Salvador Alsius: "At the Church's journalism school, I discovered women."

Salvador Alsius (Barcelona, ​​1948) is a journalist. We remember him primarily as the presenter of Telenotícies and other TV3 programs. He has written the book Veni, vidi, vixi. Memories of childhood and youth (1948-1983).

Until the age of 17, he lived at 66 Passeig de Gràcia. "That apartment had been my maternal grandfather's notary's office. My mother was the younger sister who had stayed behind to look after her parents. When she married, she was already older, her grandfather was retired, the apartment had space, and my father came to stay. We were left orphaned."

When he was five, he was enrolled in Lestonnac, "a convent school where the nursery was also boys', with separate boys and girls." And at the age of 8, he entered the Jesuits in Caspe. "It was a very tough time. At that time, they beat you, at least some of the Jesuits, not all. There was a myth that said: but the teaching is very good. Looking back, some teachers were excellent, while others, I have a terrible memory of. One made me hate chemistry."

"When I was 13, my father had already become very ill. They offered to buy him the pharmacy, located on Sant Antoni Maria Claret Street next to Passeig Maragall. He told me: you have to decide in 48 hours if you want to be a pharmacist or if I should sell it. I didn't need half a minute."

She spent 12 hours at school, Monday through Saturday. "We started at 8:25 in the morning and left at 8:25. That was for those of us who were on permanent leave, and we were the majority. The so-called day students, who left at six when classes ended, were in the minority. We only had holidays on Thursday afternoons."

Was there time to do anything after that? "No, it was just getting home, having dinner, and going to bed. However, from the age of 15 onwards, I tried to go to school every day." Congre, and I was there for half an hour, which was a balm for me, because although Jesuits also ran it, it was a different story. It would be the equivalent of kids going to the den. It was my place of youth socialization."

The death of parents

When he was 15, his father died. "I became the man of the house. I rebelled against everything. Not against God, because at that time religious education was very powerful. I was angry about the type of education I received at school because of the moral limitations it imposed on you. I even lowered my academic performance."

And a year and a half later, his mother died. "Cancer too, but unlike Dad's, which was very slow and complicated, Mom's was very quick and unexpected. And I'll never forget the image of the surgeon leaving the operating room with his hands behind his back. He approached my sister, who was 13, and me, who was 16, and he was gone."

Before he died, he told his mother that he would become a priest. "I felt a religious calling. Having the sensation that God was speaking to you, physically. And after completing a year of architecture, which was catastrophic because I wasn't focused on anything, I entered the Jesuit novitiate and stayed there for a couple of years."

But he dropped out. "Due to a change in the curriculum, they said we had to go to Barcelona in an apartment and that each of us had to choose a civil career. And I entered the Church's journalism school. It changed the way I see the world. And I discovered women, and that they interested me."

"The death of my parents caused a very strong bond with my sister that still remains today." They live in a communal apartment. "We met Josep Maria Carandell and his book The CommonsAnd even though it started as a study, it encouraged three of us couples to try it, because we were hooked from the moment we began to build our lives as a couple. And we've been doing it for 50 years now.