We are at the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC). What is it?
It is a unique research centre set up in 2001. In addition to research, it has other objectives. For example, we have a great commitment to disclosure and we organize a lot of events in this area. On the other hand, what is very important to me arises to catalyze science in the Basque Country. To do this, we have an excellent program of visitors, we receive over a hundred visitors a year, which has influenced both our results and our culture, which is ultimately a very lively center.

Are all the researchers in the country the physicists?
We all work in the field of physics, that's true. However, nowadays research is quite multidisciplinary in all areas, and for the research we do now it would not be enough with only physicists, so here it is all around us. I, for example, am a telecommunications engineer – then a PhD in physics – and as I have biologists, a lot of chemicals… Now, for example, in my research group is Teresa Celaya, a PhD student who studied biomedical engineering.

When did you arrive at this centre and why?
In 2005, I went to the United States to do the end-of-career project at Colorado State University. In principle I had to do a PhD there, but in the end I decided no.

How?
I was clear that I had to go home. I was told Trip. My grandmother got sick, when I was coming out of the closet… It was a totally personal decision. Here I studied several possibilities for doing a PhD. As I studied at the University of Navarra, there I had a couple of options, but through a friend I met Javier Aizpurua and I got the opportunity to do the PhD at the DIPC under the direction of him and Pedro Miguel Etxenike. I ended up on that path.

What was the subject of your thesis?Behind all the research I have done there
has always been a central theme: the investigation of the interaction between matter and light. I will try to explain. To give you a very simple example, we are sitting at a table right now, and you see this table next to you and you see it's brown. Why is this happening? Because the rays of sunlight come to us in lines of stroke, they collide with the table and reach your eyes. When they collide some colors are absorbed and others are reflected and come into your eyes. The shock of light beams with the table is the interaction between matter and light, hence, for example, the colors we see in our lives, the shapes and the shadows, and so many examples. What we do research in our field is what happens with this interaction when objects are not the size of a table, but small. As objects diminish, the rules of physics gradually change to the quantum world, and when we get to atoms, things are completely different.

Do you research the quantum world?
Not quite. Quantum phenomena manifest themselves fully when matter is the size of a few atoms, which I'm simplifying, but we could say more or less that. We do a little more research than this subject: the optical response of nanoparticles.

What would be the size of a nanoparticle?
It is a nanometer of 0.0000000001 meters. The nanometer is 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a hair to say something simpler or meaningful.

As you're talking about this, you're smiling. What drew him from science?
I've been bored a lot since I was a kid. I've been very curious, but once curiosity was satisfied, I would get bored again and I wanted to do something else. On the other hand, science attracted me a lot from a school age and it was clear that I would learn something related to science. At first I wanted to do mathematics, then physics. In the end, I was told that with engineering I could make money [laughter] and from there I went. But in engineering, the same thing happened to me, at first I was at the top, but to get to fourth or fifth I got bored, it was all the same: protocols, numbers… At that time I had two professors, Pedro Crespo and Hector Mancini, both scientists, and with them I realized that the questions in the research were endless.

Despite curiosity, there will always be new curiosities.
Yes. And there's another factor, which I now see clearer, though I didn't realize at the time: I didn't see myself as an engineer. I looked at other engineers and said, "I'm not like them, and I don't want to be like them."

What did they look like?
I'm going to tell you: men, white, straight, serious, trouser, etc. The issue of referents passes to many, including women. In my case, being a man, engineer, well, but being homosexual, I had another problem. In addition, I was at the University of Navarra, and there were also some tensions there. Anyway, when I started doing the PhD, I saw another layer. The goal of engineering is to create things that are applicable and affordable. We were taught to develop technology in the career, and when I started doing the PhD, I discovered what it was, not developing technology, but developing knowledge, and then I became deeply fascinated. Perhaps I wasn't fully aware that we have to generate knowledge. And there, when you're facing mystery, you never get bored.

After his PhD, he held a postdoctoral degree in the United States at Stanford University. He lived in San Francisco for four years. How about that?
Actually, the first year of San Francisco was wonderful. I felt all freedom, I made a lot of friends. I had everything I needed. But emigration is not easy. It's one thing to go to a new place and be really good, juerga and work, but over the years you get into a routine, and Americans had to start living differently, because there was no other alternative.

And you didn't like it?
In short, it's another culture, and adapting to another culture is very hard, to have the family so far. So when I talk to immigrants today, here I have a lot of friends and friends, I admire them very much, and I don't understand how people don't see the sacrifices they're making to be here and the things we live in. And going back to the point, American culture is very hard, wonderful in some things, more fun than ours, but competition is very violent, the level of demand is brutal and also in the academic world.

Aitzol, you're not a scientist who lives closed in the lab.
Let me break this stereotype. We often think that scientists are very square, that they do very concrete things, that they are people without creativity, and that idea is absolutely wrong. In short, I can imagine few things that are more creative than science. Let me explain why. We have talked about knowledge before, because basic science aims to make known or discover things that are not known. We have tools to do it: math, physics -- but when it comes to discovering what you don't know, if you don't have creativity, you can't do anything. So science is a very creative project and a fundamental part of culture. We often see culture and science as separate things, but – and although I really like culture – I am very clear that science is a high-level culture. I would say that those of us in science have all this quite present, and it's very rare to find scientists who don't like culture.

What could I answer if I asked him about the objectivity of science?
I don't know if science is totally objective or not, that should ask a philosopher, even if it seems strange. Over time, I've learned to respect these concepts. To talk about this we should discuss whether the truth exists. In any case, there are objectivable things that science investigates. You can find truths, partial truths, they're never rounded truths. Science is constantly being built. I do not believe that we ever reach an absolute truth. But it all happens over and over again in science. In the end, science is very simple: we all do it every day. If I want to take that pen and I'm approaching my hand and I see I don't hold it, I'll see something going wrong, or if I take the pen over and over again with my extended hand, from there I can objectify with the pen there and my hand can take it. What science does in the end is that. There's a hypothesis in the air, an idea, we all have hypotheses about everything. All science does is take this hypothesis, test it and see if it works or not. And not only that, but it repeatedly demonstrates whether or not that hypothesis is true.

It works for the visibility of the LGTBIQ+ community in different projects. Why is visibility important?
First, when we deal with bullying and homophobia in schools, we often think it is overcome, things are better, we live with that impression. That is not the case. The numbers do not recall, but the Spanish association COGAM [the Madrid collective LGTB+] conducted a study on homophobia among young people aged 15 to 25 years. The results are enormous. 50% of students who do not identify themselves as heterosexual suffer bullying daily. It says fast. I didn't suffer it every day either, but today it seems like this. 42% received no help from schools. 5% quit. The number of suicides is huge. So we should start: we suffer a lot in schools. And then those problems -- bullying and homophobia -- we take them into adulthood. All of this has consequences for our lives.

In the case of women scientists, thanks to the work carried out by feminism, much deeper studies have
been carried out and it is perfectly possible to see where they fall into the career progression, where they leave science. The same is true of us: not only with the LGTBIQ+ community, but also with racialized communities and other minority communities. And we have a big problem: there are no referents.

In the case of the LGTBIQ+ community, apart from Alan Turingeta we have no other referents. And it's amazing. In science, there is no marica, no bollero, no crossing? Of course we do, but we do not do them any, we do not give them any importance. Women are not given either. I don't understand how it can be, but that's the reality.

Since 2018 you have organized the event in Science of Pride.
Yes, the first was organized jointly by the DIPC and the Materials Physics Center, mainly Idoia Mujika and I. We organized some talks. They were very successful and people thanked us. Bringing a lot of people closer to an event is one thing, but when someone thanks them for organizing something, there's a change. It creates a need. Since then we have organised things every year, and this year we have prepared two events, one in Bilbao, together with the Chair of Scientific Culture, and the second in November, which we have not yet completed the date. We want to do it in schools. That's where we're fighting, fundamentally to drive new referents and show new realities to the next generations.