Xiana Siccardi: Looking Beyond the Hill

"At 24, I had a very aggressive cancer that made me rethink my life and even say goodbye to my friends. I invited them home and said goodbye to them. While everyone else was going out and having fun, I learned that we haven't signed a 90-year life contract, that it's not written anywhere that we will reach old age, and the coronavirus has simply reminded us of that."

Journalist and writer Xiana Siccardi fixes her green, curious, and lively gaze on the Sapporo beer bottle she's sipping, then smiles and blurts out: "If you accept a piece of advice you haven't asked for, whatever it is, don't delay it".

She can boast of having led by example. One morning, when she was 40, she woke up "like Gregor Samsa," and realized that she had spent the last ten years running. She had worked at La Vanguardia, El Mundo, or RNE, long linked to crime reporting ---she was director and presenter of programs like Les Flors del Mal and Cròniques de Barcelona---, she had put in the effort on television programs like Viajando con Chester and had been deputy director of Al Rincón de Pensar, by Risto Mejide. She had done so many things that she could come to the Bar every day for decades and never repeat an anecdote.

But that morning was different: "I decided to stop for a moment. I grabbed a backpack and went alone to the Himalayas. A decision that, logically, almost no one understood. And it was there, at the foot of Everest, where things I didn't expect began to happen to me. I met some local Sherpa people who, little by little, opened the doors to their fascinating, hermetic, and very unknown world to our eyes. Imagine that these are people who live by climbing the highest mountains in the world in extreme life-or-death situations, and whose culture and traditions move between Tibetan Buddhism and animism. Since then, I have returned several times to those wild and remote Himalayas. And with the Sherpas, I have talked about life, death, friendship, love... in a dialogue that, four years later, still endures. I am indebted to them. They have taught me to have a more intentional life."

That experience was recorded in Sherpas. The Other Story of the Himalayas (Ediciones del Viento). A book that, co-written with Nepalese mountaineer Lakpa Nuru Sherpa, "summarizes three years of our conversations since we met at the foot of Everest." A successful volume that is already in its third edition. The authors' profits go entirely to help the Sherpa community, "in these difficult times, and with part of them we have also removed a ton of trash from the Everest region, for which we are partly responsible," explains Xiana who, after sipping another drink, adds, enigmatically, with all the projects of tomorrow orbiting around her: "And just wait!"

Life as discovery

To understand that journey is to understand Xiana as a fruit of miscegenation, the transits between homelands, borders, ideas, customs... "My maternal grandparents were Galician villagers who, in February 1950, bought a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires. Imagine crossing the Atlantic without knowing what you would find on the other side. In parallel, my paternal grandparents were Argentinians, of Genoese descent. My parents met in Buenos Aires and came to Barcelona, where I was born. Anyway. I believe that these family comings and goings, moving without many suitcases, reinventing oneself in each new place and, above all, the intuition that there is always something beyond that hill, that the world is very big and there are many points of view on the same thing out there, are things that have shaped me."

Xiana finishes her Sapporo and, before ordering another, adds: "I find a life of discovery more interesting than one of fitting in, assuming the satisfactions and problems that this entails."

Currently, she advises various clients on content strategy, social media, and reputation, from advertising and communication agencies, while also creating audiovisual formats, websites, and personal brands. She also collaborates with Blanquerna-Ramon Llull, where she studied Journalism. But her eyes light up when she returns to the Himalayas: "I am preparing a trip for October, which Lakpa and I are organizing together with the Historical Society of Travel and Expeditions. We are going to see Everest, visit lost villages and Buddhist temples, many of the places that appear in our book. It is a transformative journey. Well, in fact, it is the journey that changed me. Whoever wants to come, can write to me."

Barcelona, city of passage

Xiana grew up surrounded by suitcases. "My grandparents, after returning from Buenos Aires, ran the Hostal Orleáns for years, which is still open and retains the same name, right in front of Estación de França. I spent my afternoons there, among the dining room tables, with the travelers."

In the sentimental side of her retina, those streets of the Born in the 80s are etched. "On the way back from kindergarten, I would cross paths with the sailors of the Sixth Fleet, whom I didn't know what they were, but they seemed like beings from another planet. Well, they were." As a teenager, she experienced the alternative Gràcia Festivals, the heavy metal bars of Escudellers street, and Poblenou.

--- And today? What is your relationship with Barcelona?

--- Today I love wandering through the city and visiting historical sites and bookstores again and again. I'm amazed by Roman Barcelona, crossing the walls on Bisbe street and seeing the Temple of Augustus. I never get tired of going to those places. And I'm in love with the Sant Jordi on the slope of Montjuïc, not divine or warrior, but human and exhausted after defeating the dragon. It has the beauty of someone who has given everything. You have to see it at sunset. I think it's called Sant Jordi triomfant, but they also call it Sant Jordi desnudo, which is undoubtedly a better name.

One only needs to see the expression with which she speaks of it to visualize that Sant Jordi bathed in the lights of the Barcelona twilight. But by the time that image comes to life, the regular is already on to something else. Specifically, glancing at the menu.

--- What will you feel like?

--- Although I'm now discovering spicy, very spicy food, with my friend Geshe-La, who is a Tibetan Buddhist monk, I'm inclined to order a shared provolone and a Neapolitan milanesa for each of us. Are you up for it?