Manel Vidal: "I've absorbed 'socialist' like few people have"

BarcelonaFootball is the background landscape, more or less overwhelming depending on the chapter, of the book The pass to space (Destino, 2025), by the screenwriter and comedian Manel Vidal (Salt, 1989). These are "partial memoirs," "things I wanted to tell about football," which complete the profile of a man whose resume includes the podcast The cassock and the RAC1 program The competition, among others, in addition to a troubled stint at TV3. Vidal speaks to ARA on the terrace of the Can Déu Civic Center, in the Barcelona neighborhood of Les Corts.

Your writing is more of a short sentence, but with a long-term vision. Every time you build a chapter, you know where you want to go.

— Yes, there's the catch: I know where I'm going because these are things that really happened to me. It's about reconstructing memories, and in this sense, it's much easier than if I were writing fiction, which would require a much more structured approach. I never thought of my writing as short sentences and long glances; I'll write that on my epitaph when I die. I think it's heavily influenced by what I write before the book, which is scripts, radio, or monologues.

It is a book that will disappoint anyone who expects you to talk about The cassock and of The competition, which are left out of the book.

— No, of course, I... I hadn't seen the Espanyol thing [he exclaims, pointing to a jar with the Espanyol crest that I left on the table]. I quite like it... I have nothing to say about it. The cassock that does not explain to The cassock. AND The competition It's an extraordinary job, the best job I'll ever have, but it has all the components of a job, which means I'm subordinate to people who, in this case, are also very good, and everything I write is never worse, but rather better. I'm very comfortable, but it's still a job, and I didn't consider sharing anything that had to do with that day-to-day life of mine because I'm not even interested in sharing it, and I imagine someone outside wouldn't be very interested either.

Can you tell me who Christoph Frilling was?

— He's one of the first people I met when I lived in Germany, in 2011. He was the director of the language school where I learned German and taught Spanish and English. He was a person whose life I later unraveled as I got to know him, with episodes that were, I'd say, quite extreme and insane.

You explain that you haven't maintained any friendships or ties from your time in Germany, but to what extent did your sense of humor influence you?

— I have a sense of humor that, when I go to Germany, is already there. The thing is, you're going to live in a place where everyone understands each other much more easily than they understand you, and that means you have to hone any form of communication. If I look back ten years, which is how long I've no longer lived in Germany, it's certainly helped me become quicker, sharper, or more concrete. If I had to define my sense of humor, I think it has to do with brevity, with something pointed and brief.

Sarcasm or irony is that they called you Zirkus.

— Yes, exactly. The football team where I played for the three years I lived in Germany was very intrigued by the fact that I had a different way of playing than theirs, which was much more pragmatic. Something happens with Germans: most of the prejudices are true, and in this case, the way they played football was also much more direct. However, I liked the flourishes much more, and they christened me Zirkus, which is the name that stuck. And there's something German about this, which is like a somewhat innocent sense of humor: if we think you play that way, differently from us, we'll call you that. There's only one layer to it.

Speaking of layers, there are several in the book. There's a more personal one, especially when you talk about your childhood and early youth, and your relationship with your father. But then there's a part more closely tied to football: Manel Vidal, a Barça fan, and a lot of Barça.

— Correct. A lot of Barça, yes.

When did you become a Barça fan?

— I don't remember a specific moment when I became a Barça fan, which means I'm one by nature. In my house, I didn't have one grandfather who was a Barça fan and one who was an Espanyol fan; I only had one grandfather, and he was a Barça fan, and my father was also a Barça fan, and my surroundings were very much Barça fans. So, there's no real life decision. But the development of my Barça self, to put it somewhat pretentiously, draws heavily from my grandfather, who was a man from Barcelona who had often gone to watch Barça and who, moreover, had a rich conversation on the subject of football.

You dedicate two chapters to two footballers, Iván de la Peña and Sergi Busquets, who I've always thought were actually two parakeet players.

— Well, Iván de la Peña ended up being one, and Sergi Busquets would have fit in perfectly. Just like Gavi, from Barça, he could be transferred to Atlético Madrid tomorrow. Iván de la Peña ended up being a "perico" player without seeming like one when he was at Barça. And you would see in Sergi Busquets a talent that could fit in perfectly with Espanyol, although perhaps he would have been a different player, because he is very influenced by La Masia, Guardiola, and all that kind of tradition of his position. I very much remember Iván de la Peña scoring two goals at Camp Nou, Guardiola's first year, 2008-2009. Then there's my falling out with Iván de la Peña, because he celebrates those two goals a lot.

But you remember him, because Iván de la Peña gives you the title of the book.

— Yes, he was a player who played a lot of passing into space, he was very active, and I wanted to play like that when I was very young. When I grew up, I wanted to be more like Sergi Busquets, and I've failed in both attempts. Clearly, too.

I've listed the times you admit failures in the book. One of those failures is your academic development, which led your father to send you to Germany to work. Does that weigh on you?

— It's weighed heavily on me for a while, but it hasn't been a trauma that immobilized me either. I talk about failures because I'm at a point in my life where I can look back and laugh. It's a book that goes a bit to the heart of these failures, but they're failures that many people can relate to, to a certain extent, because there are many moments when you're young, or when you're an idiot, excuse the redundancy, when you make mistakes or fail.

Comedians who do good passes in space?

— I'm going to be very unoriginal. The other day I presented Magí's monologue, Modgi, at the Teatre de Salt, and I didn't think in these terms, but I did think: how good he is at constructing, and that's still a pass into space. He does self-passes, Magí. How good he is at pretending he's going one way and then going the other, which already generates a comical quality, or very slowly and slowly preparing a very powerful punchline.

What script would you like to write?

— There's a script I really like having written: the one for Marc Gasol's retirement video. They say he's a perico like you... We wrote it with Magí, and it's a script I'll remember writing because we were able to think about how that person spoke not only to the country, nor to Spain, but to the world. If you have three seconds to tell your grandchildren what you've done, I think one of those things I would do is tell them this. And apart from that, I'd like to write scripts for many things. I've written scripts for radio, for TV, for stand-up comedy... The other day I wrote the script for an awards gala for the first time, now I've written the book... Maybe I'd like to make a film, later. If we can make a script for one or a film... sitcom, or a script for a series for... I was going to say for TV3, but I don't know if that will be possible...

If you ever had clean ones, how would you tell them? your relationship with the PSC?

— I would explain to them that I had originally worked for the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party). When I was a kid, simplifying a lot and leaving a lot of people out, and I'm really sorry, there was Pujolism and Maragallism. At home we were Maragallists, and we came from Felipe [González's] family. I had attended a Rose Festival and had shaken Pasqual Maragall's hand at a tribute to Ernest Lluch. So I've been a little bit nurtured. socialist as few people have suckled socialistAnd then I should explain to my grandchildren that, later on, I changed, and so did that game. And we changed so much that they ended up demanding my head for a TV collaboration I did for a joke they understood perfectly. This is what I should explain to them. More or less.

Did you feel bad for Joel Díaz, especially?

— For Joel and Magí, it's also true that people are often treated a little unfairly, because people say, "Wow, Joel, what a heroic gesture," and Magí made a very similar one, if not the same. But yes, for both of them. Do I feel bad for Joel and Magí? A lot. But they've never made me feel guilty or responsible. They know perfectly well, and we all know, that it's not my fault. And it's also a gesture and a decision by the PSC, which was already incomprehensible and authoritarian when they made it, and it's aging very badly as time goes by, I think.

What's your best memory related to humor? And what memory would you like to forget?

— I'll start with what I'd like to forget. When I was very young, I made a joke, which isn't even humorous; it's proto-proto-proto-humor... At a popular race for school children, in a pavilion in Salt, there was a photographer, and I covered one of the photographs he was taking to play the joke on him. He got really angry, and I think that's when I understood that jokes could upset people, which is something that, as a comedian, is important to remember. We've had to have a very clear position and discourse about the world in Catalan, and we've also had to be clear about the limits of humor. Something very basic, and explained quite clearly in this example, is that you can say there is freedom of expression, and I believe that and I will defend it to the bitter end, but it's also important for your brain to remember that it can hurt. Javier Cansado, whose comic I really like, explains this very well. Keep in mind that you can hurt a lot with humor, because it's a real weapon of mass destruction. At the same time, and even more forcefully, let us keep in mind that no one should pay any penalty, whether criminal or labor, for having joked, whatever the penalty may be.

And good memory?

— At the beginning of doing The basement I used to play around a lot with provocation and dark humor, sometimes in pipes, like shooting with a shotgun at fairs to see what would happen. It hadn't been long since the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in August 2017, and I made some jokes that weren't cruel, but I did talk about the boy they found in a car and who had been killed by the terrorist. It was a delicate moment, and the air was heavy at the time, and one day a girl wrote to me saying, "I came here with some people who were friends of that person who died in these attacks, and we went to dinner, and it was super liberating because we talked for the first time." They had every right in the world to tell me, "Dude, you have no right because the grief we're going through is still too fresh." And maybe I could have defended it, or not, but, luckily, it helped them talk for the first time. It's a very fond memory.

In the book, when you describe Kluivert, you say that his play is as aesthetically pleasing as it is ineffective. Is Catalonia exactly like Kluivert, as aesthetically pleasing as it is ineffective?

— There's that cliché that we're always lost on aesthetics. It's also true that when I see the events or galas we put on, I don't think we're that good aesthetically either.

Who has given you the most trouble, Barça or Proceso?

— It's given me much more joy at Barça. The Process has given me one disappointment, but I also think it's important for us to move on. I've thought I've done that for a long time, but it's important not to dwell there, in that disappointment; I think there are people who have gotten stuck or who are even now channeling it in a way I don't like. Barça has given me many, many disappointments, and I've even felt like telling it to go to hell, but just like the country, it can't be done, it won't work.