To fly, beyond each person's tactics or ability, the most important thing is to interpret the weather,” summarizes Jordi Vilalta about a sport that no one understands.. How do those human birds sustain themselves? With their wings, their chairs and the cables that connect both parts, they are capable of ascending up to 5,000 meters in altitude, traveling 60 kilometers in a single flight, and exceeding 40 km/h.. How do they do that?

«The key is the thermal columns. When the sun shines on the ground, it creates a mass of warm air above it that rises.. What we do is get inside that mass and go up with it, spinning around inside it.. We replicate what vultures do. In fact, along with cumulus clouds, vultures are our guides to detect where those thermals are, which is the most difficult part of the sport.. A flight consists of gliding and climbing, gliding and climbing,” describes Vilalta, one of the best in the world crossing mountains with these aircraft.

Last July he became the first Spaniard to finish the Red Bull X-Alps, something like the Tour de France of paragliding. Most competitions are based on speed, seeing who crosses a valley first, but this one is not. The Red Bull X-Alps is an endurance test in which the participants, chosen by the brand for their merits, must cross the Alps, just as it sounds. This year they started in Salzburg, Austria, crossed Switzerland, went around Mont Blanc and returned through Italy to reach Zell am See, again in Austria.. In total, about 2,200 kilometers to travel in less than 12 days. Vilalta, who finished twenty-fourth, walked 570 kilometers and 1,700 flying with a maximum flight altitude of 3,986 and an average speed of 36.11 km/h.

«It is the mecca of sport. I am a firefighter, paragliding is just my hobby, I am an amateur, but the majority of those who participate are professionals. There is the Swiss [Christian] Maurer [winner of the last eight editions, all since 2009] and it is like being a tennis fan and being able to play at Wimbledon against Roger Federer,” says Vilalta.

And how does one start paragliding? Since I was little I have always done mountains. I'm from Ripoll, near the Pyrenees, and I saw people practicing paragliding and I thought: “How handsome!”. 14 years ago, I took some very old paragliding equipment that my uncle had in his garage and I showed up at a school. They told me where was I going with that, that I should rent a new one to take the course. I was hooked. How dangerous is it? If you are careful, not too much, the risk is quite low. Paragliding is not a sport for the brave. You must control everything that happens very well because if you gamble it can be very dangerous, of course.. I have never suffered an accident, although I have had some scares.. The main danger is competition, when you want to extend a flight because if you get off you lose a lot of time.

“When you fly you realize how slow you are walking,” concludes Vilalta, 38, who will hardly return to the Red Bull X-Alps.. Although Red Bull gave the registration fee and the material was provided by a sponsor, he had to pay his expenses and those of his friends, who served as assistance with a van in which he slept.. In the end, a good pinch. Next year is the firefighters from Granollers, will take his ultralight paraglider, weighing just six or seven kilos, will climb the Pyrenees and jump into the void to ascend like a vulture through a pocket of invisible hot air. To fly you only need to “understand the air, know how to read something invisible.”

No matter how much punishment he received, Carlos Caszely (Santiago de Chile, 1950) never shied away from contact. Neither against defenders, nor far from the pitch, where he always stood out for his commitment and rebellion.. The former Levante and Espanyol player, one of the best forwards of the 70s, will be remembered as the footballer who refused to greet Augusto Pinochet. And like the national idol who shouted the goals with left-wing fervor. Today, 50 years after his arrival in Spain, he speaks to EL MUNDO, still enveloped in grief for his deceased wife.

His signing for Levante is still surrounded by a certain mystery. Can you clarify how the agreement was created? After a friendly in Seville with Colo Colo, where I scored a goal, the president of Levante, Manuel Grau Torralba, approached me with a representative named José Luis Torcal, to hire me.. Grau was afraid that I would return to Chile because of the turbulent political situation, so he did not hesitate to follow me to France, which, along with Italy, had already broken relations with my country due to the coup d'état.. And it was in Paris where everything was resolved. How do you remember that Spain that was enduring the last blows of the dictatorship? On October 6, 1973 I married María de los Ángeles Guerra, my partner, and only two days later we arrived in Valencia in the middle of a tremendous reception. Spain and Chile were very different. In my country, just when we were beginning to get used to a democracy, that incomprehensible coup d'état arrived. I was finishing my student years and the university was teaching you many things.. Because football was a wonderful, incredible world, but in the classroom you understood that sometimes you had to raise money to help those next to you. You have maintained that you were able to play for bigger clubs, but that the operations were not closed because of your political militancy. Are Real Madrid included among those clubs? Shortly after signing for Levante, a locker room colleague told me: “Chilean, they tell me that Madrid has been following you.”. I had scored many goals that year in the Copa Libertadores with Colo Colo and that must have triggered interest. Do you think there was some kind of veto on the part of General Franco? I don't think it was directly Franco, but rather it was due to the thought of the Madrid board. It should not be forgotten that Paul Breitner was fired shortly after those famous photographs next to a poster of Mao. Years later, after a great season at Espanyol, where we reached the Cup semi-finals, Johan Cruyff asked me to be hired for Barcelona. I didn't even have a representative and the president of Espanyol told me: “If I sell you to Barça, I have to leave the city.” In the National Stadium of Santiago, which was a detention and torture center in 1973, the banner: “A town without memory is a town without a future”. Do you feel a part of the history of your country? Of course, without a doubt.. And it seems very good to me that there is a minimal part of the stadium, even if it is just a few boards, where what happened then continues to be remembered.. I had many university classmates among those who were retaliated against, including those who made up the Chilean soccer players' union. Hours before the last general elections in Spain, Borja Iglesias and Héctor Bellerín took a political position and asked for a vote “in favor of progress”. Does the footballer have a moral obligation to enter politics? Undoubtedly yes. Because first we are people and then footballers. Just like you are a person before you are a journalist. Do you take it for granted? No, because I am not a communist. I am a footballer with a social conscience. That's my motto. I have never signed nor will I sign for any political party.

Caszely, in Barcelona, in an image from 2015. ANTONIO MORENO Did you send, as your enemies said, part of the money you earned in Spain to finance the armed struggle against the dictatorship? That is the biggest lie they invented to take me off the pedestal. I have never, ever contributed money, but I have collaborated with someone who was going through a bad time or with a political prisoner. In 1978, before returning to Colo Colo in exchange for eight million pesetas, you rejected a substantial offer to play in Arabia Saudi. How do you see this phenomenon today? Today, football is money. At that time, they already offered me a huge amount, but that was not life. I could adapt, but not my wife, nor my two daughters.. My wife could not wear a miniskirt, nor go out with her face uncovered. Hours before Chile's phantom victory against the USSR, when the Soviets did not show up in protest against the coup d'état, FIFA summarized the situation in their country with two words: “total tranquility”. Half a century later, is the highest organization still blindfolded in cases like the World Cup in Qatar? It is worth clarifying that when the FIFA representatives arrived at the National Stadium, the military had already hidden all the political prisoners, so they couldn't see anything. As far as today is concerned, FIFA remains an entity completely separate from national or international legislation.. It's like the Vatican: no one can mess with them. Only two months earlier, on June 6, you had lost the playoff match of the Libertadores final in Montevideo. Salvador Allende went so far as to say that Colo Colo was “the only thing that keeps the country united”. What was the president like over short distances? I was only with him three or four times, nothing more.. Don't forget that in the context of an underdeveloped country, it was normal for the president to receive us as ambassadors of the nation.. At that time, Chile was in great turmoil and divided.. The only moment of tranquility, among so much revolt, was when Colo Colo played the Libertadores.

In Chile we still cannot talk about full democracy, because 50 years later we do not even know where the disappeared are.

Will one day, sooner rather than later, as Allende said, “will the great avenues open through which the free man may pass”? Here in Chile, even today, we still cannot speak of a full democracy, because 50 years later we cannot even We don't even know where the disappeared are and what has happened to so many people persecuted by the dictatorship. You will always be remembered for the moment you refused to greet Pinochet during the reception at the Diego Portales building before leaving for the 1974 World Cup. Always They remind me of it in every interview, yes. I did not want to participate in that meeting. It was a very tense situation, but I still remember an enormous silence before you approached and Pinochet's sour, dirty and hard look. In the Spanish stadiums they shouted “sudaca” at you and you faced a fan who asked you if you knew how to play with boots. However, he has never been in favor of sanctions for chants against footballers.. Do you still think the same after the recent racist episodes? One of the main problems of our time is that we are excessively sensitive about some topics. I still have a friend in the neighborhood whom I call El Negro Juan. It depends how you look at it and how you take it.. It is very sensitive material and in some matters you can get involved for something you did not intend. You return to Spain from time to time. Do you see our country very changed? I still have great friends in Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. In 2015, the last time I visited them, I was reunited with many pleasant memories. But now I am haunted by enormous sadness due to the death of my wife [in February 2022], which does not even allow me to cross the border with Argentina.. In any case, I have followed with great interest the results of the last Spanish elections. Do you perceive a reactionary regression in our country? I don't know. I do not have enough information to offer you a conclusive answer. In his last season with Levante, just after the 1974 World Cup, he did not hesitate to play in the Third Division, with many matches on dirt fields.. Why did I only play at home? After a game in Ibiza, where I was even kicked in the back, I had a conversation with the president and the coach. That was when we decided that he would no longer play as a visitor.. For that reason I could only score 26 goals that year. You received the first red card in the history of the World Cup, for responding to a provocation from Berti Vogts. Even today, watching videos and replays, I find it hard to believe, but Vogts tells me went down 13 times with kicks. Years later, the German coach admitted that he had specifically prepared Vogts for specific marking against me and against Cruyff. In his last World Cup, in 1982, he was still the star of a team where Elías Figueroa and Pato Yáñez shone.. However, his missed penalty against Austria at the Carlos Tartiere was taken as the symbol of the Chilean debacle.. Do you think they passed the bill on you for your political activism? Yes, of course.. It was taken as my personal failure.. They made a fuss about me in the press. They said every outrageous thing that hurt me to the core. At least, I knew that I had my partner by my side to get out of that terrible moment. Not only did I suffer pressure from the media, but even when I played at home with Colo Colo, my own fans harassed me. You have acknowledged that you failed in your two World Cups with Chile, in 1974 and 1982…Yes, and I repeat it again. new, because I am not afraid of the word failure. The only thing that scares me is not being able to get up from every failure.

The Rubiales case is not just a matter of the football sewers. He found the Government in office and with a changed foot, after not having previously stopped a leader who was a cluster bomb. And to its highest representative in sports, recently arrived at a position that took office one month before the elections.. Víctor Francos (Barcelona, 1979) took office in the Higher Sports Council (CSD), on June 16, without the certainty of continuity. Pending the formation of a Government, it still does not have it, but the pressure and intensity caused by Luis Rubiales' kiss to Jenni Hermoso is worth several legislatures. The case has not ended with the resignation of the president of the Federation, because the Government wants to go further and put an end to a systemic problem, which already occurred in the Villar era and has continued in the short period of Rubiales.

First we have to close the Rubiales case and then try to prevent it from happening again.. What are the formulas? The first, in the short term, is in the hands of the Federation. You can call elections with the same Assembly and exhaust the mandate or ask the CSD for an advance to the first half of 2024 and face this electoral process with the renewed Assembly. The Government is in favor of the second, we believe it is more convenient, so if you ask us for that advance, we will grant it. The members of the current Assembly are those who elected Rubiales and those who are currently there. But the problem will continue to appear in the election of the members of the Assembly. There appears the second, deeper. It has to do with the preparation of the Electoral Order that regulates the election process of those 140 members of the Assembly. Football needs a more direct democracy, not an intervening one, like the current one, in which representatives of groups are appointed and one ends up not knowing very well who they have chosen.. This would not only involve football, but also the rest of the federations. And even more in the long term, there are other things that we want to raise.Continue.We have to reflect on what has happened, because it has been serious not only for football, but also for the Government, for the country. Sometimes these cases are an opportunity to change things and we should not waste them.. I believe that a Government cannot be, faced with a situation like the one that has happened, at the mercy of the TAD [Administrative Court of Sports] or FIFA. You have to have instruments to be able to find solutions and intervene and not collapse.. But this reflection, as I said, must be taken within a framework of consensus and the moment will have to be sought after the Cortes are formed, because a modification of the Sports Law would be necessary. Well, the new one was approved months ago , and after a bitter debate, with numerous amendments. On the other hand, no one proposed changes with respect to the federations, as you now suggest. The reality is that until you reach the precipice, you do not feel the vertigo. Now we have felt it and it can't happen to us again.. I think there may be a certain political consensus in that. It is difficult to believe that the football war is over.. The candidatures for Rubiales' position could activate them again. Honestly, I believe that after what has happened and the position that society and the Government have taken with respect to football, it is going to be difficult to maintain certain positions that were previously tolerated. Did Rubiales or anyone around him warn you about his resignation? No. I found out about a quarter to ten on Sunday night, like most Spaniards.. The last day I spoke with him was August 24, before the Assembly, and he told me that he was going to talk about the measures to be taken regarding women's football.. He didn't tell me that he was going to resign or not to resign, nothing.. I have not done it again. You entered the CSD when many complaints had already arrived against Rubiales. Why didn't the Government act sooner? Once in the CSD, I ordered a review of all the actions that were carried out. The complaints that could have been processed were already prosecuted, and the rest were proceeded correctly. The world champions still maintain their support for the national team. Can the Government do something? They have my phone number for whatever they want and it can be of help, but these issues, which also involve technical aspects, correspond to the Federation.