You had planned a documentary series of 13 episodes, but you had to leave Algeria out, and you also had problems rolling in other places.

Yeah, that's Algeria's rage. I really wanted to meet the musicians who live there, I know the town well (I was there as soon as the civil war ended) and I know a lot of musicians, best friends; we also made a great investment (in time, resources and money). But at the last moment they did not give us permission and we were worried that we would also have problems in the following countries. That’s why they’ve been incredibly tense since the beginning. In Morocco, for example, all the material was held hostage for three days at the airport in Tangier; in Bahrain we had to act equally and clandestinely; in Syria we had enormous problems to enter and we had to use influences, talking with Hezbollah and all... It has been great, but a difficult task, titanic, because in fourteen months making eleven documentaries is a great task.

They come back and there are uprisings in the Arab countries.

The documentaries now have a second reading and will remain as documents for history: they are the musical map of these countries at a specific moment, from which everything has changed. One thing is what they told us, what we lived through, and another is what they explained through music. And now, judging by what happened, the words were really premonitory. In Egypt we believed that there would be an uprising and that the flow of blood would be terrible. On the other hand, the human cost has been high, but nothing compared to what it could be. There was an expression that the Minister of the Interior had thrown away many years ago: “There are 80 million of us, if we are 5 million less nothing happens”... There was systematic torture for any nonsense, a terrible police prepower... There was a huge amount of chaos and there is still a lot of work to be done, because corruption is very entrenched and it is difficult to say no to privileges, but what a joy it is to see a dictator thrown out!

In any case, there are elements that come out very little in the media here because it is not of interest: that they are struggles against neoliberalism, against capitalism; and that the rebellion has been carried out through tools that the working class knows very well: a general strike, but a general strike that stops everything. When they stopped the Suez Canal, and Cairo, and they stopped the village, that's when the trouble started.

It's not like here then, under the influence of minimal services...

Fuck the minimum services! They carried it there, but all the rest was still. Even if we listen to Gaddafi, what is he saying? To get everyone back to work. And to tell you this means that the people have power, but here we are anesthetized. On the other hand, these dictators have been established by the West and Israel (just look at the images in the archive); they are sons of bitches, but our sons of bitches, as Roosevelt said about those in Latin America. To protect the supply of fuel well, to protect the borders well because of immigrants, and to keep under control the possible terrorist threat. And in return, we give you the weapons, even the Basques. So it's wonderful to see that it turns around, even though it's hard now.

Do you think the domino effect will continue?

What happened in '68? It didn’t come by itself, in previous years something was already in full swing, boiling water. And it exploded in 68, mainly in Europe, but in general around the world. And now the same thing is happening: It has reached the Mediterranean, we have forgotten about Greece, but in Greece there are also huge strikes these days and they try to cover it up because talking about Greece is talking about our capitalist economy. It is not a domino, but when there has been an impatience and it explodes in a place, when they have seen that the people have been able to do it and they know how to do it, that is what they have done. If it had been an armed uprising, it would not have been successful, because it would have been easier for the government to combat weapons with weapons, but when the people rise up in this way, it is a huge lesson.

So juxtaposed, in 2008 when you were interviewed by your colleague Garbñe Ubeda for Luz, we brought the following headline to the surface: “There’s a smell of war all over the world, the only option is the neighborhood.” Has this neighborhood been the success of the uprisings?

Without a doubt. Both in the uprisings and in the work that I have just done, because it has been a dialogue between cultures. When we were making this trip, the European commissioners well marked the lines of their discourse: they opposed multiculturalism Merkel, Cameron, Sarkozy. Bombs of neutrons, for a single discourse and culture, for the discourse of the big ones: of neoliberalism, of the market economy. And what's left of this is the work of the neighborhood. That’s what I’ve been trying to do since my trench, my cultural framework: music, cinema and meeting.

Is this what we lack in the West?

Yes, we are still in shock in some countries because the blow of globalization has been very hard and has dragged us. There are huge communication gaps because, despite the fact that you seem to have virtually 5,000 people, a lot has been lost in terms of relationship and solidarity. The main syndicate we have here is my ass and me. We need to find new ways.

Do you think that with everything that is happening, our image of the Arab countries has changed?

It seems to me that no, because the people who follow Al Jazeera only see revolts, the information channel leaves little space for culture, and I think culture is the tool to know the people. However, it is very interesting because thanks to Al Jazeera we are seeing faces first hand.

If culture is the tool, do documentaries act as a bridge?

Yeah, I'm convinced. First of all, because people don’t know what music is made in these countries or what music is made; what level of music there is, the cultural level. And also to see how they express things, gestures, faces, voice... They are documentaries of great value for the culture and landscape they show, and for their political value. Imagine the multiculturalism that exists in a country like Egypt at the crossroads. Multiculturalism is not only when we Europeans say that we associate with other cultures; multiculturalism is what Egypt, Sudan teach us, because cultures and people everywhere come together. We have a lot to learn.

What structure do the documentaries follow?

The model has been that of Checkpoint Rock: drawing a sound map, from traditional music to the latest trends. Often through a trip (for example in Morocco from Tangier to Marrakech; in Egypt around the Nile River...). In each place we meet with a musician and he represents what happens in that town. Although the capitals have the greatest importance, we have also extracted the surrounding villages, and in addition the districts of the capitals are huge. We have gone to the mountains, to the fishermen of the port, to the Bedouins of the desert...

You say the Checkpoint Rock model. It has a message of denunciation, but at the same time it shows that the Palestinian people are a living people. Are we going to find that again this time?

Yeah, that's right. Because there were images that we are used to in Palestine, but also other ones, we did not provoke it, we just turned on the mic and let it express itself. We have already done so and we have found very interesting discourses, more poetic at times, more direct... A rap group that used violent words in Egypt, a musician who wanted to reflect the suffering of the people in the Tunisian style of malouf... The ones that appear take the journey from traditional music to experimentation and successful hip-hop in the Arab world; music takes on another dimension.

No one knows about Persian Cats, by Bahman Ghobadi, focuses on undergrounded Iranian music and reflects the regime’s prohibition that making music by means is a transgression. Did you see that?

For example, many women appear in these documentaries, and their dress is already a transgression, as well as their willingness to go out and sing on stage... On the other hand, they have problems in different countries: for example, in Lebanon at the moment there is a huge musical explosion, you have all kinds of forms of expression (traditional music, experimental, rock, hip hop, hardcore, improvised...), while in the Gulf (Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen) we have seen great setbacks, in Kuwait we can not even organize live concerts, and in Kuwait we can not win many live concerts. In Tunisia they use words in a very metaphorical way to combat censorship; in Morocco it is forbidden to use the word Sahara... Imagine the music that hugs you when a person is drowned.

Women play an important role in documentaries.

You said transgression... I would mention the avant-garde: in the case of women musicians the word is avant-garde. To begin with, because the two totems of Arab music are women and in each village women are gaining more and more space in Arab countries, and especially in music, they are head-to-head in this field with men. All the people who have made the narrative thread, except in Tunisia (and we have done it through the comets of Kuwait and Bahrain) are women. They still have a way to do it (also here), but it is true that our stereotype of women there remains from the ground.

Do they also have music as a means of proclaiming the language?

Without a doubt. Most of them do it in Arabic and give it a lot of importance. In addition, the Arabic of each country has nothing to do with the others; the documentaries of Morocco and Tunisia and the statements of several Syrians, for example, will be broadcast in Al Jazeera with subtitles in classical Arabic. And in Lebanon, for example, they emphasized the need to sing in Arabic, because English and French are gaining strength.

What attitude does it take to do such a job?

Come to a place and try to enter that town, immerse yourself, make contact with the people. Being with people, really getting wet with the reality of that country, not staying at the hotel. That's how you get a lot of prejudices. Musicians have their own language, we connect immediately, we share many references, and I have an advantage in this regard. In addition, I have had a very good travel team, from the guerrillas, because I myself belong to the guerrillas: Natalia de Ancos, Jordi Abusada, Ángel Katarain (with me since the time of Kortatu) and Atxus Acosta, from Vicepresides, with me also with sound issues since the time of two.

You have worked as a musician, journalist and filmmaker in documentaries.

The basis is music, I consider myself a musician. But I've worked with all the things that are related to music. Musician, Egin also served as a radio communicator and I have participated in numerous soundtracks for the cinema. We also started recording and documenting tours and concerts with the Red Winters, my first documentary with the Jamaican experience [Bassque Culture] and then Checkpoint Rock.

So you look comfortable as a filmmaker?

Yes, more and more. Especially after directing 11 documentaries. I say documentalist because it is different to work with fiction or reality and I feel very comfortable immersed in reality.

You have also served as a jury at the FIPA festival in Biarritz and the San Sebastian Film Festival. Have you had the opportunity to learn from other directors’ feedback?

Yes, I love to discuss it and I’m passionate about cinema, and they usually look for diversity in juries like this one. A lot of currents, being on the jury allowed me to see very different points of view, and of the rest of the jurors, yes, you always learn, and I am always ready to learn, always open. This year I would like to make a film with a couple of these documentaries linked and to offer them at the San Sebastián Film Festival; then they will also be screened at the DocsDF festival in Mexico, I have others in mind; and I would also like them to be screened at ETB, with Basque subtitles.

With the recent uprisings, the Al Jazeera channel has received a huge echo. What philosophy did you find there?

I can say that I am very proud to have worked for them, as well as seeing the work they are doing now with the uprisings. They have given me complete freedom to make all the decisions once they have said in which locality they wanted me to do it. There have been moments of tension because there are different currents, from a very open and leftist one and a more closed one, and we have had strong discussions, but the director supported me. The collisions and disappointments with more closed currents also occurred to me on the radio. I have worked for the Al Jazeera Documentary Channel and have had a great relationship with Al Jazeera English. And I can tell you, Al Jazeera English is clearly the most interesting medium of communication at the moment, because of the spirit and the people that exist, most of them coming from the BBC.

They tried to discredit Al Jazeera...

Yeah, yeah, and bombing! There is a recorded debate in which Tony Blair tells Bush no, not to bomb the offices of Al Jazeera in Qatar. But the offices in Baghdad were bombed. Journalism has enormous prestige in the world, but it is very bad for the interests of Europe and they will try to encourage the BBC in Arabic and especially Al Arabya to support their interests. The US and Saudi Arabia, when they realized the influence of Al Jazeera (which has an audience of 40 million people considering all its chains) and that there were many leftists involved, created their own chain next door in Dubai: Al Arabya, with the money of Saudi Arabia, and although it is critical at times, is always underlined its dependence on the United States and Saudi Arabia.