José María Murià: The Mexican-Catalan who knows tequila best: "In Nahuatl, 'tequila' means 'bucket of stones and herbs'"

Guadalajara (Mexico)José María Murià is a curious case. Born in Mexico City in 1942, his native language is Catalan, which he has never stopped speaking and writing. But he is Mexican and a Mexican nationalist. His father, the writer and politician Josep Maria Murià i Romaní, who went into exile in 1939, had been a member of Macià's Catalan State and has a library in Guadalajara named after him; and the writer Anna Murià She was his sister. A member of the Mexican Academy of History and the Institute of Catalan Studies, José María Murià considers himself a native of Guadalajara, where he has presided over the Colegio de Jalisco. He has also held political positions, notably eight years in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His influence was decisive in Catalonia being chosen as the guest of honor at the 2004 edition of the International Congress of Catalan Culture. Guadalajara International Book Fairand convinced then-President Maragall to make the pavilion exclusively Catalan, not shared with Spain. Two decades later, Barcelona had the same honor. The success of 2004 was key to repeating the operation at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2007. Murià is an expert on the history of Jalisco. He has now published a book in Catalan in which, through the lens of tequila, he explores the history of his country. Tequila (Base Publishing).

Why a book about tequila?

— Am tequila shotA good drinker knows that you should drink between one and three glasses. And sip them slowly, savoring each one. After three, your palate doesn't work as well.

In the book Tequila combines hobby with profession.

— Yes, I'm a historian. And tequila allows you to talk about many things: politics, customs, culture.

It refutes the supposed pre-Columbian origin of tequila.

— I agree with the idea that pre-Hispanic cultures should be favored, but there is no doubt about this: they had no knowledge of distillation.

Tequila is made by distilling the juice of the agave, a plant from the agave family.

— A native agave of the region, the blue agave. There are many types of agave.

The word tequila Yes, it comes from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.

— It is the most widely spoken pre-Hispanic language in Mexico: it has a 2,000-year history, twice that of Catalan, and about five million speakers, half the number of Catalan speakers. My mentor, Miguel León-Portilla, was the first to study it seriously. Few original documents in Nahuatl remain, and they are mostly abroad: in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy... The Spanish had a tendency to destroy them. In Nahuatl, tequila means place of stones and herbs. AND Jalisco means place on the sandWe are talking about a rather infertile territory.

The word agave It has a very different etymology.

— It comes from classical Greek. The term was coined by the naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the 18th century. In Greek it means admirable.

What is the difference between tequila and mezcal?

— Mezcal means house of the moonIn Mexico, it is the generic name for agave and gives rise to another beverage, which can also be of very high quality.

What is the alcohol content of tequila?

— If it's good quality, it costs more than 50, and it's discounted: today you can find it for 35 to 45 degrees.

Tequila is therefore the product of a cultural hybridization.

— Yes. A hybridization that cannot hide a history of destruction: from 1520 to 1650, it is estimated that the Nahuatl-speaking population decreased by 95%. Around the town of Tequila, the population fell from about 10,000 inhabitants to around one hundred.

When Spain wanted to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the conquest, you put a stop to the idea of the "celebration".

— There was nothing to celebrate. We Mexicans proposed "commemorating," which means bringing to mind. In the 1980s, when people started talking about it, I held a position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We ended up getting people to talk about the encounter of two worlds, a very different approach from the initial one.

Let's go to another era, the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). Tequila also played a role.

— It was cheap, it was the people's drink. But Pancho Villa was a teetotaler. The painters of the revolution, the muralists, did drink: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo drank everything, including tequila, which wasn't well-regarded among the wealthy, not even in the families that produced it. With the First World War, it experienced a boom; it was a good export. There was a shortage of alcohol in Europe.

Also during World War II.

— Yes, but then came a shock that forced them to improve their production and quality. And from the 1950s onwards, little by little, they rose in social standing, a trend that accelerated in the 1980s.

In 2019, President López Obrador urged Spain to apologize for the conquest. There was no response. And a few months ago, Mayor Sheinbaum did not invite the King of Spain to her inauguration.

— Asking Spaniards to apologize, if it doesn't come from them, is pointless. I think President Sheinbaum is doing a good job.

These days, both the mayor of Barcelona, ​​Jaume Collboni, and the Catalan president, Salvador Illa, have thanked Mexico for its warm welcome to Catalan and Spanish anti-Franco exiles. Mexico was the only country that did not recognize Franco's regime.

— However, in general, the exile has been largely forgotten by the Catalan side.

You are a child of exile and feel Mexican through and through.

— I have a clear conscience knowing I've done a lot for Catalan culture. Catalan was always spoken in my home, but my parents had great respect for Mexico and its culture. No one was more pro-independence than my father, who was also very much a Mexican patriot.

Which tequila do you recommend?

— One that is 100% agave.