Don’t think we make a sacrifice going to Gipuzkoa, with the excuse that the lady and I are going to make a good extortion,” he said, and we’ve been quoted in the square of Igeldo almost randomly, on a cloudy Tuesday in July. Xabier Amuriza (Etxano, 1941), along with his wife Arantza Plaza, is walking from the top of the town. From Orio to Igeldo not have to drive to the city center. Coinciding with his farewell and the beginning of the photo shoot, Plaza moves to the bus station, where they meet after the interview. We have three long hours ahead, but we've sat down and we've started talking without wasting time. “I have a long history, I have been very questioned in many fields, and now, over the years, receiving some recognition gives a lot of satisfaction.”

The language of stones has given rise to a phrase from the memory book: “A business idea is a happiness. I want joy.” And explanation: “I know what joy is and I need joy to live, I have always needed it, but now, retired, they make me live joyful motives. And for me it's a joy, for example, to come here today and do this interview." In addition to the explanations, the gestures confirm that it is exciting: he speaks passionately of the memory book he has just published on the web. It contains some 500 phrases that show their contradictions, most of them concealing some paradox. For example, sometimes sadness strikes as much as joy. “I have a rather irregular state. I make great illusions and then I get frustrated. But out of disappointment, I've lived happily. Every disappointment has had hope.”

Their purest poisons are childhood poisons. For something begins the language of the Stones: “I am childhood plus an annex.” He still clearly remembers those journeys that came home from the seminary and that lasted around the returns to extend the joy. And because I knew that upon the return, I would start to discount the time back to the seminary. “I have felt few sensations so sweet and strong. Subsequent joys have not been so simple, so sharp, so monocomponent. I understand the ET movie very well: home and home, I had no other feeling.” He was 11 years old, first in the Carmelite Convent, second year in the seminary, where he lived until 24 years old. “I am fascinated by adolescence, because the explosion of me stayed inside, waiting. Perhaps that’s why I’m still experiencing these votatory explosions, perhaps I’m in permanent adolescence.”

The greatest liberation of
life occurred in the early 1960s, and the echoes of “Gu tour Euzkadiko gazte berria” also came to the seminary. In this politicized environment, the beliefs of young Amuriza begin to be grouped. “What is this morality of the itomas? Why do we get God into our consciences? Why should obedience be blind? What does the Basque country have to be rejected? Why can’t you talk about politics?” Remember as the greatest liberation of your life the moment of your moral liberation. “I said it one day: in my conscience I am only myself. Nobody here can send more if I don't want. So I'm free! That security gave me a lot of peace of mind. From then on I began to own myself.”

By the time he became a priest, he was clear that he was working to face internally the hierarchy of the Church. By then he was already freed from the faith of “transcendence”, but it does not seem to him to betray anyone: “People respected what they believed, I only helped them to free bonds, to overcome moral concerns.” It places the question of faith, transcendence, within the weaknesses from childhood to maturity; it is part of the leap from the age of the story to the mental. He does not believe in God. “Another reason to believe that God exists is to believe that I am God. All matters of faith and religions are the consequence of death. From the inadmission of death. For the end of something is nothing but elimination. A simple extinction. What then will we be something? Of course! We were also in the dinosaur era. But not a consciousness, that realizes that I am and that you are. If it's not that awareness, everything else is futile. Do you believe that in 100,000 years, you, Kepa and I, Xabier, in a way, can communicate with all our memory, remembering this interview?” And here he adds one of the phrases in his book: “There is no science fiction like religions.”

Not expecting
transcendence changed life and faced his loneliness. What do you do with life? What is the time to spend? The interior has pushed Amuriza to many places, but it has always finished returning to its usual tasks. “Life is like a tree. You go down a branch, but soon the road ends. If you don't want to fall, go back to the trunk. The rise is also quite limited. Attempts you can do, knowing that you will soon have to return to your general route. For example, I have greatly admired great writers or musicians or painters, but in those fields I have not succeeded. Nor have I had it for free. It makes me really sad, for example, not to be able to draw. I've been in artist circles, but not permanently. All the arts have attracted me, but in the end I have been a poor bertsolari.”

Her eagerness to spread in multiple directions has given her much joy, but I would appreciate it if she were one of the most satisfied. “There are people like a quiet spot, without so many internal conflicts. That's lucky. I am not like that.” In any case, since he decided not to have “great” hopes, he says he lives more fully: “Liberated Basque Country? I will not know. The Basque Socialist People? I will not know. Basque country? Neither. Even less will I know a fair and nonviolent world. I will try to defend those expectations, but my moral distress doesn't help them at all, I decided not to suffer in vain. I don't always get it, but I feel calmer. I come to the last slope and I want to live in a sentimental disconnect from the world of time I lack.”

Ideals and fears
It cannot separate thought from feeling. “Blaise Pascal has a famous phrase: the heart has reasons that the mind does not understand.” He says it's nice, but it doesn't match. “Feeling, animals also feel it. I can’t feel anything without thinking and I can’t think anything without thinking.” However, often there is sadness that cannot be explained and can only explain the perils of one or more hormones. “Yesterday I was happy, and today, without changing the reasons, why am I like that? Why am I cheering back on coffee? It's hard to swallow that you're a chemical lab. Leaving metaphors, I'm a little bipolar." They tend to have cycles that range from sadness to euphoria and often match the cycles of the day: “In the mornings, normally my constant mood is down, but in the evenings I don’t feel like going to bed. I once told Alfonso Sastre: ‘I have never found compelling reasons to get out of bed.’ He was surprised. It's true. Emotions often escape you to unnecessary sites. What can you drive? Intelligence. Thoughts. You have to feel what it deserves, what is sensitive, not something uncontrollable. And that is distinguished and achieved through thought, although sometimes thought itself falls to me.” Finally, on sales, it often deals with statistics: “If the sales have always been transitory, the ascent will return.”

Throughout his life he has suffered another internal shock: fear and ideals. “People think I am brave and radical, but I am a poor inward. All kinds of corrosive fears come to me. Suddenly I manage to get rid of them, realize they're absurd, and then every now and then comes euphoria and sometimes depression. How have I been like that, for no reason? Being aware of it fascinated you. But ideals are also there. And I don’t know what caused me more.” He remembers many moments of his life and it seems to him that if it had not been for fear he would have gone much further. The desire to abandon the seminary of children, the boys of the prison, the ghosts of the sessions of bertsolaris, the more or less strong actions, the action of Eusko Gudariak in Gernika before the kings of Spain… He says he was about to have fears. The team and ideals have been wrapped up in life. However, he has no regret or concern for what he has not done. “In any case, it is a pity that we cannot.”

Old age, back to base The
expulsion of personal matters does not like much. “It has always seemed to me that we are alone in the deepest feelings of life. Who am I going to start to tell the joy of the peasants of children, of the seminar at home? Then they will start to answer 'Well, I, the other.' The listener cannot receive his feelings with the strength that you give him, and when you guess it comes the disappointment. It is often said that there are emotions, but I am more raised, at least in important feelings. And don't give calacas! This is a dialogue, and you must necessarily be interested in what I say, but if not, I do not want to talk about my inner world, because there is nothing more disappointing than to be heard with indifference.”

It lives old age as a retreat to the basics, as a period that faces its own raw material. “When you are in the whirlwind of society, you can enter the demand with one, the challenge with the other, in all kinds of debates, but in old age you pass the awareness of yourself. I, especially now, live with myself. And what are my most important feelings? Those I've always had. Those coming from childhood.” Being more isolated, he says that vanity is maintained. It's a phrase from the book. “Age does not reduce or humiliate divinity.” And it justifies: “If your head starts going a little bit, you’ll still lower your divinity, but if not, your desire for identity doesn’t shrink. Banality has no explanation, it's still there. All you can do is you don't know. Or give an appearance of humility. I don’t want that falsehood.”

Now the main concern is to occupy time in some way: “Empty time is a black hole. I ask the day not to come blank. I’m afraid to be undocumented instead of watching a naive TV show.” Most of the time, it has to act. Almost every day and also writing. “Writing gives me pleasure to face life. When it seems to you that you have said something right, that gives you a good definition of your feelings or thoughts, that really does.” Save the customs of overtime. “Custom has a bad reputation, but we are animals of customs. A habit that allows us to always know what to do. Sit at the table in a place, enter a certain bar, go through a place... As long as it does not become conflicting, continue to do so. Tradition follows instinct.”

He feels lucky because at 82 he is in good health, but he doesn't know how long he will be able to maintain his current life. Meanwhile, the company gives it satisfaction above all, and the simple feelings that it's OK. “Sometimes I hear that you have to prepare for death. Prepare? That will come unprepared. In addition, I think I will have a free death, because the joy of ending the penalty will be greater than that of those who rejoice.” And the Basque Utopian Prize has gathered us in this interview, retrieved a last sentence related to this concept, as an epilogue: “It is a great happiness to be of a city that did not establish conquests, no monarch was awarded, no emperor nominated it. That city doesn’t exist, but I’m from there.”