I love surfing and I love clowning.

The reason why I like surfing very much is because it’s one of those things that if you are not in the moment, there's no surfing. You cannot plan what's gonna happen. 

I find big parallels with the work that I do, which is to be on the stage and listen to the audience. I play material, and the audience reacts — on some days — very good to this material. Some other days, they react to something a minute later. But I can't say that this material is better than the one that comes afterwards, because it all depends on the day: How am I? How is the audience? How are the people I'm playing with? It depends on the moment. 

Every laugh is going to die. And as a clown, as a good clown, you can't bank anything. You can't say, ,Oh, I got them laughing with that, so the next thing is gonna work! No. You have to go back to zero, which is like going back to the break and waiting for the next wave. You wait for the next laugh to be generated, and then ride the laugh until it dies. And when it dies, as a clown, you need to accept that the laugh just died. And go back again to zero and I start again.

With Spymonkey, we have always been very interested in the borders between tragedy and comedy. And we always use this saying that in every single flop, when we talk about the flop of the clown, something dies. And the quality of the acceptance by the clown of that tragedy is what makes the audience laugh. If I do something and you like it, I celebrate, but if I do something and you don't like it, I have to accept it.

As a performer, I think it's interesting how when that happens, you have to suffer a little bit and then forget about it. It gives you a wonderful vulnerability and openness to then come back from the ashes like a Phoenix bird. 

So I think it's interesting. I say to many of my clown friends who are a little bit older, that the theme of death has to be in their shows. Maybe they say, “No, no, I'm doing a show about eating! ‘Yeah, but you are 65 and if you eat three bananas, everyone in the audience is going to think you might die! If you don't accept that, you are delusional!”

It seems very obvious, but many of us did some material when we were young and it was very successful, and then we've been doing it all our lives. Now the material, if it's really, really good, still stands, but it has other themes. It has other contexts. But very often, that material doesn't really last because it didn’t take into consideration the theme of human life, which is that it's going to end, no matter what. 

I think everybody has within themselves a child or that stupid human who tries to deny that one day they will die, but at the same time wants to have as much fun as possible until that time arrives. So you still live in that contradiction. 

I’m 55 years old. I feel I have less stamina now, but I'm content. You know what? I go surfing with two women who are my friends, and they are 10 and 15 years younger than I am, and they just catch 20 waves, and I catch 10, and I'm very happy.

I enjoy every single thing about being in the sea. You’re playing on the edge.

At the moment I have lots of work. I'm trying to work less so I can go surfing a little bit more. But on the other hand, I don't have enough money. I have to make money. And I don't want to make money working in a bar or teaching in a school. I want to make money teaching workshops or directing theater shows or me playing, acting. So the compromise is how to negotiate all those things – that's the thing that worries me, that occupies my brain the most, because I’m at an age where it would be great if I start to think, How am I gonna get a pension?

I go surfing with this gang of people, my friends here in Bilbao, and I say, “Fucking hell. I think I only have five more years of surfing.” And my friends tell me, “No, no, no. I know people 75 years old, they surf. And so you can surf for as long as you want.” And probably that’s true, but I ride short boards, yeah, so it would mean I'm going to have to transition to a long board.  

At the moment, the way I talk about my life is, “I am what I do.” For better or worse, I just like to have fun and live in the moment.