Nature, he notes, was a great source of inspiration for Gaudí and this is reflected in all of his work. Watanabe, who visited Barcelona 30 years ago, enjoys walking around the city because “art is in the street” thanks to a unique architectural heritage. Therefore, and to encourage cultural and business relationships, he is personally prepared to push for a direct flight between Barcelona and Tokyo. In this regard, he maintains that Barcelona’s El Prat airport meets all the requirements to be an important hub in the Mediterranean and a bridge between Asia and Latin America.
He has a passion for literature and for smoking cigars (he wrote a treatise on this subject that was reviewed by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, one of the world’s most widely read), Watanabe is the author of several novels and has translated into Japanese Blue, one of the most important collections of short stories and poems by the great Nicaraguan Modernist poet Rubén Darío. He fell in love with the work of Darío, who was also a diplomat, when he was in Nicaragua and heard a nine-year old girl, dressed in rags, who recited the famous poem dedicated to Margarita, the author’s muse. His diplomatic odyssey has also taken him to Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela, Río de Janeiro and Miami. This last city is where another of his idols lives: the Argentine journalist and author Andrés Oppenheimer who is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
He firmly believes that literature and culture are the best ways to open people’s eyes to the world, and he carries a notebook in his jacket pocket with a list of novels about Barcelona by authors such as Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Eduardo Mendoza, Ildefonso Falcones and Javier Cercas. He is also familiar with the tradition of debates by modernist bohemians at the bar Els Quatre Gats.
He is still impressed by the attendance at the Barcelona Manga Convention that, with 142,000 visitors, has established itself as the most important event for this genre of Japanese comics in Europe, alongside Paris. “People here have very open hearts and this is why they also like our culture”, he adds gratefully. But his heart was stolen by a woman from Valladolid whom he met in Madrid 30 years ago and who has helped him to command the language. Their marriage has one daughter who is a family doctor and who has worked in Chicago and Miami.
He praises the level of efficiency of the police in Barcelona, even though there is still room for improvement in the struggle against the petty thefts that some of his compatriots suffer, and he is very satisfied with the sponsorship deal reached between the Japanese online sales company Rakuten and FC Barcelona. “It is an honour to be the sponsor of a team like Barça”, he says. He also notes that Carme Ruscalleda and El Celler de Can Roca are very well known in his country and he is very enthusiastic about the plans to host an exhibition of Catalan modernist art in Japan in 2019.
