Tortell Poltrona: There are children who think that milk comes from a container and not from a cow

— It is difficult to think of happiness in Catalonia without this name coming to mind. Tortell Poltrona (Barcelona, 1955) has just returned from Ukraine. In the words that the Rokada association has dedicated to Clowns Without Borders for his stay, there is a precise synthesis of a lifetime dedicated to the happiness of others: the gratitude for offering children not only laughter, but "the reminder that joy is still possible". Tortell Poltrona —or rather, Jaume Mateu— says he is getting old. But this does not inhibit his desire to keep traveling, nor does it prevent him from moving forward before he can ask the first question.The clown is like wine. Did you know that?

I didn't know!

— First: it must be from good land, and from a good vine. Then, it must drink a lot of water to mature. It must experience heat; just the right amount, because if not, it gets too strong. It must be cut and pressed. And, if it is good, with time, it improves.

This of cut and trodden…

— Standing in front of people to make them laugh... Achieving it in less than a minute is a catharsis. It's exactly like tasting a dish or taking a sip of wine. The speed with the things you like, which is when there's really that point of happiness, is something to be highly valued. For me, when I really like a dish, my partner always has to tell me: “Please, a little more slowly, because I spent a long time preparing it for your plate”. And with all these things, it happens that you are never satisfied with what you do.

What does it mean?

— When you stand in front of people, what you do always seems to be little. The same happens to my colleague. She cooks wonderfully, but always says: "Oh, maybe it's not at the right point of salt". The right point of salt is an individual thing; everyone has their own right point. And in the end, my conclusion is that what the clown does is the same: what is important is what happens with the audience while the clown talks.

Does each person in the audience have their own pinch of salt?

— Yes. And they are all different.

It's from a generation of bread with wine and sugar.

— We, when we were little, ate it every day for a snack. And that is something that surely must have uninhibited us in some way. I imagine I am the way I am because of bread with wine and sugar.

His mother was a cook.

— She was a volunteer at the parish of Sant Vicenç de Sarrià, in the children's and youth movement of Catholic action. She cooked three daily meals for fifty people during the three summer months, with a basic kitchen. A very good cook, eh? She gave me and my siblings a book with all her most special recipes. Her legacy.

Are they still cooking their dishes?

— At home we have tried to preserve them and there is a very interesting culinary crossover. My daughter, who is a lover of cooking, has associated my mother's cooking with my wife's mother's cooking.

And in general, do you have the feeling that the culinary transmission has been lost?

— I think the very potent human degeneration we are experiencing at this moment has a lot to do with this. As a species, first we had to make a living to find food; then, to be able to manipulate and prepare it, and now people just buy packaged goods. It is an absolute regression compared to what is the most natural life: I look for food and I know what I eat because I harvested it, because I hunted it. Now no longer. There is a dissociation from the real world with the world of cities. There are children who think that milk comes out of a container and not from a cow.

It also happens with grapes and wine. What is the relationship?

— I like to drink wine every day. I inherited it from my father: if there was no wine, we didn't have dinner. That is to say, we ate, but we didn't have dinner. And I like accessible wines.

For example?

— I find that the wines from Bages and Montsant are extraordinary. Then the Tempranillo and Merlot wines... In other words, I'm not racist.

And today, what wine will you have for lunch?

— Today for lunch I have... One second, I'm coming closer [you can hear footsteps while he sings 'tara-rara' and 'where are you, I can't see you']. One from Montblanc. They told me it will be good. There is also a bottle of Ribera del Duero, called Bela, which I'm saving. And bottles from the 60s and 70s, which I pick up now and then. And here also a Clos Primat Negre, from Capmany. I have many friends in La Rioja. When we pass through Penedès and they say: "Look how much grape!", I always tell them: "No, silly! That's not grape: that's wine!"

Do you have any other anecdotes?

— One day I went to the Sahara with a friend. To cross the desert, we took a box of 25 liters of wine. And to cross the border, we brought the Algerian customs officers two bottles of whiskey. When they asked us: "And what are you bringing here?", we told them: "The blood of Christ". I have engraved the image of a Moroccan prisoner draining the drops from the bag that we had left empty... Everyone got sick because they were drinking water, and we didn't, because we were drinking wine.

He said that culture is basically born from gastronomic culture. What did he mean?

— I understand culture as that art that is capable of modifying people's lives. And when I say life, I mean their customs, their thinking, their way of living. And it seems to me that the greatest legacy we have is cuisine. When our grandmothers... Look: until recently, cooking was absolutely feminine. And now it turns out to be absolutely masculine, when before chefs hid to say it because they were ashamed. It had always been something passed down from grandmothers to mothers and from mothers to daughters, outside of the cases of haute cuisine française.

He says it in French!

— Now that we are in a kind of occlusion of everything, it seems that to eat well you have to eat in a sophisticated way all the time. And it's not true: the best thing in the kitchen is hunger [laughs]. When you're hungry, you can eat a can of dog food dipped in bread and find it very good. And if you've gone hungry —I'm not saying I've gone very hungry, but I have sometimes gone through an involuntary fast— you value having a full fridge even more.

In what era did he/she/it live, this?

— On an expedition to Africa that Clowns Without Borders made seven or eight years ago, on the border of Ethiopia with Eritrea. We got stuck.

Is there little talk about the risks they run?

— Better. It's better that they don't pay much attention to you. For example, I can't stand photographers and things like that coming with us, because the relationship with people changes.

You just returned from Ukraine. How was the trip?

— Since you act in front of widowed women and women whose husbands are at the front, and children who are waiting to be told that their father has become a hero and that they can go see him in the photograph at the village parish… I am very angry with politicians. And with the communication world, too. We talk about wars as if they were pure economics, as if lives — unless they are American ones— were equal and it seems that what is important is whether oil and purchases are rising. There are things that are more important, such as the conservation of the species, in general. But well, I dedicate myself to making children laugh, because I think they are not to blame at all.

Did you always want to work with children?

— I wanted to do counterculture and perform for the university people, because I thought they were the intelligent people. But I have come to the conclusion that the only intelligence there is is the intelligence of children, who only want to play and share. When I was little, I didn't understand what they meant when they talked about the valley of tears. And I thought: but how can it be a valley of tears, this?

Does he/she continue questioning it?

— After so many missions with Clowns Without Borders, I am clear about what tears are. But laughter and crying are very close, aren't they? They are very close. They are governed by the same story of the parasympathetic. It just so happens that I have a big problem with tears.

Why?

— Because I come from an educational culture that said if you cried, you were a girl. And then they would raise their hand and say: “Do you want me to give you a real reason to cry?” This education —bad education, in short— makes it a bit difficult for the males of my generation… In other words, I am more capable of crying as a clown than in my personal and real life. I have a huge boundary with that.

Don't you feel that the professional part has given you an advantage in this regard?

— No. I come from a black and white world.

Clown's Opinions is the title of a book of conversations with you, but also that of Heinrich Böll's wonderful novel. Do you see your profession reflected in this book?

— It's pretty much like that. I never dress up as a clown for Carnival. Pompeu Fabra says: "Clown. A person who, due to their unserious and inconsistent behavior, deserves to be regarded only as an object of amusement." And this definition is something that perhaps at a certain point might bother me. But the older I get, the happier I am when people ask what I've done with my life. To entertain. And to try to give happiness.