He moves towards the bar, leaning on his inseparable umbrella, which since time immemorial has served him as a cane to maintain balance and, over the years, has become an appendage of his being.
---A non-alcoholic beer, please---, he asks with a mischievous smile and eyes vibrating behind his glasses, trying to focus on one of the thousand and one ideas that pass through his head at dizzying speed.
Alleged news and substitutes filter through the radio speaker, which Adolfo Quibus asks to continue listening to. "It's a way to stay informed and keep you company."
Writer, filmmaker, playwright, with more lives under his belt than a cat, recently compiled in his autobiographical Otoño Gris (Matraca), the regular leans on the bar and finishes the first sip of his drink, before speaking.
"I am an apprentice of a person who walks through life trying to be positive and do what I like most and can entertain others," explains the man who has been everything from a pulp fiction author (Fósiles inhumanos, La isla perdida, Diamantes en bruto) and popular novelist (Crímenes en cadena), to a playwright of works performed on both sides of the ocean (Memorias de un ente fugaz, Recordando las candilejas, El conde Von Parkus), director of films and documentaries (Diégesis, Ensayo fatídico, El séptimo sentido, Smith y compañía), host of the podcast Hoy es cine and director of the veteran Nunes Film Festival, which has just celebrated its eleventh edition at the Ateneo Libertario de Gràcia.
"The festival is, for me, one of the three great turning points in my life. The first was perhaps the first story I sent at 16 to an international mystery contest where I was a finalist, and the second is the creation of the theater company of the Hispanic Culture Institute of Madrid, when I was 22 years old."
Portraying Alzheimer's
In a perennial and hyperactive search for funding "for new films and projects," Adolfo Quibus was away from artistic activity for a long time, dedicated to a fierce and unequal battle against the Alzheimer's his wife suffered from, which coincided with a period of economic problems, derived among other things from a creative and very unaccommodating personality.
Adolfo was away from artistic activity for a long time, engaged in a fierce and unequal battle against the Alzheimer's his wife suffered fromFrom that extremely complicated momentsalió My friend Alzheimer, a documentary that gathers the experience gone through with his wife until her deathand that returned, about a decade ago, the parishioner to the world of culture with the creation of the production company Asociación Independiente para la Producción y Distribución Audiovisual.
Barcelona, individuals and people
Born in Barcelona in 1945, Adolfo says he misses "that city after the dictatorship, which I liked more," he asserts about the city at that moment of effervescence between the end of the old regime and the arrival of Pujolism, which would be a new institutional culture.
Going further back, he likes to contemplate with that mix of historical perspective and unbridled imagination past moments in Barcelona's history that fascinate him, such as "the 1929 Universal Exposition or the Paral·lel in the times of the Second Republic."
--- And something you don't like about this city?
--- The politicians we've been lucky enough to get!
--- Well, but those have people behind them who vote for them.
Adolfo Quibus smiles, complicit, and takes a moment looking at the menu of combo dishes before replying:
--- Yes, it's just that I only believe in individuals, but not in people. And the only pity in this regard is that, sometimes, individuals come together and become people.