Edurne Pasaban, the first woman to summit 14 peaks over eight thousand meters, once declared that the mountain was the metaphor of life. The ascent requires confidence, motivation and commitment, the three pillars that are needed in every challenge of our existence. And when you can't get to the top? Well, then it's time to do self-criticism and wonder what we could have done better. That's what Pasaban did and she even analyzed it in a book, when she couldn't get to the top of Everest without oxygen. And it's what we should do when we don't reach our goals. It is not necessary to write any book, but it is necessary to try to understand what we could have done better.
On Wednesday, the latest comedy by Jordi Galceran, FitzRoy, quatre dones al límit, premiered in Barcelona. Four climbers meet in the so-called Silla de los Franceses, halfway to the top of one of the most difficult mountains in southern Patagonia, between Argentina and Chile. Bad weather has made them stop until the conditions improve, but then unexpected problems arise that make them doubt whether to continue or give up.
The work is magnificent and the four actresses embroider it. Galceran presents a story of personal improvement, friendship and solidarity. Like life. Or, to be more exact, about how we would like life to be.
By those coincidences, on the day of the premiere, less than a hundred meters away, Jordi Pujol also spoke of mountains in the reissue of Des dels turons a l'altra banda del riu, a book written during his stay in prison in the hard years of the Francoism, and he remembered when, as a child, he ascended a more domestic mountain such as Tagamanent, but a mountain after all, and from the top he observed a defeated country that had to be remade. There was only one self-criticism from the former president of the Generalitat: "I have failed the young man that I was, full of illusion and enthusiasm."
The four FitzRoy climbers, at least, don't let themselves down on stage. In the theater there was a euphoria that Catalan politics has not managed to arouse, where it is not the first time that we have been thrown off a cliff.
