When I wrote to him the message that made the note to me, I ask him for an interview ...

Well, I wouldn't. I read interesting interviews in ARGIA. The people in your magazine have a different dimension to me, so I told you they have no obligation to post my conversation, no obligation to publish it. If you treat me, I'll be much quieter. I sincerely say to you, if it seems to you that dialogue does not have enough substance, do not publish it and it is already there. I appreciate your work equally and I appreciate your work…

Do you read LIGHT?

Yes, and now I will show you how I listen to your works, not read them, as I am an expert in ARGIA works, using the Spanish reading application, downloading PDFs. [And it made me hear the excerpt of a conversation] Have you noticed, no? The application reads numbers and scores in Spanish, for example. When it comes to breakpoints, the application tells me “suspensive points”, but apart from these incidents the text in Basque reads to me. It's not an old app, it's a little new, and because of that, now, we blind people can also read the Basque press. I haven't had that shape all my life.

Not so far.

No. So far, if I wanted to read the press, I had to tell someone, but there isn't always someone beside you. If not, I've heard the radio. I've always been passionate about radio, ever since I was a kid. My older brother once brought me a little radio from Germany, and since then I was with that transistor. And I keep listening to the radio every day.

In 1958 you were born in Ataun, in the Aizkorrondo village of San Martin, on the hill. Transistor accompanied...

At home there was a big radio that I always knew. And besides, I had my own transistor, the one that my brother brought... We had eight brothers, although the older one was as a child, nobody knew him. Now the two older brothers are not with us. I was little from home, very small, because I came into the world five years after my previous sister.

Are you ever aware of blindness?

From very young. I realized that it was different from others, that they didn't treat me like others. Treated with all the affection and affection, as a child I realized it was not the same. When I was four to five years old, I knew I had something that differentiated me from others. And it wasn't something metaphysical, it was something concrete in the environment. “Oh, you don’t see! Poor!” I received great love in my family and in my environment, but I couldn't conceal the difference: I was born blind and I had all of society's perspectives, values and prejudices about blindness. That's right.

What was your schooling like?

That school wasn't for me. I was going to school, walking an hour after the cottage, and there I was: I was and I listened. As many things were learned in memory, I also learned with the power of the expert. The teacher was going to say “The rivers of Spain” and I learned to say the names of those rivers with my colleagues. I also wondered something about the teacher and answered. It was all in Spanish, of course, not thinking about working in Basque at school! But I'd only been and studied, not enemies, not academically educated.

And so what?

I think grandpa and mother were going to go back and forth, talking to each other and each other. In Spain there was a law obliging all blind people to join the ONCE. The organization had four boarding schools for the blind: Pontevedra, Sevilla, Madrid and Alicante. The North Peninsular was Pontevedra, and there I was on the eve of 11 years. There I started my academic dossier. And I started learning braille, for example.

That will make the mountain into the world. Go to the barnetegi of Pontevedra from Aizkorrondo in Ataun…

The fracture was huge. I barely knew Spanish. I understood, learning to listen to the radio, but talking bothered me. “If there is no other alternative, I will have to go to Pontevedra,” I thought. And I left and broke everything: geographic, emotional, affective, linguistic… From being at home every day I went to Ataun twice a year, in summer and Christmas. Meanwhile, some of them moved, each of them began to make their own way, and the people's friends did the same. And I also changed. And I went back to Ataun and realized that that wasn't my place anymore. This boy, who felt natural in Ataun, lost confidence in his surroundings before going to Pontevedra: he lost that confidence forever. And I've never recovered that naturalness.

They say one nail takes another one out. The poet Gerardo Markuleta says no in a poem.

In Pontevedra, I contacted people like me. However, education was very authoritarian, very narrow, both politically and religiously, but that is where our rebellion takes place. Shared rebellion. We were all boys, over a hundred, six to fourteen years old. There were no girls. There I started to study braille and I started to study elementary education easily; I mean an academic dossier. I didn't do three years in Pontevedra. I did an exam to start high school and went to Madrid, where I went to high school. So I started thinking.

What do you mean by saying you started thinking?

That that was a place for us, that society gave us that place, that place, that marginal place. I started to place myself. Once there, the next step was to start selling coupons on the street. That's also what I thought of myself, and with those next door, because we shared the situation. There I saw a lot. Everyone had the internal pains as he could, and what he saw made me think a lot.

What did you see, for example?

For example, children from six to seven years old, who could not walk, had them semi-attached at home. That's what I saw, for example. And those who leave the boarding school, meet with society, get a terrible blow and don't want to continue living. I saw that too. And I don't want to create a morbid, cases are extreme. We must also take into account the environment of the early 1970s, and to get out of this situation each fought individually and in other groups to flee selling the coupon.

Did you fight?

Yes, of course. The situation was not fair. If we are part of this society and society has to be egalitarian, that is the main perspective, let us try to make this happen. Then it was said “integration”: if we are part of society, we want and need the opportunity to develop our capacities, be they few or many. Furthermore, it will be beneficial for everyone, what society prefers, that I do nothing, or that I take advantage of my limited options for my and social good? This raises another question: if society does not want anything, what does that compassionate attitude come to? Although I can do little, it is better to do little than do nothing, right? No. We are always told that we have great limitations, that there is no room for us in the labour market, that we have nothing but to sell the coupon.

No other option?

Or the administration of those who sell the coupon or sell the coupon. And a few, like a phone call in big companies and banks, or a physical therapist. Blind telephones disappear, but physiotherapists do not: There will be a dozen Euskaldunes in the Basque Country. I had to sell the coupon.

Sell the coupon to the San Francisco bilbaíno neighborhood in 1978.

Of course. I wanted to come to the Basque Country. I'm from here, I wanted here. I was already politically conscious. Through this transistor I listened at Radio Paris, Radio Pirenaica, Radio Moscow, Radio Bucharest, BBC…, putting them as possible next to a piece of iron. And on the other hand, my brother [José Mari Agirre, Txato] lived in exile through Lovainan. I came to Bilbao, but coming to Euskal Herria, for not being very close to his own: for I to have autonomy, and for yours to live quiet, so that I would not have to be in my breast. On the other hand, I wanted to do collective work with the blind, and for that I needed people. Because in the last era of Madrid my reflection was not individual, but collective.

It was Franco’s time…

Gradually. And we gathered half hidden in some bar, according to our relatively naive clandestine mystique. Kar, kar… In Madrid, we had the school near Cibeles, and there was movement in the neighboring Chueca neighborhood. I also tried with the political parties. The blind, some at least, were aligned with the desire for change at the time, and we wanted to put our problems on the political agenda, as is now being said, right, on the political agenda, but we did not succeed. But let me say one thing...

You say it.

I live geographically in Euskal Herria, but as a living citizen in the main parts of my life apart from Basque institutionalization. The Basque administrations have had very little influence in my life. My work has never been related to the usual labour market, public space, employment offices here. Our work was and is in the hands of the National Organization of the Spanish Blind. ONCE is still more prevalent in us than in the Basque general administration. It is true that progress has been made in education: the blind child who is born in Ataun today does not have to go to Pontevedra, will grow up in Ataun. It is a huge leap that the administration has made because of several parents. However, blind children, still in school together with others, have no work.

If the coupon is not sold, it means.

Of course. The blind work according to the National Organization of the Spanish Blind. And we have repeatedly turned to the government, saying that those children here in school and in school need a specific work address or work address, otherwise the labour market will not allow them, or simply an opportunity. According to the data, but always according to the data of the Government of Spain, communities do not work, which I know, 70% of the blind in the state do not work. The remaining 30%, most of them, work on coupon sales. But that is not a labour market! And a few of you have physiotherapists or are Kaxiano.

Kaxiano! Blind from Lizartza!

& '97; No “The Lizartza Musician”, however. “The blind man of Lizartza.” Blind always blind! When I'm on the street, I've heard my mother say several times: “Mom, mom, look, blind!” From birth to death blind. The child shall say and say the serious person: “Oh, poor: blind!” In this, feminism has done well the genealogy of exclusion: it has visualized the mechanisms used to discriminate against anyone and how we include them! Do not believe that those who are not blind are different from the blind. No, we are equal, we belong to this society, and being blind does not make you a certain ideology, as it does not make you socialist to be a worker or to be a woman does not make you a feminist. But I wanted to say something else.

He talked about employment.

I meant we don't live in Euskal Herria. I have set an example to employment. Today there is no employment dynamic in our favor, starting from the Basque Country: zero, no good, no bad. The blind have not been able to build on the local situation and provide solutions. We have not been strong, neither the Basque administrations nor the Basque agents have taken care of it. We have been, we are still, but we have not succeeded. When they passed the Political Associations Act, we formed the union within the Blind Organization. It was a time of transition. A very nice subject.

The Spanish Transition, a nice topic? What was the Transition for the blind?

The Blind Organization was born in 1938, at the beginning of Francoism. The creation of this institution was one of the foundational actions of Franco. That’s why someone should make the social history of the blind in Euskal Herria… Most people would take the life of climbing. Selling straight lines, maybe some. But most blind people don't have an extraordinary ability, we're pretty normal. Not all of us are Ray Charles, or Kaxiano, or Steve Wonder, or the teacher Rodrigo…

Ja, ja…

Ha, ha… We are a bit normal and therefore those blind people who were going to ask. And then in Spain, selling the coupon. But the decree creating the ONCE says: “Given the situations generated by the war, we will create provisionally…”. The coupon. A way to make money. In 1938, what Franco said “provisionally”, the Transition perpetuated it! And we haven't been able to change the situation, and there are reasons. For starters, he has given us the coupon. Nobody likes to get on the street and sell the coupon. And at the age of seventeen, let alone. I think we have also been embarrassed by putting ourselves on the street corner. We are excluded and the marginalized feel shame. The same applies to marginalised peoples.

I was talking about the Spanish Transition...

There was no other way in the transition. Moreover, at the time of the Transition, the ONCE had very large resources: more than ever a disabled association or association of people with functional diversity. And this was the case for at least fifteen years, from 1985 to 2000. The ONCE had huge resources, huge, huge profits, huge profits, but then it didn't use those resources to create new opportunities for the blind, for example, to successfully access the labor market. This Blind Organization doubled the budget by ten. See who does that!

What did the National Organization of the Spanish Blind with these resources do?

The question is what was done by the Blind Organization, and what was done by the state that has its legal guardianship, because the coupon is from the state. ONCE has received the coupon from the granting State. This concession involves four legally established government ministries. So the question comes from itself. What happened to that pile of resources that ONCE had in those 15 years? Did the living conditions of the blind improve? Are the new generations following us more likely than we are?… And the answer is: “No.” They are not currently working, more blind than they were thirty years ago. The other way around. Today, living conditions, working conditions, etc. The Commission's proposal is based on the principle of subsidiarity.

Where did those huge resources go?

There is a book La rosa y el bastón [All the connections between the empire of Miguel Durán and the socialist power, José Diaz Herrero and Juan Luis Galiacho, Temas de Hoy, 1992] That is where the money from the Blind Organization was used in the time of Felipe González. And, among other things, it was used to finance Telecinco [Silvio] Berlusconi, to help the possible merger of the “albertianos” [Alberto Cortina, Alberto Alcocer] [Central Bank, Banesto] and to close a newspaper that did not like PSOE, El Independiente, [bought the newspaper in April 1991. Closed on 31 October], etc. And because they had a lot of huge money, they filled the world with advertising. Let me give you an example. In 1988, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of ONCE, the entity donated 100,000 pesetas to each affiliate. As we are 50,000 members, 5 billion pesetas! A tip from a social institution! And it goes on!

Miguel Durán appears on the cover of La rosa and the cane...

“The Durán phenomenon!” “The Durán phenomenon” shows how the process of elitization of power occurs. We, the blind, were a very marginal organization, but through publicity came the “Durán phenomenon”. At that time Durán managed the ONCE. It became very popular because it talked to the ministers of each other. At the time of Durán they created a small directive structure, but around it (how much money we have!) created a network of middle managers. And in a few years, ONCE went up to 500 people, from selling the coupon to technical political figures, together with a secretary! It was a penetration, totally in accordance with the logic of power. We have lived through that very closely. And that's where the UGT is cooked.

What is UGT?

ONCE had a union, a yellow union if you want: UTO (Union of Eleven Workers). Meanwhile, UGT had a great problem in its day, due to housing [case PSV, 1988]. It accumulated debts. And, “by chance”, the ONCE reached an agreement with UGT at that time, saying: “We affiliate our affiliates and affiliates to our UTO UGT trade union, so you will receive monthly 15,000 or 20,000 thousand installments in exchange for rejecting this new coupon being created, Project.” This was agreed by the PSOE, the ONCE and the UGT, and for that it also used those great benefits. If there's money, people do. It was the most glorious time of Felipe González of the PSOE, and there also UGT. What they did, what everyone else does! It has been very difficult to combat it.

I was told you use the conversations to denounce such situations…

Yes, I told you. Come here, I'm going to show you something else. [And he's risen up and taken me to the bookshelf of the class] See, no?

‘Political Map of Europe’, he says.

Well, that's it. Map for the blind. Countries, capitals… When I was in school, more than fifty years ago, there were already these maps that ONCE did and continues to do. Beware! There are no maps of Basque Country. Bizkaia does not exist. Not Gipuzkoan. None from Navarra. None from Álava. Without a North… The map has a reading guide to know what each thing that appears in the relief means. Everything is in Spanish! Everything! We have spoken to [the Basque Government] Culture. What is made public. Films and documentaries, described in audio, are increasingly present in many languages. The Basque country is practically zero.

Does Euskal Telebista have anything?

ETB applications are inaccessible to the blind. The Basque library has a department in Daisy format to make it more accessible, but we are not useful, because it is very difficult. The reading books are those of the ONCE and if I want to read something I have to go to the ONCE. You cannot go to the attached municipal library and ask for the book. Impossible. And I'm not saying that for us books are in the neighboring library. No. But we should be able to manage it from there, as people do: go, ask, come back a few days later and pick it up. I say again: I am not saying that here in the public library of Santutxu, you have to have books in braille, but we should be able to manage it from there: go, ask, receive, read, return to the end of the loan period and take another. But no, apart! That too, apart!

Which book do you have open on the couch?

History of Joxe Azurmendi's Thought in the Basque Country. I really appreciate Joxe Azurmendi's work, I really like it. I ask ONCE that I want to read this book, that they do – if they do – I receive it and read it. The government has agreements with the ONCE and gives it money for this work. But we also don't know how much you give them, they don't tell us. And ONCE puts these books on its network, but not on the public network, I told you: If I lived in Ondarroa, or in Ataun, I would have to go to the ONCE of San Sebastian. It is absurd! The unblind ataundarra will receive the book in Ataun, whatever its content. And if I were blind and lived in Ataun, you have to go to Donostia to take the book! That is how we are today! That is why I said: We live in the Basque Country, but to a large extent we do not live in the institutional Basque Country, unfortunately. Today!..

(...)

But he asks me what book I'm reading… That by Joxe Azurmendi. I'm very fond of Joxe Azurmendi and I'm asking that his books go back to braille so they can read them. And they've translated half a dozen. Spaniards and Basques; Last days with Gandiaga; Volkgeist, Herri gogoa; On the soul of Spain… I ask for it, they return it to braille – if they return it – and suddenly it comes… So we are. But before that, it wasn't either. On the other hand, ONCE has a digital library, audio-recorded books and other records in a special format, but to be able to read the Braille terminals it is necessary to associate them with the computer or telephone to be able to read in Braille. However, it is a very expensive system, as your purchase is personal. This is the main problem, which is expensive.

At least you read in Basque.

There we are. Another book which has given me a tremendous impression – and which I have not read since it was published until very late, because I also had the opportunity – on the Navarra massacre: Navarra 1936. - It's amazing, but amazing! You have an old book, but I've still read it. It has made me very depressed... Otherwise, I am pleased to hear the orchard of Lizardi de Radio Euskadi, a program made by José Luis Padrón. I'm not very fond of poetry, but I'm an expert, I hear it in Padron's voice. And I'm a great music fan. This album I just had in my hands [#the sea monkey] is fantastic. Inés Osinaga. Listen to music every day. [And he taught me a great collection of cd] Recently I've been to Ataun, hearing something very nice: A cantata by Maxima Aierbe, Domuit vascones. Very nice. Joxe Arratibel's book? [Old accounts] I haven't read, but I've heard stories, recorded by someone -- see this?

Thermometer...

Yes. And now, expert! [The thermometer begins. I want this in Basque. It does not exist! Same clock. There is no clock to give me the time in Basque. Today! So we are. And always like that. And not having a map to get to know my people is very significant. In the world there is no state that makes the map available to the citizen. It does not exist for us. We want to know our people. Another example: historical heritage. I don't know what Arantzazu looks like. Are there no Arantzazu models? Arantzazu, to say one! What is the historical heritage of Euskal Herria, I have no idea! And does that happen elsewhere? No! Are you blind and want to know what Burgos Cathedral looks like? You already have the model! Want to know what cremline looks like? You already have the model!

Speaking more, Manu, what do you say about paralympic sport?

I am not particularly fond of sport. I pay a little attention to the ball, to the paddle… Less and less to cycling. If paralympic sport encourages people to do sport, I think that is fine. The message is that the blind can also do sport and encourage me to do it, OK. As for the competition, I'm a little skeptical. The most important thing for me is that the citizen can do sport. Another is the world of competition. Now we also have [Aitor] the French Zarauztarra, blind, surfer, with lots of medals. I do not know, but I know that a few years ago he lost sight and has still won the World Cup. And there are more athletes. But I'm against a few receiving elite treatment. I've seen ONCE take the elite sport and use it for propaganda. I am not interested in that and I am against it. Otherwise, I am not against the path of French personally. I do not deny that path. But how many blind people surf in Euskal Herria? Or any other sport? But this is the main model of professional sport, and we are not going to ask the blind what is not asked of others. Elite sport does not seem to me to be a model.

How do you value artificial intelligence?

I just came up with the joke: our problem is not artificial intelligence, but natural intelligence. Ha, ha… One of the functions of the blind is to comfort those who are not blind. “The poor man also fixes it! I am not so bad, and…!” Many people tell me. I walk every day and they tell me: “You see it this way and give encouragement!” And in literature itself, how do writers work blindness? And I think the writer really welcomes the interior of society. Through literature, the writer gathers what is not said. What interests me most is the literature that shows what does not appear in ideological and standardized discourses. Poem by Bernardo Atxaga: “Are the inhabitants on the other side of the border happy? Don't you dream about crabs? What about blind children?” I don’t know what Atxaga thinks of blind children, but the question is very well answered… Unfortunately there is also escalation. There's the game: “What sense would you lose? Sight, hearing, taste...” Sirimiri is continuous and impoverishes us. A 25-year-old girl or boy, with the resume of Christ, working as possible, precarious, in precarious conditions… and, in this situation, should the entrepreneur take blind work?…

Society is your goal...

What does the society of the blind, of those with functional diversity want? What do you want to do with them? That's not going to be fixed by the entrepreneur, not by a small cooperative, but if you do, what? ! What are the values of this society? And that is the situation throughout Europe, unless there are no coupons there. In fact, the sale of the coupon is linked to a peninsular tradition that was strengthened at the beginning of the last century in the Andalusian area, in southern Catalonia, etc. Hence a way of earning life and subjectivity emerged. And, as I have been able to read there and here, in that subjectivity there have also been two trends: to keep the coupon that gives us food – and this trend has not changed yet – or to try other ways.

What is this tradition in Basque Country? You said that there is no coupon in Europe...

It has not been investigated, but in Basque Country there is no tradition elsewhere in the peninsula. In Europe, without coupons, there are special centres for the blind, working under special conditions, the state, above all, depending on the particular forms of production… But in Europe you also have very few blind people in the usual labour market. Very little work in normal conditions. Before it was said “integration”, integration is to appropriate each other, and now “inclusion”, but there is no inclusion either. There are no businessmen who hire a blind person. Or these are very rare cases. But we also don't have data from Euskal Herria. We don't know either. It is terrible, real data, statistics, studies… We do not live in the political and institutional Basque Country.

He retired...

After working on the sale of the coupon. At one time, if it's fast, but I haven't been fast, I'd come out to live well. In the previous fifteen years, some were enriched. I've met, I know how they lived before, I know how they live now. It's funny. At first we were told that we had to sell the coupon, then society changed, or the market, and we weren't competitive. Also from Europe came a note on the granting of the State and opened their way to bingos, casinos and casinos. Private companies, and new ways to compete with the coupon. And what did the organization tell us? “Putting the coupon on the street corner, or on the kiosk, is not a way to sell anything today. This does not suit the needs of the current market. You have to take a large space, go to transit places...”. I am referring to 2002 and a certain political situation.

What is the political situation? What is the time?

By 2002, the PP is the leader of the Spanish Government. ONCE told the Government that it had a heavy burden of exploitation and could not carry it, that it should be managed by the Government. The Government frightened him and turned the situation on its own. “What are your biggest burdens of exploitation?” the government at ONCE. And institutions: “Wages.” And what did they do? Design a plan to advance retirement and transfer to social security the people who generated the most expenses. The ONCE was reduced to the operating burden, it was able to accommodate new people, under other conditions, of course. And the Spanish government took care of people over 52. Among other things, with multiannual contribution. In the past, we only used to sell the coupon and then we didn't. That's been our trajectory, but it's true: at the end of the road, we're now living on a good pension.

Getting a good pension, home!

And it's not just been our case. For a thousand! The burdens have been transferred from the private sector to the public sector, they have demobilized the work sectors, we have gone home in good condition, we are 50 years old – and it is not a matter of applauding all day in the newsstand – and goodbye! But collectively, it is a big setback: sending us home, in many cases no more has been hired. At ONCE, a quarter are blind. Everyone else has no blindness, but some other functional diversity. And why? Because it's not blind. The blind man is not. We are not. This society insists that we are not capable of anything. Today, anyone who wants to buy the online coupon online. Or buy at post offices... The coupon is sold, but without the blind! It has taken us to retire in good condition, in exchange for those who come behind to be in poor condition.

(...)

This is the current social contract: “We will treat you well to further exploit your funds.” And we have partly accepted this contract. Workers over 50, the vast majority, have much better conditions than those under 40. The struggles of our generation have been great, in some cases enormous, but we have failed to get young people to have the right conditions to socialise in the way they need. We have not succeeded as a people, nor as a blind man. And if you like, it's worse for the blind, that we had great resources to channel the situation. But to buy, or help, Berlusconi's Telecinco, they put that bunch of millions and did what they did, always for the benefit of the PSOE. “I’m not going to see you do it inside your house, if you give me some of your benefits, without having to give any political account to anyone.” That was the deal, and they did. But there were others.

Is it more than a lot and says there's more?

Yes, there is more. ONCE has union and party. The union now uses the UGT brand and has a 90% representation within the organization. It says fast. CCOO, in the Spanish state, does not reach 10%. That means something! The party, for its part, is called PU, that is, the Progressive Union, but it has no possibility of obtaining electoral results, because there are few.

Is there no solution for the one born blind?

Work is the key, and from that LAB has a very interesting proposal for me, which is guaranteed employment. That is to say, that administrations guarantee employment for citizens. The proposal states that the citizen should train himself, and to this end he has a number of training instruments that guarantee him employment. I think that is an interesting approach. Another thing is to materialise! It's about taking and giving. However, according to society, we – we call ourselves “disabled”, “disabled”, “disabled”… – have nothing to give. And that's the most terrible thing to say to a person who has nothing to give. We therefore have an obligation problem.

What do you mean?

If society thinks it has nothing to give, it has no obligations, what place will it have in that society? Very marginal! They explode you, because it's useless, nothing happens. And nothing happens, and then charity emerges. From private mercy we have moved to the system of public compassion, we have moved from beggars to salaried or assisted. And so society calms down, thinking it helps us. That's what humans want: instead of correcting the situation, making charity, helping this or inventing a foundation, or I know what. Capitalism has invented the system and it works pretty well.

(...)

That's what makes the most capitalist, the richest in the richest, to make charity, to justify themselves. Donate in Spain to Amancio Ortega, a health system with large donations for their purchase. Instead of paying taxes, he propaganda with a quarter of his room. And people will say, “Generous, by the way! I didn’t have to do it!” And it is true that if it does not give money, nothing happens, but it is justified to society, however. And we do that, otherwise we cannot understand.

I have 11 interviews. For the first time I'm talking to a blind man…

To say nothing, you have to feel who you are… Before they called me on TV, and before I asked them: “What do you call me for? Do you need a blind man? So, no. I will go if I may say what I have to say. You tell us your own, but let me tell you my own. If not, I don’t go.” This is also done: blind, pretending, inclusion, etc. Everyone should know where they are. You also have to be conplacent blind, be functional blind. There are also blind people who send out a message that suits no one. And you're right. It's not my conception, but it's also that. After many conversations, for the first time he is talking to a blind man… for me the problem is not that, it is what I have told him, what I say to those who have called me to interview me: “Why do you want to interview me? I am not known, I am not a famous writer, nor engineer... I have been on the sidelines..” And that's the truth, blind people live apart, that's the reality.

Excuse me for being excluded all these years. We haven't seen you, neither with our two gorgeous eyes. And thank you for taking care of us at home.

It's estimated. I have read your papers, I appreciate the LIGHT very much, and I really told you: if in carelessness it seems to you that what we have spoken is not worth, that it is not worth publishing, do not publish it. I like them and I appreciate their work, and LUZ… What, do you want a beer? Today it's hot ...

* * * * * * *

With paint

“The painting is made to see, right? However, there is a growing trend: the adaptation of the picture to the blind. ‘You don’t see it, but we’re going to touch you,’ as I say. I believe that this is a form of colonization. For me, painting is not within my reality. My reality is different, for example the one I hear. Music, for example. But a picture? A picasso? That’s not for me, we don’t have blind experiences of color and light, because our life is outside of our experiences.”

Friends of Ataun

“Before I left Ataun, I was with my elders in school, ‘with my friends from Ataun’. I always felt loved, but I knew I was apart, and then that aside went a lot further. However, my friends have tried to maintain our friendship and soon I will return with them: they called me, saying they were going to make an exit to the mountain or someday, and there they want me and I will leave.”

LAST WORD

Questions 2 (Bernardo Atxaga)

“Are the inhabitants on the other side of the border happy? Do you love the centenary of your beloved? Among the territories of your kingdom is a place called Greenland or Greenland? Are your valleys famous? Are there gas stations from Shell? He said, are the inhabitants on the other side of the border happy? Don't you dream about crabs? What about blind children? Do you remember Tom Simpson? Do the leaves protect the fruits across the border? Are there strawberries? Do abyssal fish know how to distinguish between light and dark? That is what I have been told, that the strength of the birds is hidden in the wind paths, which are ships that do not cut the port. Are there many, are you many in that cross-border kingdom? These people I see every day on the street, do they live there?”