100 Miles from Manhattan with Guillermo Fesser

LW: How did you first connect with Rhinebeck?

GF: When I started on the radio, I was also working as a journalist on an early-morning money news show. I wanted to be an international correspondent. I learned French and Italian and wanted to learn English. [My wife] Sarah had finished at the University of Arizona and was teaching English in Spain. I met her in a Brazilian bar, and she became my English teacher. After we got together, we always came here during the summer for a vacation.

LW: What is the focus of your news stories for the weekly Spanish show you contribute to now?

GF: This week I talked about women’s salaries. Obama is trying to implement equal salaries, and I tried to explain why women are still paid less, even though women’s rights are so developed.

I also often focus on stories showing how the history of Spain and the US is mingled. For example, I did some research on the painting of George Washington’s inauguration, which shows him in the middle, Lafayette on one side and Diego de Gardoqui on the other. Gardoqui’s a guy from Spain who helped Washington feed the troops. Because Spain had a lot of colonies in Latin America, it didn’t want this help to be known officially. Also, the symbol of the dollar is actually the two columns of Hercules in the Gibraltar Strait, which is taken from the Spanish crown.

LW: What are other particularly timely issues have you addressed on the weekly show?

GF: Fracking is starting to be an issue in Spain. American companies are exporting their expertise to Europe, and Spain is a big deal. I wanted to open up that debate, given the high unemployment and the potential promising jobs. I went to Pennsylvania [where fracking is occurring] and talked about that. Health care is another one…the People’s Party in Spain wants to privatize the universal health care system, and there was a big fight. They argued privatizing would be better and more efficient, but health care is not about making money. I was part of that battle, and on the radio show, I used the examples of privatization of the prisons in this country to show why health care should not be about profits.

Obamacare has its flaws, but I think it’s the greatest thing that could happen in this country.

LW: What strikes you as the biggest difference between America and Spain?

GF: There are two things that hit me when I came here. One is the diversity of America, and the second is how Americans relate to nature. It’s hard to find nature in Europe; most people live in urban areas. This is in my show all the time: I say how a robin is a mean guy, who destroyed my rearview mirror when I left my car outside.

LW: But Spaniards seem more connected to nature when it comes to food, according to your book.

GF: In Spain you go to the markets, which are a big destination. In the whole town of Austin, there’s only one butcher. I wish I could have shrimp heads to cook with my rice. Part of this is related to the fact that Americans don’t want to know bad news. I was on a panel during the Iraq War, when it was decided the press would be embedded with the troops. I had a fight with my American colleagues about that. Years later I was talking to a journalist who did a study about why the American public accepted this. His answer was they didn’t really want to know [what was happening]. There’s a lot of denial. The system makes you want to be that way. People think it is a God-chosen land and whatever we do abroad is good. They use the excuse of collateral damage: To make an omelet you have to break some eggs. The media in this country doesn’t help.

LW: What are your favorite US news shows?

GF: I love NPR, 60 Minutes, Steve Colbert and Jon Stewart.

LW: What’s your opinion of social media?

GF: Everything is about likes and how many friends you have. The goal of teenagers is to be famous and popular, which is completely wrong. I didn’t do a radio show to be famous; I happened to do it, and people liked it. And now [those values are] all over the world, because America exported them.

LW: You and your radio partner started an educational foundation. Whomdoes it help?

GF: We provide educational workshops for probably 500 kids in Nicaragua and Sri Lanka. We’ve also started doing stuff for kids in Spain, including those in a Romanian community. We build facilities and offer classes and workshops to help the kids. To raise money, every year we hold a flamenco festival. The last thing we did was a tapas event, in which I called my famous friends to be waiters for a day. We ask them to come have fun with us. Many came and stayed for the whole day.

LW: Unemployment for young people in Spain is something like 50 percent. How is that affecting the country?

GF: Spain was isolated for so long. But now that the country is getting more modernized and we finally have a generation ready to upgrade the country, many are working abroad. They study abroad for a semester and can’t come back because of the economy. Many are working in Latin America, which is booming. Many companies based in Spain are making money abroad, but they’re not creating jobs in Spain.

LW: What’s your assessment of the current era, and America’s role in the world?

GF: We’re in a time that is very confusing. It used to be what your parents told you at home was repeated on TV and radio. Now when you’re being told something at home, what you see on TV is the opposite. At the moment we have no leadership. It’s like a video game and nobody knows how to go to the next screen. We’re trying to change the rules of the game, when the whole game has to change. Is it worth it to have everything for free, and no jobs? On the other hand, many poor people [around the world] are now studying and looking for their first jobs. They’ll create something new. We’ll see big changes in rethinking our style of life. People are ready for downsizing their lives, in order to have a better community.

People think you can export America everywhere, but everyone needs their own timing to evolve. I think of countries as being at different ages: as babies, old ladies, adolescents. Like a good parent, we have to help adolescents find their own way, rather than tell them what to do.

LW: Do you miss Spain?

GF: I’ve been going back and forth enough I don’t have to miss it. There are also plenty of Spaniards in the US. It used to be just people who worked for a company and then went back to Spain, but now people from Spain come here to stay. In Greenwich, Connecticut, half of the bankers are from Spain, and Spain is third or fourth in terms of the country that contributes the most kids from abroad at Columbia University.

LW: What other projects are you working on?

GF: I’m doing a theater tour with my radio partner, where we’re onstage for an hour-and-a-half and give our thoughts and people ask questions. We did it in Barcelona and Madrid, and at the end of May we’ll be visiting Bilbao and Murcia.

For the last three years I’ve been creating a collection of books for children in which the main character is a girl in a wheelchair. I created fun material with a telephone application, karaoke, riddles and other elements to allow them to interact. The girl is a normal person and very active in terms of justice. The book was picked up by many schools in Spain as required reading for the fourth and fifth grades, and I’d like to use the visual material I collected to create a musical for children. It would consist of an instruction manual of how to cope with people with disabilities. For example, when you meet a paraplegic, do you shake his hand? Do you help a blind guy to cross the street?

One important thing in life is having fun; the other is learning. When you can do both of those things, bingo.

100 Miles from Manhattan book-signing by Guillermo Fesser, Sunday, April 27, 1 p.m., at Upstate Films, 6415 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck; (845) 876-2515, www.oblongbooks.com.