Jaume Bartrolí: to miss the Polynesian island where you were just another neighbor

BarcelonaRapa Iti. A beautiful volcanic island, which can only be reached from time to time by crossing the Pacific Ocean from Tahiti. A dot on the map that Jaume Bartrolí wanted to set foot on. He wanted to put a face to it and meet its people. And he ended up living there for a few months, turning it into a place where every day, with his memories, he returns mentally. “I was looking for the most original, the best-preserved Polynesia. It was a craving I had. Islands have always attracted me and I was looking for a place where local culture was maintained. I looked at an island near Fiji, some in the Solomon Islands... in the end Rapa Iti seemed like the best option. It wasn't a flat island, here the landscape invited you to discover it. A place with a colder temperature because it is further south, halfway between Easter Island and Tahiti. I had to go”. No sooner said than done.

Jaume Bartrolí, a journalist and traveler, has crossed the entire world. From one end to the other, whether by ship from Antarctica to Europe or by train through Siberia. As a child, he read Gulliver's Travels or the chronicles of Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian who had sailed the South Seas on boats inspired by those of the indigenous people of Peru. His father, a magnificent tennis player who would go on to lead the Spanish team in two Davis Cup finals, would send him postcards from Australia or India. And the son, with an atlas, would follow his father's journey. And he would fixate on points on maps, wondering what it must be like to live there. Over the years, he would visit almost all those islands he investigated as a child using encyclopedias. After studying history and when it seemed he would be a professor at the Autònoma, Bartrolí would begin his journalism career at the newspaper Teleexpress and later at Televisió de Catalunya. “I was destined for this job, as a child I used to buy newspapers to read about the conflicts happening in the world. I wanted to tell stories,” he recalls. And precisely for this reason, he would end up requesting leaves of absence to take long trips, whenever possible by public transport. He would cross Afghanistan or Russia and reach remote places like the border between Pakistan and China where people did not understand what a European was doing there. “In some villages, small children were scared to see a white demon,” explains a man who disguised himself to visit Tibet and took old, falling-apart boats in the Cook Islands and reached the Kuril Islands. Trips he would recount in the books From Siberia to the Tropics (La Magrana, 2000) and A Million Islands (Ara Llibres, 2025).

The doctor of an entire island

But the trip that would mark him was the one he took to Rapa Iti. “To get there, you have a single boat every month that leaves Papeete half-empty. When you take the boat, you know you'll be there for a good while. In fact, you need the mayor's permission, because sometimes a crazy person arrives without money or the desire to work. And they have to put up with him for weeks. I got the permit and they found me a family to sleep with,” says Jaume, who would end up being adopted by the local community, which does not exceed 500 inhabitants. “I had only been there a few days when they offered me to participate in the dance rehearsals they were doing. In Polynesia, there is a festival of local culture, the Heiva, in which all the islands participate. And they went there to compete. And incidentally, they took the opportunity to earn money by performing in hotels in tourist areas. That year they were collecting money to build a church. And I ended up being part of the group. On the trip to the festival, many got seasick and I gave them Biodramina. Afterwards, some got sick, because when they leave the island, it happens to them, because they usually live isolated, without bacteria. And since I had medicine, they decided that I would be their doctor, he recalls, but points out that when there is a serious case, patients are sent to Paris, if necessary, to be treated. Bartrolí would document their way of life and participate in wild goat hunts, try to learn to fish, and win the complicity of the population.

Besides acting as an improvised doctor, Jaume also worked as a photographer. “When I first went there, people had few photographs. Mobile phones didn't exist. I took many, and years later, by uploading them to Facebook, I was able to keep in touch with them. And it moved them to be able to see images of people who are no longer here and loved ones,” explains Bartrolí, who has spent three different seasons on the island in total. “I was very happy there. Never so happy. I even considered staying. But I suppose I would have ended up getting bored. I saw it as paradise, but they want to leave. It might seem crazy to want to leave a beautiful island to end up in a suburb of Paris, right? But it happens. If you stay to live there, you have to end up working to earn a living. Paradise doesn't exist. Paradise, like hell, we carry within us,” he argues.

In fact, the third time he returned, he understood that the world changes and cannot be stopped. Trees planted by French authorities are taking over local varieties. And people speak more Tahitian or French than the local language, which is receding, “although they are trying to recover words and expressions in their language. Protestant missionaries learned Tahitian and evangelized in that language when they arrived,” explains Jaume. His paradise was changing. But the memory of his days there remains the same.