Joaquín Araújo in conversation with Miquel Molina

Joaquín Araújo argues that the most beautiful, essential, generous and welcoming creation of nature is a wood and that our future does not make sense without trees and yet this civilization has affected its most reckless clumsiness by devastating the great home of life. He says so in his latest book, Los árboles te enseñarán a ver el bosque (Trees Will Show us How to See the Wood), in which he once again calls to attention all that we are wagering if we continue to turn our backs on Nature. Now that climate change seems to have made it onto the agenda of institutions, it is more pressing than ever to address the questions regarding the urgency of sustainability policies and how the lessons from a pandemic that is devastating the world should be the cornerstone to change course in our relationship with the natural world. Araújo is an icon in Spain for his defence and promotion of Nature from his early days when he worked alongside internationally acclaimed Spanish naturalist and broadcaster Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente. Araujo can lay claim to almost 100 books, over 2,000 speeches, hundreds of educational programmes in audiovisual media, but perhaps the figure he’s most proud of is the 22,000 trees he’s planted throughout his life. An entire forest.

Araújo will talk to the journalist and author Miquel Molina, Associate Editor of La Vanguardia, the newspaper in which he has a weekly op-ed. Molina has authored essays and novels such as Una flor del mal, La sonámbula, L’Everest al´hora punta or Alerta Barcelona. His most recent work is Naturaleza muerta, an essay on the story of the stuffed man known as the Negro of Banyoles, and in his view an example of 19th century fake news and a chapter in ethnological showbusiness.

This session will be streamed live at YouTube

Photography of Joaquín Araujo: courtesy of Grupo Planeta