Josep Bou: "I am once again a crazy businessman. I haven't had a single day of vacation"

Barcelona"No more than work," replies Josep Bou when asked what he has done since leaving Barcelona City Council four years ago. After a term at the head of the PP municipal group, Bou returned to his company. At 71 years old, he is not thinking of retirement by a long shot. "I have given up retiring and collecting any pension. My life is work," he assures.

He explains that after four years he has had to work hard to regain the company's momentum. "Although I had a great general manager, I wasn't there and it showed," he says. When he returned to the company, he had accumulated 1.6 million euros in losses. A critical scenario from which he has recovered. "I have pulled the company forward," he celebrates, and points out that this year he expects to close it with profits. To achieve this, he gets up every day at five to go to work. "I'm a crazy businessman again. I haven't taken a single day off," he says, laughing.

And doesn't the bug of municipal politics bite you from time to time? "I feel very satisfied with that stage, but I wouldn't go back," he confesses, while assuring that those four years "were like 30 or 40," but they made him grow personally. "The City Council, if you love it, you never finish it," he defends. For all these reasons, he prefers his current day-to-day life. "The life I have now is completely authentic, a life where it's cold and hot. In politics there is heating and air conditioning. You can't always do what you want or what you think," he concludes.