Many you have not read, some are old or repeated. But Meritxell Bautista wanted to recover them from her parents' house as a tribute, to transmit the love of books to her children, who are super digital. She and her husband, Josep Olivet, have made a living from the internet. At the age of sixteen, he set up the company that, when it appeared in 2012, would become FibraCat: “We are the perfect tandem, el seny i la rauxa; "He handled the technical part, and I handled the business and marketing part." They had just met when Olivet told her that if she had a son, he would be called Josep (the fifth generation). Bautista answered that, if she had a girl, she would be called Berta. And that's how she was.
In the study of the house in Sitges – which they share – there is a white bookcase that matches the piano that one day she will learn to play (now she says her nails are too long). In front, on the desk, are the awards, such as a heavy Pompeu Fabra or the awards with which both Manresans de l'any have been recognized, in different years. In Manresa is their company, the children's school and they started a family. They spend more and more time in Sitges, it is the space of calm and peace, where they will grow old. They have the covers of La Vanguardia corresponding to the day they were born. She is from April 24, 1978 and her name would have been Jordi. She was named Meritxell because she does not have a translation. There are also photographs of her father, “always present”, who died in December 2020. During confinement, Bautista decided to create FibraCat TV, becoming the first female president of a television channel in Europe. Among the portraits that Pilarín Bayés has made of him, is framed the letter that Jordi Cuixart sent them from prison as president of Òmnium to congratulate them.
Read mostly on weekends. On paper. At daytime; at night he would fall asleep. She does it on a corner bench in the living room, or in a hanging chair in the garden, or in a chaise lounge next to a sun-drenched Buddha; Look for areas where you can watch the children. As a child, they instilled in her that, to be smart, you have to read a lot. In the Christmas verse, she recited Calderón de la Barca. She was a giant girl (she is now over six feet tall) and a lover of Spanish literature, especially of the generation of '98 and '27. At twelve years old she liked Antonio Gala. And when they made them read La celestina in class, she had already done it.
Later he became interested in Caterina Albert, and then The Celestial Body, by Lucía Echevarría, caught his attention. Her readings were “very random.” She says this has given her vocabulary and a broader view of everything. And memory; She studied law, then tourism. Before, at Salle Montcada, she won poetry prizes. His mother, Lola, still remembers his verses; She now saves the magazines that highlight Bautista on the lists of influential women (for example, Forbes) and tells her neighbors about it, she publishes it on Facebook. Her mother ran Whirlpool's sales office, she had a senior position in a men's company and traveled a lot. Her father, a lathe mechanic at the factory in Can Cuiàs, got up at five in the morning and spent the afternoons with Meritxell.
Her grandparents took her to school. In a cupboard on the bookshelf she keeps a red Olivetti Valentine that her mother gave to her grandfather so he could write her war memoirs at Quinta del Biberón, “it's a work of art, she had it like a treasure". This Baptist reads a lot of feminist books, about powerful women around her. And thrillers, from Mankell to E.L. James. She is not passionate about the genre (“but, just as I eat everything, I read everything”), she liked Walking Blindly, by Jordi Soler Ferrer. She has books in German from when she did an Erasmus in Austria, in English and Chinese, which her children are learning. She will learn it too, like how to play the piano.
And he will do three more things: write a book; have a store that is a bookstore and florist. And create a foundation to materialize everything they created at FibraCat TV and help people carry out the projects, which is what they do at Manix Capital: “I want to die old and happy, having contributed something cool.” He concludes: “For that you have to work hard and continue the cultural legacy.”
