

— Do you know it's typical to play at doing things as a child? I had never played at being a presenter. I'm presenting a two-hour daily show at 22 damn years old. I love my job, I adore the Loft, it's the best thing that has ever happened to me. But sometimes I say: "Maybe this is too much for me". What if everything has gone too fast? What if I now face a standstill because I don't have the skills to go further? Will I have time to learn it? I have a different, and interesting enough, view of the world, so that others might like it, or have I just been lucky and that's it? What I would like is to be able to work from a more curious, more authentic point of view, to be able to work things out a bit, and to really feel that I am contributing something.

He spoke of the fear of saying things that are not appropriate. His relationship with privacy, what is it like?

— Do you know people who start smoking at 15 and smoking ends up being part of their personality? Well, I think something similar has happened to me. I don't just notice it with myself: it's the whole sector. You've been sharing your life for so many years that you not only devalue words, but you also devalue which things you should keep to yourself and which you should share. Right now I'm not suffering the consequences, because I'm one year old and I'm nobody. But I'm afraid that in a few years I might regret it. That all of a sudden I won't have two bits of sense and I'll say: "Maybe I should have kept quiet a little longer."

In what sense does he speak of the devaluation of words?

— It happens to me talking with my friends. I realize that they give a lot of importance to what they say, that when they want to explain something they look for words. But for me, for example, it's now very easy to lie. You chat so much that in the end you reach a point where you see that they are just phrases, and sometimes it's hard to load them with meaning. And it's something I'm trying to work on: that it's not just empty talk. Humanity hasn't been inventing language for years for me to come now and say: I don't care. Nevertheless, it's great, lying.

Yes?

— I love it. Tricking people makes me laugh a lot. White lies, huh? Sometimes I've walked into a hair salon and made up that I had a casting for a role and that I had to cut my hair like in this photo because the casting director had asked me to.

Where else does it do it?

— Especially in hair salons. Or to escape a date.

And if you could have a date with a glass of wine with someone famous, who would it be?

— I know it's very typical, but with Rosalía.

And if I could add one more person?

— Almodóvar. I think I would have nothing to contribute at that table. I wouldn't like them to talk to me about business or strange stories, only that they talk to me about their lives, about when they felt how they had to exploit their life vision.