Innocent Day was born and you define yourself as a good person.
Yes. I firmly believe that innocence is the reflection of benevolence, which is the greatest virtue. But people don't value this. I think being a good person is the best way to be human. I'd like to put on my epitaph, "You tried to be a good person."

However, I have always been shy and very heady. When I was young, I took some rich yolks and once I got naked on the Sarasate Walk, protesting my sister's bad hairstyle.

And since they advised you not to be a pride, right?
Indeed. I'm a very normal person, but I don't know why, I've always been very leader. I studied with the Jesuits and they chose responsibility for many puestos.En the university was also very popular and on many occasions I was elected as a representative of the students.

I've always been very good at having ideas and getting others to work on them. So a priest told me to be careful and try not to be a pride. But I'm not special. I've been listening to people 52 years old and I've seen clearly that everybody has very interesting stories to tell and write.

Why did you study psychiatry?At age
15, I suffered an anxiety attack. I had a depersonalization crisis. I was at home, and suddenly I saw that everything around me was starting to move, like it was a movie. I had the feeling that all this was not real, and that I was floating. My father was a doctor, a pediatrician and I called him, but he didn't understand me. He told me that to stop saying nonsense, and then I saw that that was a serious issue and that mental problems can be a source of hard suffering. So at age 15, I decided to be a psychiatrist. The psychologist didn't come up to me because the race still didn't exist here.

Has social commitment always been the focus of your life?
No doubt. I have always found it essential. At 15 years old, for example, we organized a group to go to Madrid to ask for freedom of the press and religion. We had the train cards with them, but the parents didn't leave us.

Social issues have always seemed very important to me, and I reaffirmed this idea when I went to England in 1963. There I met another society. The situation was completely diferente.En the four years I was there I realized that what was here was a botch, in every sense and with a delay of 10-15 years.

Why did he go to Oxford?
I studied at the University of Navarra, even if it was against Opus. I wanted to go to study in Zaragoza, but we had no money. My father was a pediatrician, and luckily we didn't go hungry after the war, but we were five brothers who were able to get ahead with what their father earned without any luxury. I was in a group of Catholic students and we were very against Opus. We were pretty red.

In the third year of my career I entered the department of Psychiatry and at the end of the studies we saw the need for training abroad and proposed a project. Five members traveled to several universities in Europe and the United States with the intention of returning and creating a modern university department. We did so, and it was up to me to go to Oxford with the help of the Donostian psychiatrist Félix Letamendia. It was a fundamental stage, both professional and personal. This marked me forever.

I studied a lot and experienced hard experiences, like the suicide of the young patient Rosalind Bairstow. I had to take the rope off my neck and tell my parents what happened.

There I realized that throughout the career they didn't tell us about death. That and sexuality were taboos at university, and these are precisely some of the pillars of psychiatry.

How was psychiatry in Navarra at that time?
Here was the psychiatrist Federico Soto who marked the line. He said who could enter the mental hospital and who could not. When I came back here, I left the first consultation in a basement of the Hospital of Navarra and he told me that he was entering an area of his property.

What was your model of psychiatry in Oxford?
I found a specialty that was beginning to overcome the asylum model. This model of psychiatry based on a therapeutic community included other professionals such as psychologists and social workers. In addition, he sought to involve the patient in his healing process.

There I also knew about the use of the first psychopharmaceuticals. Until then, there was nothing and, for example, drinking wedges to sleep or beer was advised.

At the same time, the first mental problems arising from drug use began to emerge. These would arrive later, along with the spread of drug use. Their society had nothing to do with the one here. It was much more open. Social interests were much more present and politicians followed the citizens' proposals. The opposite was the case here and it is still the case. Unfortunately, we have not made progress on this.

What happened when he came back?
Visitors made a report at the request of the university. We made a very good report, even from today's psychiatry, but too modern for those of us who commissioned us. We asked, among other things, for teachers to fully respect students.

The Rectorate of the University of Navarra received the examination and then destroyed the team and eliminated the majority of its members.
So we got together to create the SMEDA company. We started a new psychiatry there, in collaboration with psychologists and social workers. The company became the foundation in 1976 and then we called it the Instructor.

In addition to caring for people with mental problems, from the beginning our objective was to promote mental health. We soon began our collaboration with public health and participated in the Navarra Mental Health Plan of 1986. This plan revolutionized psychiatric care. It meant the eviction of the psychiatric for the social integration of the mentally ill. Navarre pioneered the whole state. For many years we have dedicated ourselves to the care and training of towns, centres and educational centres.

The first opportunity a priest gave me to do a sex education session. Catholic Action was based on the Labrit fronton and left me a room. Then I started in the schools and went all over Navarre until I was 61. I let the students identify me more with my grandparents than with my parents, and then I passed the class program to another teammate.

So did Skolae before?
Yes, but in ramp. In addition, I was doing partner therapy and I spent 35 years teaching
soltero.Tambi courses on the subject of death, especially in Madrid. There I taught many courses of death and mourning. So I was there until in 2011 I had a stroke. The doctor told me that I would get very nervous when I could not find the words I needed and I started writing leaving aside the conferencias.Ya I have published three books.

After more than 35 years of collaboration with the public health system, Argibide was no longer a concerted centre. How did this happen? A
few years ago, psychiatrists who drive another type of psychiatry began to take precedence. They were trained in psychiatry based on mental health. They paid special attention to the seriously ill and carried out very good centers, but leaving aside this new community psychiatry, like the one we have now seen so much needed with COVID-19.

However, we continued to work in some areas with Argibide until the government of change kicked us out. When Uxue Barkos began his term of office, in 2015 he came up with someone we couldn't be there as a private public sector promotion foundation. I had a good relationship with Uxue Barkos and Koldo Martínez, but they left us in poor condition without giving explanations. That hurt me a lot.

Carlos III. When I got the medal, I thought it was an attempt to compensate for that damage.

What consequences has the pandemic had?
COVID-19 has caught us in a critical situation where the strength of human nature is a bit in decline. We have not had any more mental health problems, that is, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders or other pathologies have not increased, but we have found weaker beings that overflow in situations of stress. These are not serious changes, but inadequate reactions. So I say our problem is lack of mental health. Promote mental health to improve the defense of people before life.

What can be done for this?
We must try to ensure that all people work their own inner world. What is now called spirituality, not religious, fulfills that inner world, acquires its own criteria and reaches values that give meaning to the vida.Hay three very important moments in life, to which special attention must be paid: the first seven years, adolescence and the
more than 50 years. The first seven years are decisive. There you play everything, because in those years the person's bases are laid, and that's what parents have to do, without leaving the child's education in charge of the school.

Adolescence is also a very important time. Young people collide with their parents and that is why the presence of an adult who connects it with young people is required. This adult should tell you that now life is in their hands and that they have to make the script of their movie, choosing the values they want. Sports or leisure monitors and trainers, for example, can be very important here.

Then comes the age of change, about 50, during menopause, and old age. In this age group there is a very high percentage of people without mental health. And the sad thing is that you don't help the elderly. I called for a psychogeriatric plan to alleviate the discomfort of these people. In old age there is still much to do and to live.

How do you know the future?
When I start thinking, I feel fear, but I have a lot of faith in the human being. I think we need a new paradigm, apart from idols like money, success, fame and consumption. We need humanization, and that is taking care of ourselves, of other living beings and nature. I would also add that it is essential to promote feminism, that is, equality between women and men. All of this is the future of humanity in the 21st century. That is why we need to promote groups or Community initiatives that are starting to be mobilised in this direction, and in that respect the role of the media is very important. Small initiatives like the Information Foundation or the ARGIA magazine can help in this mobilization and that is what we need to protect.

LAST WORD

Script

In recent decades it has become increasingly evident that in the face of a problem we expect others to solve it. Today, especially among young people, what we are seeing is a large number of people who do not have their own personality, who do not have the capacity to influence or suffer. What we in psychology call “the strength of the Self” is very weakened. There's a huge flow of information, but we don't dig into anything. We live more and more for the moment and very superficially. As a result, consultations of psychologists, suicides, suicide threats and unprecedented drug use have increased dramatically. People don't work. Young people live by providing answers to this and the other, but without making proposals. That's the key. Everyone should make the script of their film.