Raül Balam: "It excites me when people cook for me"

--- What would you be doing on a Friday at this time if you hadn't met me for a snack?

--- I would be in the kitchen of Moments preparing for the evening service.

--- What time do you start preparing it?

--- At half past three in the afternoon.

--- Are you in charge in that kitchen?

--- I am in charge there, but always in agreement with what Carmeta (Carme Ruscalleda) would do.

--- How are you as a boss?

--- I am much better now than before.

--- Before you got clean?

--- Of course! In every sense. Your perspective on life changes a lot, from the way I soap my hair to how I experience death.

--- What do you mean?

--- Well, before I experienced deaths as if I were a flamenco dancer who had lost her husband in the bullring. I lived it with great intensity, and now I experience them as a transition of life, more calmly, and I accept it.

--- I declare myself an absolute fan of your Instagram stories. You have a sensational comedic flair!

--- I am very much a clown and a cabaret performer. I really like to make people laugh.

--- Haven't you thought about exploiting it?

--- I can't exploit it any more! However, I won't deny that I wouldn't mind collaborating on a show doing something.

--- Like what?

--- I would really like to sing.

--- Do you sing well?

--- No, but I can carry a tune. And doing some silly thing from time to time on a show, I wouldn't say no to that. But I am a cook.

--- In many of your Instagram stories, you appear in your underwear or directly naked. Is that because you are proud of your body and want to show it?

--- I have come to love my body. Before, I didn't love it at all. I didn't even love my hair. I used to get Japanese straightening because I didn't accept my curls. And there came a time when I just don't care anymore. Do I have a big nose? Do I have curls? A bit of a belly? I don't care. It's my body and it will accompany me until the day I die.

--- What do you want to tell your followers with your stories?

--- I think I do them mostly for myself. There is no purpose of achieving anything. Instagram for me is a work of art, an artistic installation, and it works well for my OCDs (Obsessive Compulsive Disorders). One of my OCDs is diagonals.

--- Diagonals?

--- Yes. Haven't you noticed that my Instagram is diagonals? Wherever you look, the photos always go in this order: person, thing, person, thing, person, thing, and there must be diagonals in between ---he takes out his phone and shows it to me---. Who sees it? Who notices? Nobody, because I do it for myself. It's my little museum.

--- What would you have liked to do if cooking had not crossed your path?

--- I would be a hairdresser. Also an artist, comedian, actor. But I have a terrible memory and I don't think I would be able to learn the scripts for the roles when acting.

--- When and why did you decide to always dress in black?

--- My mother made me dislike black a lot. As a child, I fell in love with a black tracksuit, but my mother told me that color didn't suit me. So I stopped wearing black because I thought it didn't look good on me. Then, as I approached 40, I saw that everyone around me was going crazy celebrating their birthdays. They looked like weddings! And I knew I didn't want that kind of birthday. So I decided to celebrate my 40th by traveling alone to Stockholm and listening to Serrat's song Ara que fa 20 anys que tinc 20 anys on repeat. On my birthday, I went to dinner dressed in all possible colors. I looked like a parrot! And ever since then, I've always dressed in black. Or in fly wing when it's faded.

--- And have you never broken the rule of always dressing in black?

--- Only once. Late last year, when I went to Miami with a friend. He is very conservative and I told him: "If we go to Miami, you have to buy a skirt" and he said "okay, but then you have to wear color." And something very curious happened to me!

--- Tell me! Tell me!

--- That when I spoke and moved my arms, I got scared because I wasn't used to seeing color on that part of my body.

--- You have just published Enganchado (Libros Cúpula), a magnificent and necessary book that you wrote with journalist Carme Gasull, where you talk about your addictions and the whole process you went through to get rid of alcohol and drugs. Was it hard to empty yourself and see it written on paper?

--- It didn't cost anything. It was hard, but I really wanted to talk about it. In fact, in therapy, you already talk about it. We started doing it during the pandemic, via Skype. And I have to tell you that after reading the galleys, once published, I haven't been able to read it again.

--- Why?

--- Because it's very difficult for me. I have very much accepted that I wouldn't be who I am without these experiences and it's what I've had to live through, this disease of addiction. And when I think about it, I say to myself: "Damn Raül, what a shitty life." It stirs me, it moves me, it hurts me. Seeing it written, it's impressive.

--- Does it saturate you that everyone is calling you now to always talk about the same thing?

--- No. Perhaps I would tell you that it exhausts me that they always end up asking me the same questions.

--- What haven't they asked you yet that you would have liked?

--- If I feel proud of having achieved it. If it has been a trauma for me. If I regret anything... But they always end up going to the sensationalism of the phrase I say in the book, the one about my first drug dealers being my parents. I have even asked my mother if that phrase bothered her and she told me no, because it is true. Because no one considers that making children toast at family celebrations with some alcohol in the glass is a drug. The most dangerous one that exists.

"I have very much assumed that I would not be who I am without these experiences and it is what I have had to live, this disease of addiction"

--- How I've been doing it for 10 years. Going up in the morning for therapy at the Hippocrates Institute and getting another stripe tattooed ---he lifts his shirt and shows me the tattoo he has on his side that reminds him of each year he has been clean---.

--- And now, when you have to toast, what do you do it with?

--- I don't toast because I'm an addict. The brain has memory and if I toast, I might start a psychological relapse just by making the gesture. That electrical discharge could lead to many things.

--- Who is the first person you make read the book?

--- My mother.

--- And what did she say?

--- My mother was already very tough with the galleys. Not because of what it explained. Think that now she talks about drug dependencies very calmly, but she has always been very tough with me.

--- A mother is a mother

--- Yes, there is no mother who isn't tough. And I like her to be. In fact, we have grown up like that. When I gave her the galleys to read, she told me there were things she didn't understand, because of how they were told. And I remember I gave her the physical book on December 30th and on January 2nd we were leaving for Paris on a trip.

--- The two of you?

--- Yes, my mother and I really like to browse, go shopping, eat, visit museums, and my sister and father don't follow us. These outings with her are very good for me. And inside the car, on the way to the airport, she told me she had finished the book. I remember it perfectly. It was five in the morning.

--- And what did she think of it?

--- She told me it was a hymn to life. And I breathed.

--- Is Carme's opinion key in your life?

--- Yes, but not because she is chef Carme Ruscalleda, but as a mother. Many times I think: "Wow, my mother is the best cook in the world," but I only see my mother. I am aware that I have a very alpha mother. Sometimes I have to remind her that I am already 46 years old and that I can decide what I should do, even if I make mistakes.

--- Does approaching 50 make you anxious?

--- No. When I was young, I didn't like celebrating birthdays at all. Think that I celebrated my 18th crying and left the whole family stranded with the cake in front of them and without blowing out the candles. And now, on the other hand, I love celebrating birthdays. I do like my mother. If I'm already 46, I already say I'm 47.

--- The opposite of the world. Instead of taking years off, you add them!

--- Yes! And at 50 I would love to travel around the world. I don't know where I would start or if I would go this way or that way, but I want to do it alone.

"Many times I think: "Wow, my mother is the best cook in the world," but I only see my mother. I am aware that I have a very alpha mother"

--- I think I have enough with myself! (laughs) Do you know what happens? I like people less and less. Said like that it sounds ugly, but I really like solitude. Because with myself I already feel accompanied. I have many conversations with myself. When I was in the detox center they made us look in the mirror and talk to our eyes. It's very hard to do. Looking at yourself in the mirror and telling yourself the truth is not easy.

--- Do you remember any of these moments that were especially complicated?

--- One day I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize myself. And I started to cry and I spent 3 years crying every day. My monkeys were the cries. I thought they were feelings but it turns out they were brutal withdrawal syndromes.

--- Tell me about Grandma Núria.

--- Oh, poor thing...!

--- You got emotional.

--- I made my grandmother rot so much... It's been 7 months since she died, a week before opening Cuina Sant Pau.

--- So she was able to see you recovered!

--- Grandma was a very church-going woman but in the end she normalized homosexuality. And she accepted that her grandson was undergoing detox therapy. She had come to see me at the center. And she was happy that I was there. Sometimes I would take her to IKEA and then she would tell her friends. Or we would go to mass. Grandma had a plaster Sacred Heart at home and when she died I asked my mother if I could take it to Cuina Sant Pau. And now I have it there, next to the wifi. It's part of the family.

--- What do people not imagine about you?

--- That I am very shy.

--- I would never have said that.

--- I am very bashful. I'll give you an example. I can do anything when I record myself for Instagram, but if I had to do that while someone on the street records me and asks me to do something, I couldn't do it.

--- What do you not forgive?

--- I forgive, but I don't forget.

--- Is there any food you can't stand?

--- Swiss chard and snails.

--- That makes two of us! I haven't eaten Swiss chard again because they forced me to at school and they made it every week.

--- Me because of my mother. I can't stand them. They taste like geranium sand.

--- Is it easy to invite you to dinner?

--- Yes, very much. I love it when they cook for me. Even if it's bread with tomato and an omelet. It drives me crazy.

--- But do you end up going into the kitchen yourself?

--- No. I love to watch. Many times they tell me: "let's go out because what the hell are we going to cook for you". And it excites me when they cook for me!

--- You attended the birth of your friend Meritxell Falgueras. How was that experience?

--- It was a C-section! I couldn't look at anything. I focused on her face.

--- Do you see yourself being a father someday?

--- No. I'll turn 47 in July. Everything must have its moment. I admire and respect people who become fathers at 60, but the energy is not the same. This doesn't mean that if I go out now and meet the love of my life, and she wants to be a mother...

--- How do you like your Cola Cao?

--- For me, preparing a Cola Cao is a whole ritual. First a little chocolate, then I add some hot milk from a pitcher. And then I mix everything. When I have a well-compacted paste, I add the rest of the milk so that everything is uniform and without any lumps.