BarcelonaUntil the age of 20, Manel Vidal Boix (1989) grew up and lived in the old neighborhood of Salt with his family, near the Plaça de les Llúdrigues, next to the vegetable gardens and the Munard Bank. Now, the comedian is fully settled in Barcelona, where he has furthered his career, becoming famous as the authorized voice of La Sotana, and writing scripts in The competition From RAC1 i He performs monologues with the Sotiranian. However, despite the physical and temporal distance from his native city, his relationship with Salt is honest and constant, like a kind of distant but latent sediment, without which his trajectory is inexplicable. From day to day in the Catalan capital, Vidal remembers and identifies the most defining points of his own little world.
Great social balance
The comedian admits he doesn't usually make the trip back to Salt to visit his family or reunite with high school friends. Now, despite the interruptions, he never hides the name of his hometown, quite the opposite, a trait he repeats and says jokingly, but also with sincere pride. “It's true that I don't go there very often, but I pretend to be from Salt because that's how I really feel, not to build a comedic character, because I find it's a city that has a lot to claim,” he says. Vidal was born before the arrival of the large numbers of immigrants who now populate most of the city's neighborhoods, and during his teenage years, he witnessed first-hand the beginning of the demographic changes that were reshaping the streets of Salt. “As a result of these strong waves of migration and the increase in population density, in Salt, which is also a city without industry, tensions occurred typical of a situation like this, but thanks to the invisible work of the associational fabric outside the departments, the social balance was never violated,” he concludes. “It's a credit to the people who were already there and to those who came.”
In March 1983, the streets of Salt, south of the River Ter, became independent from the city of Girona. They now form one of the municipalities with the highest immigration rate in Catalonia, with more than 33,300 residents of very diverse cultures and origins living together.
The capital of Salt, Girona branch
When Vidal claims to be originally from Salta, he does so to pay tribute to his city, but also to throw a poisoned arrow at Girona. In his jokes at La Competència and La Sotana, especially now that the Girona club is thundering, he often mocks the closed, bourgeois nature of the Girona club. “My cousin and I always talked about… gyrovins, That everyone understands who they are, these families with immune ancestors and their personality crotch He continues, saying: “I make jokes about the repressed people of Girona who do not abandon or celebrate football successes. People understand it and relate to it easily.” Salt's rivalry with Girona – not the film Girona with Salt, which is practically non-existent – is very interesting material that interests Vidal: “I've always thought that things in Salt are more authentic and less provincial than in Girona, even though they may seem the opposite.” , Argues. He concludes: “One-way competitions from small to large are my favorites, such as Salt vs. Girona, or Santa Coloma vs. Graminet vs. Barcelona.”
Making humor outside Barcelona
For Manel Vidal, the Catalan capital represents the nucleus of the necessary connections and opportunities that made him known as a comedian, while Salt is a kind of natural state that defines his way of being and acts as a counterpoint to the centrality of the city. “I realize that if you are committed to communication and you are outside Barcelona it will be more difficult to achieve success, but, for example, from La Sotana, even though we register in the city, we try to avoid the eyes of Barcelona and we have fans from all over Catalonia.” “When I perform in Girona, Olissa or Tárega, I like to incorporate some jokes with a local perspective, but I also find that there is no need to change the mood because there are topics that appeal to everyone. I don’t like the idea,” he adds. “Living in Barcelona is a decade more advanced than he is.” In the villages. He concludes: “I live in Barcelona as a kind of monster of homogeneity for everyone’s peculiarities, which made me, for example, lose the dialect of the place where I grew up.”
Lessons in the Socs plan and a summer at Startit
The comedian's father was a lifelong resident of Can Masana, and his maternal grandfather came to the city to work in textile mills when his mother was 8 years old. Vidal attended primary school in Les Dominiques (now FEDAC Salt), secondary school in Girona, and, aged 18, he enrolled in philosophy at the University of Girona. The academic experience did not go well, and before he was thirty years old, he embarked on a lively and professional journey through Barcelona and Germany, before heading permanently towards the world of comedy. Vidal has many memories of the years he spent in Salt, with his grandparents, parents, sister and friends: “The reference place is Plan Socs, where he often went on foot or by bike and the primary school teacher had lessons there in the open air,” he recalls. Also wines at Can Marquès on weekends, or parties at La Mirona for the elderly. Baix Empordà is also an important point in the Girona regions for Vidal. “One of my friends says we are from where we spent our teenage years, so I am also from Torruella and Lastarte, because my parents rented an apartment there, where I spent many summers and weekends,” he says. .
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