Enric Auquer: "Left-wing people have become very conservative because the future is very disgusting"

BarcelonaGentrification, occupation, and the housing crisis are just some of the themes touched upon in Ravalejar, a 100% Barcelona series that is now available on HBO Max after its run at the Berlin festival. The fiction, which will be shown on 3Cat later, is inspired by the family history of its creator, Pol Rodríguez, who saw his parents lose their restaurant, Can Lluís, due to an investment fund. In Ravalejar, the protagonists are the owners of Can Mosques, a century-old restaurant in the Raval whose continuity is threatened by the appearance of a fund that wants to evict them from the building they are located in. Enric Auquer (Rupià, 1988) plays the son who is capable of crossing all limits to save his parents' business. Pol Rodríguez also directs the series alongside Isaki Lacuesta.

Ravalejar is a very Barcelona series. How would you explain to someone from outside what Barcelona is like currently?

— For me, it's that I don't feel from Barcelona. I live there, but I wouldn't say I'm from Barcelona. I came when I was 18, but I have seen it change a lot. I would say it's a city where you can still live well, but it has gotten worse and will get worse. I always romanticize and imagine that I would like to live in that Barcelona that was still a Mediterranean port, that was dirtier, uglier, and more dangerous. More real. There was more neighborhood, more people in the streets, more children in the streets. The other day I was talking to a friend who is doing a doctoral thesis on the dockworkers of the port of Barcelona and he told me that one of the things he noticed is that the union struggle has changed, but because people are more individualized. That is to say, they [the dockworkers] would return from the port to Barceloneta and go to the cafes and the square, where the women were chatting, the children playing. And they, in the cafe, would chat, and I don't know, political struggle happened there. Work was done not for the dignity of the job, but for the dignity of the neighborhood, of the families, the dignity of everything. Left-wing people have become very conservative because the future is very disgusting. I find that the city lacks a sense of community.

You have performed in El Raval.

— For three months I've been filming in the same place and you start to see the dynamic of Carretes street. You realize it's an absolutely police-controlled neighborhood. It's a ghetto where there's much more poverty than in many other places, where different races, religions, and cultures coexist, but it's the neighborhood in all of Barcelona where you see the most children playing alone in the street, without parents. Children of all ages and absolutely free: Catalan children playing with Senegalese, Moroccan children, and Sikh children and children from Pakistan who speak Urdu among themselves. It feels like the healthiest neighborhood in Barcelona, deep down. It's an incredible neighborhood, but of course, there's a lot of poverty and a lot of inequality. If a tourist with a rolex worth 50,000 euros comes and enters the Raval, what do you expect, dude? They'll rob you. What do you want? It's like going up to someone who has never eaten and standing in front of them with a plate of spaghetti that you eat while looking them in the eye.

Your character, Àlex, is the family member who first springs into action, with a bit of recklessness.

— It's what's cool about the series, that you don't really know what's going to happen and the character doesn't know what he's doing either. I would define Àlex as a very excited guy, he believes that what he's doing is what should be done. He's a noble guy, who believes he has to solve the family problem.

Does the end justify the means for him?

— I think so. It enters into the logic of saying: "It is an investment fund that comes to our city and for which this is a business." He thinks that if he manages to make this business unprofitable, perhaps they will want to sell the property. What happens is that he will end up justifying unjustifiable things.

Alex takes action, but, on the other hand, his mother, Elisa, initially prefers not to raise her voice.

— This series is very masculine: it shows a problem and transforms into a very masculine thriller. Elisa feels ashamed of the eviction, she thinks people will think they didn't know how to run the business. This shame is repeated in all victims, both when you are a victim of abuse and sexual assault or moral violence. I really like Elisa's journey, which goes from shame to seeking collective help. In the end, she is the one who ends up triumphant.

Do you think that as a society we are doing enough to protest the housing crisis?

— We are doing little, very little. It seems that being involved in this is a marginal thing, it's hard to get it going. I think we should make it fashionable, because Barcelona will get worse if we do nothing. I have been to Manhattan, London, Paris, Rome, and it is much worse there than in Barcelona. Barcelona will be much worse because the expats come to live here. The weather is good, they can work remotely and they are people who earn 15,000 euros a month. A rent of 3,000 euros doesn't bother them one bit. What my character proposes, but collectively, is a good option: to make speculation unprofitable. The problem is no longer an investment fund from abroad, this is like a civil war: people from the same city who have the privilege of managing to have five or six apartments and who speculate with these apartments and their own neighbors to make money. It's a vacuum cleaner that sucks up the salaries of people who spend twelve hours working. People who earn 1,800 euros and spend 1,500 euros to pay rent; people who increasingly have less money and less possibility of achieving the dream of owning an apartment one day. On the other hand, the others, after four years of renting four apartments, can already buy another one. It's like a feudal thing, it's very strong. This must stop or it stops. Now we have a left-wing government, in principle.

Why do you think it's so hard for society to mobilize?

— Because we are individualized. We all go to the psychologist, but the more we go to the psychologist, the worse things get. All the problems we talk about with the psychologist are individual. All the time you focus on yourself: your wound, my inner child, my trauma, and me, me, me. This doesn't exist collectively. It's the class struggle of a lifetime, but they've already taken care of destroying all ideals.

You have participated in different demonstrations, for example to stop the eviction of Casa Orsola. When you go, do you think that your presence can influence someone?

— I don't live life with this awareness. With Casa Orsola I did realize it, but also because the Union wanted to use it. I have been to other evictions and other demonstrations and no one has come to ask me anything with a camera.

Have you ever considered not talking about political issues for fear of it harming you?

— I don't know. Perhaps it's because I don't have social media and I don't see what's being said about me every time I speak. I have friends who do have networks and when they speak they receive threats and other things. I don't know if it penalizes me or not. I would be afraid of losing the privilege of being able to continue dedicating myself to what I do. Since my work depends on large corporations and televisions, and on whoever governs in Spain, perhaps I can lose my privilege if I express my political opinion, especially if PP or Vox win.

So far, has it ever been a problem for you?

— No, especially because I continue to live in a very similar way to how my friends live. I live in a 70 square meter apartment in El Born, with my children. My son goes to public school. My friends are the same ones I had. I don't earn enough money to have become a strange elite. I consider myself an absolutely normal person, even though I understand my privilege that when I work I earn money and I am rich, in the sense that I can spend money and that I could stop working for a year and a half. After a year and a half, I would have to start working as a waiter.

Today you are wearing a t-shirt from the Arrels Foundation. Why?

— I have been a volunteer at the Arrels Foundation for a long time, on Tuesdays. It's a project I hold very dear. I'm a volunteer at La Troballa, which is a slightly more lenient place in terms of commitment because you work with people who no longer live on the street. It's a very loving place, it's a workshop where we make all of the foundation's merchandise. It's not hard, it's rather enriching and healing. It's a bit selfish: I go there because it does me a lot of good.

Before you were talking about your children. Have you considered what Barcelona will be like where they will live as adults?

— Sometimes I feel like I'm very conservative. I'm the type who thinks everything that came before was better. Suddenly, the right has become the antithesis of conservatism: the tech giants of Silicon Valley are these crazy technocapitalist people who want to destroy the state, who are anti-trans people and anti-abortion. The world is very strange. I realize that, systematically, society functions in harmony, a harmony that is not subjective but objective: because you realize that neighbors see each other, know each other, love each other, take care of each other, things work, there isn't so much violence. And I am conservative in this, in trying to preserve this solvent and beautiful space.