Borja Sémper (Irún, 1976) has been out of politics for a year and a half and is happy in his new life in Madrid, but he has not completely disconnected his public facet.
It is now exhibited with
Things that pass
, a book that is not about poetry, aphorisms or
haikus.
Or maybe yes.
Things that happen, like that in general ... You haven't broken your head with the title.
I had been thinking about the taxi about the title, because I sensed that you were going to ask me about it, you know that I am a very smart guy (laughs) ... I was thinking about the amount of things that happen. To all and constantly, things that in theory should be obvious and objective, because they are what happens to each of us, but that suddenly have become almost a counterculture. In these times the obvious and normal is the revolutionary, the disruptive, what a corny would say. I am very interested in the things that happen as they are, without complicated interpretations or a thousand readings, and hence the title: I vindicate the obvious.
What is the obvious to you?
Truth versus lies, that the future is more important than the past, good manners versus rudeness ... These times are ripe for rude people and that is why we must stand up to rudeness. I don't know, recovering what we learned at home because it is much better than what the Kaffirs impose in the digital world.
In the midst of the posturing era and getting smart, you come up with this defense of simplicity. Do you like to go against the tide?
Today it is almost snobbish to claim what is reasonable and logical. When I write or when I reflect on reality, I am very interested in removing the layers of dressing and decoration and trying to arrive at a nucleus that is probably simple because, in the end, life is simpler than what is projected on the public plaza.
After all your life in the public eye as a politician, shortly after retiring you publish a fairly intimate book of poetry. Do you have an exhibitionist dot?
The weight of public exposure is carried on the shoulders and there comes a time when there is a logical exhaustion. I think that, deep down, everyone who has dedicated himself to something of public projection over the years ends up exhausted and needs a change; it is healthy to occupy another role. What happens is that the goat pulls into the mountains and in the end you think: "If I like it and I have the opportunity to try to influence in some way those things I believe in, why not do it?". But my ego is quite controlled, I have always been aware that you have to carry the ego on a very firm strap.
The ego has an exaggerated notoriety.
Yes, whoever denies having an ego is denying a reality. The problem is not having an ego, the problem is when the ego dominates you. This is a no-brainer too; we are going to make the festival of obviousness claimed as something positive.
Going back to poetry ...
Honestly, I don't think I have written a book of poetry, neither aphorisms, nor haikus. I don't really know what it is. The poet is another type of profile. I confess that I often feel like an intruder who arrives, greets and leaves.
In writing or in everything?
In some things a little less, but in almost everything because I believe that in life it is good to be a good intruder, one who does not come to steal but to pry a little. I have realized that at 45 years of age, and it annoys me to say it, I am fundamentally curious and I have more and more doubts.
Are you wrong with your age?
I am very conscientious and it humps me, not to say it fucks me, quite a bit over time. Not because of a Peter Pan syndrome, which maybe if I psychoanalyze I also have it, but because the years go by and I realize that there is less left and I love this about life. That's what pisses me off the most. Like Woody Allen, I think dying is a very bad idea and as the years go by, inevitably, we are led to think that we have less than half our lives left. And this causes me some discomfort. Although I still think I'm 30 years old until I look in the mirror.
In the text you dedicate to Edu Madina you say: "There are people who think the same all their lives. And they tell it, satisfied". Have you changed your way of thinking a lot after leaving politics?
More than getting out of politics, over the years and experiences. I am very surprised at this moment in which we are in which it is claimed not to change its opinion as a value in itself. Monolithic and immutable opinions are required. I believe that there are two or three immovable things that are the pillars of our life and of our way of understanding the world and interpreting it, but from there, if you are a minimally complex being, doubt ends up colonizing you. I have talked a lot about this with Edu and many other friends who do not think the same as me a priori: how good it is to be able to evolve and change your opinion on a thousand things. The claim of the absence of change has me very surprised in these times.
Madina and you are what could be and it was not in PSOE and PP and, in these times of polarization, you have both ended up outside politics and they call you 'centered center', as if disagreeing without yelling at each other or trying to understand each other was something negative. At what point did everything go from mother?
Actually, I think there is a polarization of public discourse that does not correspond to the polarization of real life. Just like I don't think everyone is such an asshole on the street as they are on social media. Maybe they are a little bit of jerks, but not very much. People are neither so pissed-off nor so polarized nor so radicalized in their everyday lives as is apparently apparent from public or published discourse. That is why I believe that today it is necessary and ethical to claim the doubt, claim the will to find you. That does not mean that you do not have ideas or that you are a liquid person, what it means is that from your own ideas, you are very interested in listening or even learning and internalizing things that a priori were not in your ideological orbit. This, which until today has made us progress,now it seems to make you a dangerous relativist. Well look, long live relativism because relativism is the epic today.
I see you delighted with the atmosphere that we are left with.
Battles must be fought and the battle of our time is to vindicate the mixture and impurity, vindicate the doubt.
Do you think there is going back in this polarization?
Anne Applebaum, from a more Anglo-Saxon conservative and liberal point of view, has written an extraordinary and extremely interesting book on the decline of democracy, but I don't think it's that serious either. Although I go for weeks, I confess it. There are weeks when I think that the West is collapsing and others in which I believe that these are just fireworks and that normal people, who are in the majority, are more and more up to their balls and at a certain moment they will claim that space of normality and encounter, thus breaking the polarization. We have a few years of polarization left, but I think that will generate such a level of exhaustion that normal people will eventually impose the return of reason in the public square.
Are you sure there are a lot of normal people left?
Only time will tell. It is true that today everything indicates that we are going to polarize more, we are going to face more, we are going to turn society even more into closed niches and that the battle of identity and the cultural war is going to consolidate as the scenario in which we are going to have to operate and live. This is what everything around us points to, but I believe, and I want to believe, that this is going to break because moderate people, people who do not have complexes or fears to hear or confront ideas in a reasonable way, leave to end up imposing.
You have always surrounded yourself with people who think differently from you. Joaquín Sabina claims to be your friend, we spoke before about Edu Madina ...
And I am also a friend of Santi Abascal.
Do you have shared a real and terrible enemy like ETA?
Totally. I believe that my career in Euskadi helped me, looking at it now with perspective, to prioritize the importance of really serious things and put aside what is relative and less important. If you share a trench with Edu, with many Basque socialists or with Abascal, because they want to kill you, you join a lot. Sure. Everything else is not that I don't care, but I take it into the background. There is a field of political discussion that I find very funny and very interesting, I have never hidden my ideological distance with the PSOE and VOX, which does not prevent me and I do not understand why it should prevent me from having a good personal relationship with someone VOX, the Socialist Party or Podemos. I don't know why a political disagreement should lead me not to speak to someone. I have never understood.
It is clear, but the politicians themselves seem the most interested in exhibiting bad relationships with each other, often nonexistent.
In this tweeted democracy, the confrontation must be fed back and, in addition, staged it, despite the fact that later, in reality, the great agreements are not reached in the Plenary of Congress but in the corridors. Those of
La Cultureta get
rid of me
when I speak of bridges, but it is a valid metaphor to say: "Hey, somewhere we will have to meet". The bridges in democracy are in the corridors of Congress. But, yes, these are times of imposture, of televised democracy and tweeted politics with which there is a notable part of staging and exaggeration. It does not worry me or it seems wrong to me that this exists, because it always has been, the problem is when the imposture and the staging eat up reality. And that's one of the risks we have right now.
After a year or so, do you miss that atmosphere?
Nerd. The bug always goes inside, but I am very happy professionally and vitally. I am happy in Madrid.
Madrid, another of the main protagonists of the book, has been at the center of the country's debate for months.
When has it not been?
Yes, but as a Madrilenian I had never felt this apparent need to define what it means to be. I had no idea that being one gave me an identity.
Ramón Gómez de la Serna said: "Madrid is the capital of the world that is most difficult to understand. It is incomprehensible as a great artist, as something that has something great about it." That definition is the one I like the most. I believe that the identity of Madrid is precisely what you indicate: the absence of identity. But what I can assure you as a Madrid-born adopter is that all the good topics about Madrid are fulfilled: you arrive here and nobody asks you where you come from or where you are going, it is easy to make relationships of all kinds, either to do business or to flirt. and fuck more. This is Madrid. In addition, from the cultural point of view it is immense. I have the feeling that many Madrilenians don't quite believe it. With all the flaws and problems you have,As a capital comparable to anyone in the world with its objective and real difficulties derived from the economy and the difficulty of access to housing, in comparative terms I do not know another city as great to live in as Madrid.
Are you enjoying this new life?
Very much.
My professional project at the EY consultancy takes me time and enthusiasm, I am having a time like a dwarf and getting to know areas and professional skills that I had not had the opportunity to develop.
In addition, they allow me to do many other things such as writing or collaborating in the media, which is very important to me.
When I was in politics and the one who worked 22 hours a day was exalted, I always thought that if you only did politics, you would not do politics well.
You must have other occupations and interests, I don't care about a rock group than doing a professional handstand.
That allows me to grow and do my job better, so I will continue to carry out parallel activities.
Although I will try not to get into many puddles, because I have already stepped on too many in my life and I do not want to.
You haven't stepped on one in this interview.
You are a beautiful person (laughs).
Anyway, I have realized something that takes away a lot of problems: I understand politics less and less, so why am I going to talk about it?
And there are not so many puddles, if you don't talk about politics.
Neither politics nor football.
Well, in that matter imagine me, that being able to be from Real Sociedad and loving it a lot, I am from Madrid.
My mother was born in Puente de Vallecas, she was one of those emigrants who left for Euskadi in the 60s in search of a better life, and the first gift from my grandmother when she came to see me in Irún was a Madrid shirt.
What team am I going to be?
Well, Real Madrid is already very honored.
Now, I understand that someone may think that I am from Irún, the PP and Madrid for fucking (laughs).
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