(Production: Pablo Cantudo)
Joaquín Araújo has lived in the Villuercas region (Cáceres) since the 70s, where he practices organic farming and ranching and plants thousands of trees. We spoke with him on the occasion of the launch of his new book, and he has also told us how he has lived these months of confinement.
“I have been a forest, an orchard, a spring… I have lived a peaceful and green spring, full of natural events. That is the privilege of not being afraid of loneliness and silence. I have been freer during these hundred days than during any other moment of my life ”. And it is that, as the naturalist recognizes in his latest book, “I do not live on another planet although it seems so when you choose serenity and silence instead of crowding and noise. The point is that not only a considerable number of trees protect me but also loneliness ”.
We need greener cities
One of the things that has been missed the most in the cities during the weeks of confinement has been, precisely, nature. “There is a social clamor, we have that instinctive impulse and we have missed green. But, in addition, forests are a vaccine for pollution, for climate change, for the asphalt desert … the city needs many more trees. It is necessary to dress all the walls and roofs of the cities in green ”.
Joaquín Araújo has also referred to the climate crisis, a pressing problem that has been parked: “In the months prior to the pandemic, the pace of debates and information regarding climate change had increased greatly. I have been dedicated to the defense of nature for more than 50 years and I have never seen such great interest. Especially since COP25 we were talking about the weather every day and proposing things. That has been buried by a more immediate catastrophe, which needed quick attention, but the urgency of climate change cannot be lost sight of ”.
“ In the end, 100 days without polluting does not balance 150 years polluting . The next threat of collapse is the climate crisis, and it is a threat of collapse of the vital system. Climate change has not gone away, just like the virus has not gone away ”.
The tree and the forest, the best company
Joaquín Araújo’s latest book is a new tribute to trees and also the result of a lifetime shared with them. “ They are tireless free workers who get the main sources for life and its continuity . They are supportive, they are beautiful, they are builders and they also have no opinion of you, they do not criticize you or praise you. You live very well among trees ”, reflects the promoter.
“We all come from an evolutionary process that took place over more than six million years within the equatorial tropical forests. The entire lineage of great apes evolved much longer within the grove than outside. Our genetic great-great-grandparents were all ambushed. And the current world of urban crowding is in those antipodes ”.
“ I am an ambush: I live in the forest and I ambush the ideological enemies of the forest. To those who make eulogies that you have to live far from natural sources of health .
Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, a tribute that went unnoticed
The outbreak of the health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain coincided with the 40th anniversary of the tragic accident in which Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente died, of whom Araújo was a collaborator for several years. In addition, he was in charge of finishing some of his works after the sudden death of the one who is the reference disseminator in our country “Félix was the idol, the maximum reference, so imagine how I felt when I was so young and they called me to work with the. Professionally, it is impossible for something better to happen to you. It took me four years to finish all the films, books and encyclopedias that Felix had left unfinished… it was like doing several careers, I had to study and learn a lot, but I consider myself lucky ”.
I choose to be a tree (fragment of ‘the trees will teach you to see the forest’)
“We all love our own existence but very few love the whole of Life. Most of our people allow indifference to conquer their emotion and behavior more and more every day. Something that happens fundamentally by not wanting to be complete and nobody is if they have excluded Nature, that other half of all who should be loved as oneself. They do not love it because they do not know what it is that pampers and maintains them. They do not love her because their sense of Beauty is sufficiently drowned out by the hyperactive stimuli of the crowded, comfortable, fast and artificially lit. But we do not surrender, not even when completely defeated, do we stop rebelling against the clumsiness of this civilization that has achieved, above all, that everything is more dead. “
