Last Monday, at Casa Seat Cupra, Barcelona had the opportunity to attend one of those conversations that don't need much of a script because they have a lot of life behind them.
Two friends, two geniuses each in their own universe: Javier Mariscal, father of Cobi, that Olympic mascot that he himself says went down in history, among other things, for being the first to drink beer, and Javier de las Muelas, father of Dry Martini and Gimlet, two temples of mixology that have projected Barcelona to the world. Well-set, the official artist of the two had already done the honors with a gin and tonic before starting.
That was less an interview than a bar conversation of those where the world is fixed, questioned and, above all, observed with a mixture of irony and curiosity. Because the bar of a pub, they claimed, was the great social network before digital social networks arrived. And it still is: things happen there that no screen can reproduce.
Mariscal and De las Muelas generously dished out criticism: to themselves, to the house that hosted them, to the newspaper that had summoned them and to everything that crossed their path during a nice conversation that at times tended to chaos that, despite everything, we managed to conjure.
There was intelligence, insight and a complicity that was anything but complacent.
But behind the joke there was intelligence, insight and a complicity that was anything but complacent. Because being friends doesn't mean thinking alike. Quite the opposite. Perhaps that's even the point: being able to disagree, laugh about it and continue sharing a bar.
Our Javis, in their purest state. Because if the famous duo of young filmmakers describe their Madrid, the two old rockers who were summoned by The New Barcelona Post also describe a capital of Catalonia "in colors" that will never completely lose them, no matter how much it tidies up.