Jordi Basté: "I cry in the moments when you least expect it"

--- What would you be doing on a Friday at this time (1 PM) if you hadn't made plans with me?

--- I'd be in a meeting at the radio station. Until about two, so we'd be finishing up by then.

--- Is Friday the best day of the week?

--- Yes, because it's the last one. I also really like Thursday and Saturday, but Friday is always better. And I'll tell you, I don't dislike Monday.

--- The opposite of the world.

--- No, because it's the beginning. I'm lazier on Wednesday, for example, which is a day that neither goes up nor down.

--- How do you manage your social life if you wake up at night, when the streets are not yet set?

--- Let's see... I wake up early, but so do a lot of people.

--- Yes, but...

--- Yes, it's true. I wake up very early, but I sleep my six hours, which for me is enough. So in the afternoon I can do things, and I do a lot. I always take a short nap, but then I can go to the gym or out to dinner if it's early. I'm at an age where I can afford some excesses that you also allow yourself when you're young, but with added exhaustion. So yes, I do have a social life.

--- What kind of social life do you have?

--- One that I like more and more, and it's the one I want to have. Not the one my job forces me to have. Going to a restaurant and chatting with friends about things I don't usually talk about on the radio. I don't want to talk about politics. I don't even want to talk about Barça. In any case, if I have to talk about Barça, I do it a little.

--- With a compressed schedule like yours, you must have to say no often. Has it been hard to learn how to do it?

--- A lot! A while ago, when I was doing sports journalism at 18 or 19 and going to training sessions, I lived with very well-known athletes who were the same age as me. And I could talk to all of them from the perspective that the anonymity of a sports journalist from the radio of that era gave me. And I remember one day telling Pep (Guardiola): "What you have to do is learn to say no."

--- You told Guardiola he had to learn to say no?

--- Of course! Because it was the time when he was a young lad and the veterans sent him every week to visit a different fan club. And I told him: "But every week? What you have to do is learn to say no!" Later, over the years, when he saw how I was doing, he always told me: "Hey! Now it's you who has to learn to say no."

"I wake up very early, but I sleep my six hours, which for me are already enough. So in the afternoon I can do things, and I do many. I always take a little nap"

--- I will always remember a phrase David Trueba told me, which I have kept, and which Rafael Azcona, one of the best screenwriters in the history of Spanish cinema, said in his day. And he said: "The true secret to happiness is learning to say no." And it's true. I am learning to do it, but it has taken me a long time! And I still feel that there are times when I can't.

--- How did you meet Pep Guardiola? It is public knowledge that you are very good friends.

--- It was a bet!, and I also cheated, but he already knows that.

--- ¿?

--- The day Pep debuted with Barça's first team, I interviewed him on Catalunya Ràdio. It was a Saturday at noon and I remember that Joan Patsy, who was a very good friend of Johan Cruyff, told me that Pep was going to play that day. And when I was interviewing him, I asked him: "Pep, do you think you'll play tomorrow?" I already knew he would, but he told me no. And I challenged him to a live bet. I told him: "If you play, you pay me dinner. If you don't play, I'll pay you." And I won the bet because he obviously played.

--- Did he pay for dinner?

--- Of course! At Tramonti.

--- And did that friendship just start with that?

--- Yes.

--- But that must have happened to you with many people because every day you interview many Pep Guardiolas, and I don't think all of them have ended up being your friends...

--- But that happened at a time when he must have been 17 or 18 and I was 21 or 22. We were somewhat of the same generation. And, furthermore, I really like people who have special resources for speaking. I have met many footballers and lived with footballers, but I haven't had the relationship I have with Pep.

--- I'm very intrigued to know why you set your alarm for 4:24 AM.

--- Because I really like the number 4

--- Just for that?

--- I really like the number 24, I really like the number 14, I really like the number 44. Also 84. But since waking up at 4:44 AM was too late and at 4:14 AM was too early, between a quarter past and half past was 4:24 AM.

--- So, it's not a matter of superstition?

--- Well, actually, it's an OCD, you know...

"I have met many footballers and lived with footballers, but I haven't had the relationship I have with Pep Guardiola"

--- Changing obsessions is painful. If it's involuntary, you realize nothing happens, but if I voluntarily change the alarm clock, I have the feeling that something is going to happen.

--- When did you deduce that these compulsions could be OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)?

--- OCD with Jaume Padrós ---president of the Official College of Physicians of Barcelona--- and ADHD with a child psychologist. I remember Dr. Padrós told me: "You are a textbook OCD." I took a test and indeed, I was a textbook OCD.

--- Have you accepted it as is or have you tried to improve it?

--- I have accepted it. Not improve it because I am OCD, otherwise I would stop being it and would become a different person. This OCD thing is not just a matter of superstitions. There are serious psychological effects, like those people who believe they are being persecuted and are truly convinced of it. Or those of us who are hypochondriacs, who think we have an illness and are convinced we have it.

--- And we somatize. In this, we can shake hands...

--- One day my stomach mouth hurt a lot and I was convinced it was stomach cancer. But very convinced. And I went to the doctor, to see Dr. Bargalló, and when I explained my symptoms, he told me: "You have gastritis." And I denied it, I told him he couldn't know because he hadn't done any examination. And his response was rationally impertinent.

--- What did he tell you?

--- He told me he had been doing this for over forty years and again told me that I had gastritis, but that if I wanted, he would lay me on the gurney, examine me, and do whatever tests were necessary. He did it and again told me: "You have gastritis."

--- And you felt relieved?

--- Forty-eight hours. Until I had an endoscopy and a colonoscopy and then I said: "Now yes!"

--- Covid has aggravated many of our compulsions.

--- Yes, but something very curious happens with this. The good thing about OCD is that when they tell us what we fear, we don't collapse like many others do. Do I make myself clear?

--- Not much.

--- I was terrified of covid, very terrified! And when they told me, "you have covid," the reaction was more fear of expansion or contagion than fear of having it.

--- Do you Google what your symptoms mean?

--- Of course! But everyone does this! Whether they have OCD or not. Those with OCD look for cancer and those who don't have OCD look for reality, which is surely just a mole or one of those pimples.

"The good thing about OCD is that when they tell us what we fear, we don't sink like many others do"

--- They don't call me much either...

--- I find that hard to believe.

--- I think this has passed on to a better life. I am not a political journalist. I am convinced that they call Lola Garcia from La Vanguardia more than me.

--- While live, you have read messages that deputies have written to you from the Parliament of Catalonia.

--- Because they are listening to me at that moment. But the "let's meet for lunch and I'll tell you" thing happens very little. Much less than people might imagine. They do it, eh... and I go. But they also see me as a strange bird. Because I'm not one of them.

--- You're not one of them?

--- No. When I started doing the mornings, Pepe Antich (director of El Nacional and before that La Vanguardia) told me: "You have something very good and something very bad. The bad thing is that you don't have political culture and the good thing is that you don't have political culture." And this has worked very well for me.

--- They must be ashamed to ask you certain things.

--- I think they give up on me many times. To help you understand the idea, I would say that I am closer to Helena García Melero than to Jordi Barbeta. Do I talk about politics? Yes. Do I talk about sports? Also. Do I talk about doctors? Yes. But I am not a political journalist.

--- How would you describe the feeling you get from knowing that 755,000 people listen to you every day?

--- I have a very normal, very conventional, and to a certain extent, boring life. And I want to keep it that way. What do I mean by this? That I don't want to think about it. I do have a social responsibility. I always say it, we are the second or third voice that sounds in people's homes in the mornings. It's true. But I don't want to have a responsibility beyond this.

--- That is to say, you have a touch of unconsciousness.

--- Man, now imagine if they told you: "We will take this chair where you are sitting and put it in front of seven Barça fields, one on top of the other, and we will put you there in the middle with a microphone." I wouldn't want to enter that field. Therefore, this point of unconsciousness you mentioned is better. And also a certain incredulity.

--- Ego, and in this job of ours it abounds, will inevitably be strengthened. Who keeps your feet on the ground?

--- Adriana, my ex who is my best friend and who takes the reins a lot in all of this. And my daughters, because they worry little about me. They listen to me little, well, at most, when their mother drives them. And seeing that at home they pretty much ignore you is very important. I also try to surround myself with people who don't sugarcoat things for me, I can't stand subservience. And I really like the people I meet who don't know me.

--- What was your first job?

--- This one.

--- Radio?

--- Yes, of course.

"I always say it, we are the second or third voice that sounds in people's homes in the mornings. It's true. But I don't want to have a responsibility beyond this one"

--- It's just that I only know how to do this.

--- You haven't tried doing other things either. What would you have been good at?

--- Veterinarian, but I'm scared of chickens. Or a firefighter. I think I would have been a good psychologist too. Because I really like listening to people, trying to help them, I feel very complicit in it. Surely because I didn't have it and you project yourself into what you would have wanted for yourself.

--- We are from a generation in which the emotional issue at home, we ate it with potatoes.

--- But we have also had an advantage. We have opened a path because we have been among those who have publicly said that going to a psychologist or psychiatrist is not bad, it is not an illness. If it hadn't been for the psychologist and the psychiatrist, who knows where I would be now. They have helped me a lot and I highly recommend it.

--- You have never hidden it.

--- It's just that I believe our social responsibility as journalists is to use the first person so that those people who are listening to you can feel complicit in what you have and suffer.

--- Were you a good student?

--- I wasn't bad, but not good either.

--- What was the connection at home with the radio that at 10 years old you could already be in front of a microphone?

--- None. Beyond the fact that a lot of radio was listened to at home. And that one day in a bar in the Horta neighborhood there was a radio journalist, Agustín Rodríguez, who told my father that they were looking for children for a program and asked him if he would let me try it. I went and never left.

--- And do you remember that day?

--- I have the image of that 10-year-old boy playing on the floor of the Horta bar. And I remember the Radio Joventut era very well. At Vía Augusta number 17. And I remember the reception, the phone, the newsroom. I always say that I would really like to go back to the places where I grew up. I think it would be a great television format. Going to the places that saw you grow up as a child.

--- Why don't you do more TV?

--- Because they haven't offered me anything lately. I don't have much time either.

--- Why did you say no to hosting FAQS? You were the first option.

--- Because it was talking about politics from Monday to Sunday.

--- Life is politics.

--- I know. Look, I said no and I think I did well. But I still think it was a necessary program.

"One day in a bar in the Horta neighborhood there was a radio journalist, Agustín Rodríguez, who told my father that they were looking for children for a program and asked him if he would let me try it. I went and never left"

--- There has been everything. First, there has been luck. Imagine that my father that day is not in the bar of the Ateneu d'Horta and Agustín Rodríguez that day has a cold and does not go. And luck also to have accepted a call from Joan Manuel Surroca to tell me that his brother would be head of programs for a new radio station of the Generalitat (Catalunya Ràdio) and that I should do a test. Therefore, there is an obvious component of luck but also a component of work capacity, and of sacrifice not only mine but of my family. And a point of learning with which I have been doing.

--- What has been the key for Rac1 to overtake Catalunya Ràdio?

--- First, a very serious error by the public company. It is very difficult to build and very easy to destroy. And that was destroyed very quickly. When I left, one of the old-timers left, besides leaving a gap in sports. And a year later another one leaves, and after two years, another. So in four years you destroy the mornings, the afternoon and the night while rearming the other station.

--- Isn't there also a lot of a different style of making radio?

--- Surely, because I couldn't do this radio at Catalunya Ràdio.

--- Why not?

--- Because Catalunya Ràdio is a very interdepartmental company. And I was doing sports at night and I couldn't go there to say certain things. And suddenly I find myself going to Rac1 and next to my desk is the desk of the radio director. And I become a link with him. And all my radio crazy ideas I shared with the director. The fact of being few people and very well-disposed made everything flow very easily.

"I couldn't do this radio at Catalunya Ràdio"

--- Two of the three Ondas I have at home and the third at the radio station. The Rey de España award I have at the radio station, the Òmnium one too. Very spread out.

--- Surreal question. If you could choose, would you prefer to go to the future or return to the past?

--- To the past because I hope to reach the future. To review myself, reinvent myself, re-examine myself. To meet the people who are no longer here, to talk to them.

--- In June, it was a year since your mother died. That day you were in Istanbul supporting Pep in the Champions League final. It must have been a terrible moment.

--- My mother was already ill but I never thought that would happen while I was in Istanbul. And I remember being in a shop next to the Grand Bazaar buying a tie with Jaume Roures and two of his sons. And I received the call. I reacted the best way I could and cried when City scored the goal because everything unleashed there. Luckily, I had Pere (Pep's brother) and Joan Patsy next to me.

--- Do you think about death?

--- Yes, of course. I'm afraid of suffering, but not just my own. That of others. Generating harm and sadness torments me a lot.

--- How do you deal with getting older and having more and more candles on the cake?

--- Badly! But I'm not a Peter Pan. Before, dinners with older people were for older people. Now, luckily, there are mixes. People in their fifties who go with people in their twenties. Those in their thirties who go with those in their forties. And that gives me some peace. Those who have PeterPanism are pathetic characters.

--- It happens to me that I always think everyone is my age and then it turns out they could be my children.

--- Well, that's very good. And why does this happen? Well, because you need those people because that's how you are. And people who are like us, it shows. Another thing is how we are inside. If one thing doesn't work out, another does.

--- I can't imagine you doing nothing.

--- Neither can I.

--- So, it's impossible for you to be doing nothing.

--- Nobody is doing nothing.

--- I love doing nothing.

--- But you're always doing something! It's like those who tell you: think in white. And you think in white, but then you're already doing something else.

--- What are you like when you get angry?

--- I get angry little. With the program team, I practically never get angry. The problem is that since I'm rarely angry, when I do get angry, I get angry badly. And then it's: "Get out of the way."

"I get angry little. The problem is that since I'm rarely angry, when I do get angry, I get angry badly"

--- I am spiritual, but I will tell you that I am increasingly rational thanks to psychology.

--- Have you ever meditated?

--- I have done yoga.

--- I can't imagine you doing yoga.

--- I would love to meditate, but I have a problem and that is that having to think in white makes me very nervous. And I think: "Now I have to sit for forty-five minutes, doing nothing?". Whenever they tell me to think in white, I think of Flotats' play Arte, but of course, once I've thought in white, then the play, the actors, Flotats appear and I get distracted.

--- Have you visualized what the last day of El món a Rac1 will be like?

--- I have thought about what I should say and I don't know. And above all, if I have to cry, I will cry. And if I have to laugh, I will laugh. And I'm not going to record it. I will do it live. If I get emotional, I will get emotional because that's what's appropriate.

--- Are you easily moved to tears?

--- I cry at the moments when you least expect it. And yet it's very hard for me to cry when I'm supposed to cry. At my mother's funeral, for example, I didn't cry, but when I got home I remember that Sergi Ambudio, a radio colleague who lost his mother very young, sent me a message and told me to watch a movie to cry it all out. And I watched Spielberg's The Color Purple, which is the movie I cry the most with in my life.

--- Do you still cry with The Color Purple?

--- It's an extraordinarily therapeutic movie. Like The Bridges of Madison County or Fried Green Tomatoes. I put them on and have a good cry. But that's what I was telling you, I never cry when I'm supposed to. In fact, I never do anything when I'm supposed to.

--- That's probably part of your charm. I'm finishing. How do you like your Cola Cao?

--- It's very important that it has lumps, otherwise, I won't drink it. And I love to pick up the lumps with the spoon and put them in my mouth until that coughing point comes.