Just as we did with Pablo Picasso and Federico García Lorca, this is an imaginary and dystopian conversation with Albert Einstein, forcing the timeline, so that we can get closer to what these figures would tell us today about their lives, about Barcelona and about the times we live in now.
--- Welcome to the city of knowledge.
--- Aren't you exaggerating, young man?
--- I'm not saying it, these are the big names that the various municipal governments use when they have to talk about research, culture, knowledge and investigation.
--- When I was invited, it was only to conduct three interviews. And it wasn't the city council, but that kind of autonomous government that...
--- The Mancomunitat, yes. February 1923, invited by the engineer and mathematician Esteve Terradas.
--- That's it! Terradas.
--- It was quite an event, to receive a recent Nobel laureate in Physics!
--- They put effort into it, that's for sure. I remember the visit to the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts, the one with the clock building...
--- Right here going up the Rambla, yes.
--- Does it still mark the official time?
--- Now the official time is no longer marked by Big Ben, master, but by mobile phones. All of them perfectly synchronized.
--- Here at the Museum, they don't stop taking my picture with these gadgets.
--- Not as many as Messi or Rosalía, I suppose.
--- I've had to share space with more discreet colleagues, like Marie Curie, or that gentleman in the wheelchair over there in the back.
--- Stephen Hawking. A disciple of yours.
--- Disciple?
--- He united your theory of relativity with that of quantum mechanics, apart from his research on black holes and the origin of the Universe.
--- Ah! So now we know why we exist?
--- That would be something more metaphysical, I'm afraid.
--- The thing is, he gets many more photographs than I do.
--- Don't tell me that matters to you.
--- No, no. They didn't take many of me either, when I came to Barcelona. In fact, no one came to pick me up at Estación de Francia.
--- Are you serious?
--- It wasn't anyone's fault, I simply hadn't had time to send a telegram to confirm my arrival time.
--- Well, near the station they are planning the "Ciutadella del Coneixement", a kind of large area dedicated to biomedicine, biodiversity and marine sciences.
--- I trust they will do more than just lay stones. You are very good at building buildings, but they must be filled.
--- They will also build a large provincial library, which is what is done in the provinces.
--- Don't complain, you have a beautiful city.
--- A great "cultural co-capital", yes. Where did you stay, by the way? They said you declined the invitation to the Ritz and stayed at the Quatre Nacions, right here on the Rambla.
--- Some also said at the Hotel Colón, in Plaza Catalunya.
--- And where did you go?
--- Elsa and I had a very good time in Barcelona, I'll just tell you that.
--- "A great man has come to Barcelona," Sagarra wrote.
--- I have good memories of everything. Kind people, Terradas, Campalans, Lana, Tirpitz's daughter… Folk songs, dances…
--- Do you mean the sardana?
--- I loved them. I listened to the records they gave me for many years. Oh, and the Marieta de l'ull viu!
--- Really?
--- I'm not made of stone, nor any wax figure. Oh, and I also remember the Refectorium!
--- The restaurant?
--- Yes, on the Rambla itself. It was a curious establishment, like a brasserie but located in a basement and with a very medieval look. It was very popular. By the way, is that cinema still there, on the ground floor of the Academy?
--- Which cinema? Now there's a theater, the Poliorama.
--- Well, there was a cinema… Martí, I think it was called.
--- No idea.
--- And I remember an impressive astronomical clock, inside, that marked the position of the planets and the Sun.
--- Albert Billeter's clock, yes. These are things about being an Academy founded in 1764, you see that the thirst for knowledge is old here.
--- Time passes very quickly.
--- That's relative, isn't it?
--- I don't think you would understand it.
--- Well, this Wax Museum is, precisely, a kind of time tunnel.
--- It's even more complicated than that. In fact, in the three conferences I gave in Barcelona, I could see on the faces of all the attendees that they hadn't understood anything.
--- Perhaps you spoke to them as if they were physicists or mathematicians.
--- I would say that only Esteve Terradas understood me.
--- And where did you give the first one?
--- At the headquarters of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans.
--- Do you mean on Carrer del Carme, next to the National Library?
--- No, no! I mean in that Renaissance palace in Plaza Sant Jaume. Palace of the Diputación, I think they called it.
--- Ah! The Palau de la Generalitat!
--- There wasn't even room for a needle, and that's even though you had to pay an entrance fee to listen to me. Twenty-five pesetas, I think it was.
--- That's not little. For not ending up understanding anything from someone who spoke in a mix of French and German…
--- Aren't you the city of knowledge, you told me?
--- Don't make me talk. In any case, you collected 3,500. For the three conferences.
--- My one-year salary as a scientist.
--- Goodness.
--- The others I did in the same Palau, but in another hall. And afterwards they gave me a big tribute dinner at Ritz.
--- But besides Barcelona, you also visited Poblet, L'Espluga de Francolí, Sant Cugat, Terrassa…
--- I was accompanied by President Puig i Cadafalch and a very nice gentleman with a bow tie, I don't remember his name…
--- Ventura Gassol.
--- That's right. And then I remember the Escola del Mar in Barcelona, the Baixeras School Group, the Industrial School, the Somorrostro, the visit to the City Council…
--- And the colloquium at the Academy. But you also met with a CNT leader, didn't you?
--- I recommended that fellow Pestaña have his union members read Spinoza.
--- Spinoza? The philosopher?
--- I only believe in the God of Spinoza.
--- A god united with Nature, with science. You should read Francesc Pujols.
--- In any case, the dinner that Rafael Campalans organized for us, at his house, on Rosselló street, was more constructive. I remember the menu in Latin, and that a soprano from the Orfeó Català sang.
--- Well, now Campalans gives his name to the PSC Foundation.
--- I would say he was responsible for pedagogy in the Mancomunidad government…
--- Yes, a socialist like you, in a government of supposed "bourgeois".
--- I believe that the economic anarchy of capitalist society, as it exists today, is the true source of evil.
--- Campalans would agree with that. That's why he proposed his egalitarian pedagogical policy.
--- Education should develop the individual's sense of responsibility towards their fellow citizens, instead of the glorification of power and success.
--- We were heading there... But in that same month of September, Primo de Rivera would eliminate the Mancomunitat.
--- And the sardana?
--- And the sardana. Even if you had danced them too.
--- It cannot be.
--- Even the "Marieta de l'ull viu", Mr. Albert Einstein.
--- Anyway… But well, I don't know if you know that I also had to leave Germany later.
--- Of course I know. Everything is connected: space, time and fascism.
--- Don't joke. One day perhaps you will understand what I mean.
--- I don't need to understand: Sagarra, despite not understanding anything from your conferences, would have wanted to take an un-erased blackboard.
--- There are indelible memories.
--- Or pure fetishism, master.
--- I have already told you that, however much it may seem so now, I am not a museum piece.
--- Things are here and cease to be at the same time, right? You yourself immediately went to Madrid.
--- That was normal, right?
--- Of course, maestro. Don't suffer. That's what being a "co-capital" entails.