Antonio de la Torre: "Pedro Sánchez has no ideological or intellectual greatness. The PSOE is only left-wing when it suits them"

Iñako Díaz-Guerra

Updated Wednesday, March 20, 2024-21:37

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Interviewing

Antonio de la Torre

(Málaga, 1968) is an adventure.

We are chatting for a while about the human and the divine before starting with what has brought us together —

We Treat Women Too Well

, the comedy of maquis and shots by Clara Bilbao, between Cuerda and Tarantino, which is already in theaters — when He blurts out an unexpected "you can record this now" and the script you had in your head explodes into the air.

The actor with the most nominations in the history of the Goya Awards (14 and counting) is not interviewed, we try to follow him.

What can I record? The sign of the times bores me.

We live in a time in which you have to position yourself with everything and all the time.

For a few years now I have had the feeling that I am on one side or I am on another without even being aware that those sides exist.

In everything you have to take sides or you're shit.

During the conflict in Catalonia, someone told me: "You're an

idiot

" [laughs].

He made me laugh, honestly.

There are people who are very sons of bitches but with talent.

I remember another one that also made me laugh: "Legend has it that before, Spanish films were made and Antonio de la Torre didn't appear in it."

I have strayed from the topic, it usually happens to me. I accept it. The fact is that this need to take sides and encourage a public conflict that later is not such causes me concern, because I know that in personal relationships there is no such tension.

Politicians kill each other in public and then get along much better than they show.

They take it as a game and it is not.

I am an actor and I can play a bad guy in a movie, but they can't pretend like that in Congress because what they transmit creates a real bad climate.

I don't know, I'm nobody and I still measure the consequences of what I say when the artichoke is put in front of me.

We must exercise responsibility, not self-censorship.

Can I tell you the anecdote about when I understood what self-censorship is?

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Adelante I was still a journalist and working in Sports on Canal Sur, when a high-ranking official from the Junta de Andalucía appeared in the box at a match and the director started making jokes saying: "What? Should we take him out or not?"

He laughed but underneath that joke what was there was "no shit, we have to get it out of him yes or yes even if it doesn't matter a shit."

Since that moment I have been very clear about what self-censorship is. But you have done little self-censorship. What's wrong.

I'm sure I've censored myself a lot more than I think I do.

That is really powerful self-censorship, which one is not aware of.

There are always silent issues in this country, for example the Monarchy has been the most obvious case for 40 years.

Now we see progress, but its place has been taken by others.

They are taboo topics, we assume them and we don't even consider questioning them. What topics do you think about? The most unquestionable topic is the system itself.

There's no one to touch it, there's no balls.

This capitalist system is perfectly established and tied by the Amancio Ortega and Florentino Pérez of life.

The same ones are always pointed out and there are many more, but they serve as an example.

Power is not questioned, this is the system and that's it.

I don't know, it makes me think a lot.

A lady comes to clean my house and when I see her working I know that, deep down and on a more domestic level, I am a young man who has also bought this system.

We are links in a chain of power. Is that why you got into politics?

You were on Sumar's lists in the last elections. They offered it to me and it seemed to me that it was a very delicate moment.

The possibility of Santiago Abascal being vice president of the Government was and is terrifying.

Honestly, this is what moved me to accept.

But I knew that, even though I was aware of current events and had been a journalist, the only contribution I could make at that time in my life was advertising.

He made a little noise and that was my contribution, although later you don't know if it adds or subtracts votes, but I wanted to give my support.

It was a measured and symbolic act and I did not intervene in rallies because it seemed frivolous to me.

Politics is something serious and requires preparation. I have the feeling that, despite having positioned yourself openly on the left, you do not arouse as much antipathy on the right as other actors like, for example, Javier Bardem. Because I am less important [laughs]. Do they attack you a lot? I don't think so.

To begin with, I try not to hate anyone.

I played a role that was very inspiring to me, which was that of Pepe Mujica [former president of Uruguay] in

The Night of the 12 Years

.

I learned incredible things from him because he was subjected to torture for 12 years, they drove him crazy, he was part of a guerrilla commando... He made a journey from violence to peace and another from madness to sanity and both were almost in unison.

I find it very inspiring because I don't want to hate anyone.

When I say that I think it is terrible that Abascal is vice president, he does not mean that I hate that man or the Vox voters.

I think that their way of understanding the world does not make it better and that they lack empathy, but I do not hate those who think differently than me, at all. How did you see the controversy with Vox going to the Goya? Well, then you know has been normalizing.

Nor are we in cinema as important as they want us to believe.

The Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Government of Castilla y León had given birth to Spanish cinema and then had to eat the gala with potatoes.

That little bit of poetic justice amuses me, but if this life has taught me anything, it is to accept contradiction.

This takes me a little into these realms of "damn, how you red people like ham."

Damn, I'm on the left, but I'm not an idiot.

I have nothing against wealth, my problem is poverty. We are talking while the Amnesty Law monopolizes the debate.

What is your opinion? I think it is necessary.

To begin with, it must be remembered that the amnesty will also benefit many police officers who, in the performance of their duties and defending order and legality, were involved in riots.

Very little is said about this because everyone is with Puigdemont.

It seems to me that it is giving a political channel to something that he should always have had.

However, I have always said one thing and I want to remember it: they are not political prisoners, they are political prisoners who challenged the State and knew what they were doing.

The topic is very multifaceted.

I think it is a positive and vital measure for coexistence, but being from Malaga and living in Seville, imagine how much I want Catalonia to become independent...

The actor, discovering that there is nothing on the other side.Martín Mesa

None, I suspect. In fact: zero.

But I go back to what I did before, I try to understand the other.

Despite what I have said about Abascal, I would be happy to have coffee with him tomorrow.

Coexistence is essential, it is what I believe in, I can and must live with all the people who vote for Vox, although I don't know if they think they can and should live with me.

This is what worries me and the same thing happens to me with the amnesty: I may not love it, but I think it improves coexistence because there was a fracture in Catalonia that had to be recomposed.

Junts had taken to the mountains and with this it is re-entering national politics, let's see if the budgets are approved... I don't feel a special sympathy for Pedro Sánchez, I don't consider him a left-wing leader or a person of greatness ideological and intellectual, but evidently its capacity for political survival is worthy of study.

Of course, a great politician is something else, he is someone who changes the world and makes the world better.

I don't see Sánchez in that... Anyway, all this brings me to another topic. I have decided to let you flow, what topic? The PSOE is only left-wing when it suits it and needs it.

In the last legislature, the big left-wing decisions were made by Podemos, but since we are so purists and we started with "I am more left-wing than you" in the end we always ended up fighting.

Maybe it's that I'm getting older, but it's hard for me to see life in sides and I have very close personal friendships with people from the Popular Party.

I'm not in any trenches.

Anyway, I got lost... It turns out that you have a movie coming out.

'We treat women too well', the atmosphere is there for some enlightened person to take the title seriously...When I got the script I thought I couldn't make this movie, I broke out in cold sweats imagining the promotion and how difficult it was. It was going to mean not getting into a garden with the first journalist who wanted to catch me giving up, and you know that some journalism is like that.

The title is understood when you see the film, but I smelled the courage of Clara Bilbao, the director, to make the film in these times where everything is taken literally. Bilbao makes her directorial debut at 53 years old and has three Goya awards as a designer. wardrobe.

10 years ago she saw a short of hers and she fascinated you, but she had to paddle a lot to get to the full length.

Despite the boom in female directors that we are experiencing, it is still more difficult for them to have the opportunity. It is a very good time, and it is about time, for women both because they have broken that glass ceiling and in terms of aid for being a woman.

I don't know what to tell you about whether it has been more difficult for her because she is a woman because I don't know the details.

The talent was obvious, but in this profession it sometimes happens.

I also took a long road, imagine the shit I had to eat to be an actor that I even had to be a journalist [laughs]. Journalist, politician and actor.

You are provoking. We are all Koldo.

They tell me little.

How do you experience from within the reports of abuse and harassment towards women in the film industry? Any silence is complicit.

To say that women, structurally, have been at an inferiority in all classes and in all professions is obvious.

In the cinema, too.

My mother was an almost illiterate housewife to whom no one even gave the opportunity to consider being something else. I have lived that reality for women and the change has taken much longer than it should, but it is happening.

It is beautiful that men and women see and embrace each other as equal beings and that this is one more stone for a better world.

Little by little we are heading towards that.

I'm convinced. What plans do you have now? Go pick up my son from school, the rest will follow.

Have you left something out? I couldn't tell you. Then it won't be serious.