Don't ask why when I was 18, instead of enrolling in the company, I started washing dishes at a hotel on the coast. I don't know, I can't explain. You can't explain everything that happens to you. There's the feeling, the instinct... When you talk about innovation and creativity, you can't generalize anything, every case is unique, every country or discipline is different. I have not had teachers and when I was 22 years old I was one of those responsible for the restaurant Bulli has led me to reflect on why things are. It's a treasure, because when you're taught and taught too much, you don't question the answers that serve you. I have in creation the limitations I have in knowledge. The unknowledgeable copies it, or worse, copies itself. If anyone who doesn't know Pan Tomaca comes up with a brilliant idea of mixing bread and tomato, they'll get ridiculous by the idea of innovating. Let us not deceive ourselves, knowledge opens the doors of creation.

Can overdose of information stifle knowledge?

Of course, but we also have much more knowledge and much more affordable than 50 years ago. Then there was a minority who had the opportunity to read fantastic books or study a career. This does not detract from the fact that the Internet is looking at us in a new vision, and that any new horizon requires an adaptation of judgment. We live in a society that has the sin of confusing research and creativity, but they are areas of very different need for knowledge. For example, why do I need to know the history of the Visigoth kings or the eleventh of Barça in 1970? I'm not a historian or a sports journalist, and if I had to make a plate about it, I have Wikipedia. We owe ourselves a general cultural base, but the strict criteria and the mastery of the tools to find what you need are the keys to the journey. Now, once it has been resolved to move forward, it cannot fail, it has no right to make a mistake.

What does error mean in an elite as fragile as yours?

Error is part of the path that the solution points to, but you have to be very clear where you can be wrong and where you can't. You can't make a mistake in a company that you've created indebted to butterflies, but if you get into a restaurant when you take out a dish, nothing happens. You must always have the distance that you are wrong, but naturally, instinctively. What's happening is that today, innovation is overly mystified, it's up in the fog, but creativity is to get the ampoules out of the pot. Why do you think fire is the most precious invention in history? It seems that those of us who talk about creation have to explain everything with complicated and complex words for the public to believe that we are unique. It's increasingly happening to me to go to conferences on creativity and not understand anything. That's not worth it. What has to be explained is that everyone can innovate in their lives, in the way they educate their children, in the way they organize and manage their agenda… Innovating in your DNA will leave you unconsciously. To do this, it is enough to have fun, to appreciate the vertigo of danger and to continually seek the reason for things. That's a game, a passion, and that's where a mistake is essential.

Why is speech more important than activity?

Because if you want to exist, it's essential to have a speech. You can't be hypocritical. I'm not going to suck anyone's ass for getting out of my skin, I don't know where or to get a report. There are many who do so, and that's why I don't like media projection at all. I want to share and convey what I do, but my conversations are just a reflection of what I'm doing at every moment. What I have today for absolute truth tomorrow can be seen as a farce. Creativity means being able to pave and change your mind. The discourse of what is being created is constantly changing. I assume that by putting myself in front of the media, I want to share my mistakes. What happens is that with the Internet everyone creates their own news and that you can't control what they'll say about you. That’s why you should do whatever you think is right, knowing you won’t be able to control the consequences of what you do. This forces you to be ethical and honored, although sometimes society and the environment push you into other temptations. I'm clear that I'm an honest person, but when I look at some passages in my life, I realize that the circumstances and the environment have diverted me.

Does that pressure, that area, have to do with the decision to close the Bulli restaurant?

It has been the change that the team, including myself, has called for. We needed new ways to do what we like, and above all, a more humane march. On the one hand, we were winning 15 Champions League, and the system, the environment, can't be so successful. On the other hand, we were fallen in monotony and inertia. We knew that we would create between 120 and 130 dishes a year, that some years would be more fruitful than others, and eventually we would get bored. The easiest thing would be to leave what it is and to keep an eye on it, to retire at age 50 and have a couple of restaurant advisors to spend time and go lecturing around the world. With this, I must have earned more money working less than now. In fact, on November 20, 2009, when I decided I was going to take two sabbatical years, I didn't know what we were going to do, it was just the subconscious idea of building a foundation and a center for creativity. Today this is materializing, it is about making a project more exciting, important and significant than the Bulli restaurant. That is what encourages us, that is what makes us live, and we know that until we reach the level of those words we will not have a rest.

I think I talk to Guardiola...

It's no coincidence that you're friends and share a lot of values. We live in very different worlds, but we come together to confront those worlds. We both say that they are not our groups, but that we are part of the group. For example, sometimes it falls to me in the group to make Guardiola, never from Messi, and occasionally also from the masseuse. On the other hand, we agree on honesty, ethics and the desire to share. That doesn't mean we're Caperucita, but it's clear to us that everything doesn't work to get things done, and that there has to be a mindset and a way of acting at the bottom. The Bulli style is the German-Latin Silicon Valley. In Germany we have the concept of seriousness, but also the freedom of the Silicon Valley. If you tell me “Ferran, I will work from home tomorrow” there is no problem, but if you delay five minutes in a meeting it is a lack of respect towards the team. To this must be added our Latin character. We like to laugh, have fun, play, march... We're not where we are.

They're not the best times for identity.

In my dishes there is no ideology, but a way to understand life. I don't know if I'm right-wing or left-wing, I don't know what it means to be abertzale in this world ... I have a feeling, I feel Barcelona, Catalan, but I have a family in Spain and, unfortunately, Angela Merkel sends me. We live in a wild identity crisis. I don't know where we're going to end up, I don't know if we're going to be sent again. We didn't realize that the world was changing, and transformations have to be done before things happened, not when they're happening. We have opened our eyes too late and some changes cannot be made running and in a hurry. We asked ourselves, "How the hell are we going to get out of here?" but nobody has clues. What is clear is that those of us who have been lucky will have to help and collaborate more than ever before, and in order to get out of the hole we will have to find answers to many questions that we do not know how to answer at the moment.

The remoteness of the land or the status of “citizen of the world” also generates more and more questions.

Going from New York to Los Angeles is the same as moving from Barcelona to St. Petersburg, but for them it is something of their own and not for us. Our concept of rooting is in a critical situation, as it cannot be rooted forever in a circle. For example, if you're a biotech blind and you want to work in cutting-edge structures, you have to leave here. Suppose you want to open a restaurant and your city is about to overflow hostels, but there is room for over 100 pintxos restaurants in Beijing. Going to Beijing should be the most natural decision in the world. In this sense, physical uprooting has nothing to do with ground clearance. What is more, I would say that objective assessments do not reflect this. 50 years ago very few people had the garden. Today you eat much better and healthier than you did then. The problem is that we do not take advantage of the resources and possibilities we have. I mean, we eat well, but not as well as we could eat. We hold on to education. If as a child we learn sums and subs, as an adult we will be able to add and subtract, and if as a child we are taught that the important thing is to eat well, we will be able to exploit resources to be able to eat well. All right, we should not forget that 30-40 years ago the problem was not eating well, but being able to eat, but someone will have to explain to me why they always eat well with wealth and glamour. It has nothing to do with it. You can prepare potatoes well or poorly, and that's education.

At the last moment, aren't we constantly consuming time?

Yes, but the key is in your attitude of consuming time. When I approve your proposal for a dialogue, I can think that I will lose an hour, or else, that your questions will serve me to reflect and that it will cost me less than the psychologist's consultation. It is clear to me that it is essential for human beings to do what they like, to take advantage of their activity. I often think that society should replace mechanical, boring tasks that bring nothing to human beings. This is the path to happiness. The toll worker on the highway is doomed to boredom, even working all the passion inside. If I were in my hands, I would mechanize the work that can bring nothing to man and instead send people to the field. If your activity does not generate any wealth, consume pure time and pure time is hard to satisfy. Perhaps happiness and the balance of society are based on other principles and principles.

Can you advance the pillars of what the Bulli Foundation will be?

It is an organic growth project that will have a vocation for growth within 40 years, even when we are on our way to the hole. In that organic growth, we're going to learn, trying to predict where and how the world is going to change and designing transformations in function. We want our center to be a benchmark in the efficiency and effectiveness of creativity. For this reason, we will be a space of process, efficiency and audit of the creation, based on the spirit of the Bulli restaurant and on the language of the kitchen. Although the final result will be dedicated to the world of cooking, we will leave it in the hands of all the conclusions of the investigations and we will demonstrate year after year the suspicions of our laboratory of ideas. For example, what is the most effective way to seek talent? How is it created more acutely, with continued work or with momentum? What is the time of creativity? Should we keep the schedule or the change of schedule make us turn on? As we answer the questions, we will build a network of innovators that will give us the way and the way to access deeper research. We will collate the results and conclusions of our work on the Internet and little by little we will materialize the Boobs. We want to keep entertaining ourselves with questions about why things are going, because that's the guarantee that the spirit of the Bulli restaurant will stay. If we succeed in demystifying those concepts, bringing them to earth and appearing so that people don't get frightened, I think we'll open many doors and come up with many solutions.