Hen- How did you start off in graffiti? Could we say that the beginnings of Vino were the figures?

I started in the beginning of the 90’s, actually in 1990 to be exact. Let’s just say it just came to me suddenly. My brother, two years younger than I am, was always outside on the street, with guys from the neighborhood. And I stayed at home, I loved to draw. One day he came to me and said: “You could do this name, thicker, like a graffiti”, and he explained what it was, and how it should be; width, thickness, and that’s how I discovered letters and stopped doing characters. To me, drawing was copying, or basing your sketch on something existing, that you can see. Letters are something more abstract, you can add style to it, it’s creating something else with some letters. So my beginnings were sketching, and my start off with graffiti were characters. I would do my part and they would do their letters; but letters ended up motivating me.

H- Would that be as His or as Dom?

V- My first name was a 2 and Sick, 2Sick. In fact, in the 90’s, just to provide context here, it was the graffiti boom in Barcelona. Everyone was tagging. It wasn’t graffiti, tagging was the trend then, people didn’t even know where it came from. Not if it came from the US, or nothing. I was abut 15-16 years old. That was the idea then, setting your signature on the streets, at school, wherever you went. The tag was the thing that caught my eye, but when I discovered the letters, that’s what I liked.

Musa- I’d like for you to explain how Barcelona was during that time. Your neighbordhood.

V- Thinking back to how it all started, it was more on a local scale; it was neighborhood graffiti. You’d move around your four streets and you didn’t know more than that. You’d hang out with people from the neighborhood, you’d try to put out the most tags, you’d go out to the train tracks. It was quite the spectacle.

We’re talking about a Barcelona before the ’92 Olympics. My neighborhood was a bit poor; youngsters were either tagging or doing drugs or stealing cars or doing some sort of mischief. That was what trapped us, being able to do something creative in those times. And if you tagged the most, you were the coolest kid in on the block.

M- Why did you choose 2Sick?

V- I don’t know. Might have been because of the combination of letters and numbers, I’ve always been inspired by the movement letters can have, and a 2 is like an S, with its curves; a C too.

H- Was that during the second boom of rap in Spain? Checkered shirt, baggy pants, marker and ready to shake things up? Was there a rap Vino?

V- Yup, during that second. Well, yeah, but we were kind of different. There was a ‘rap Vino’ but only for a couple of months. We didn’t come from Style Wars; our thing was random, we did it because it was what was done. We barely listened to rap, and the fashion... yes, we did wear baggy pants, but it wasn’t linked to the 4 elements.

M- I remember the comments that were made about the bunch of graffiti writers, you included, that didn’t listen to rap, nor were they hip hop. There was controversy.

V- We were very connected to the Sharp movement; we were from a neighborhood where there was a lot of trouble with nazis and skins. We were left winged and anti-nazis. It was all connected to Sharp and music.

H- Around the same time as Honet… Moet also came from that side.

V- Yes. Honet, Poch and Stak came around the mid ‘90s. It all went hand in hand. Yes, but Meot came later, I am talking now about ’93.

M- The staggering thing is that there must have been quite a clash between those who had started before, and you, right?

V- Yeah. In fact, for example, people from the Sant Martí area were coming back from graffiti, stopping, and the new generation motivates them to continue or to get hooked up again. In the end it didn’t happen, at least not in my case. I didn’t move with people from that era, except Pie with whom I’ve shared more bonds, because he was still doing bombing and trains.

M- I met you later, on the benches of the Bunker, in Consejo de Ciento. I had heard about you guys but hadn’t met you yet. You used to hang out on those benches with more people. Moockie and Kapi would sometimes go over to talk to you. Moockie would hang out. Kapi had more of a serious stance.

H- I’d like to point something out. There were only thugs and bad people hanging out there. Well, not only, as Vino was not one of them. Let’s not delve on that period of time. But outside of the Bunker, some came to steal.

V- Nah man, writers. Train writers. Moockie would try to empathize with us. We’ve never wanted to rob, and we’ve have always stood up for our people. On the contrary, we thought it wrong to steal where you hung out, doing things… You know, don’t shit where you eat. It’s wrong. It wasn’t our thing.

At first, we saw some kind of escape in graffiti, a way to feel fulfilled. It’s like getting halfway there, but without having seen anything. That was the philosophy; we live in a shitty neighborhood, where people are dying, drugged up and with no future. And here they recognize me. I did my first train in ’92, and from then on, I’ve never wanted to do anything else. Remember that in that time there were train yards that hadn’t been discovered yet, and that our mindset to get everywhere.

M- Being so young, was it that easy for you to move around?

V- Well, for better or worse, I’ve always lived with only my mom, and she worked. I remember being 16 and telling my mother I was going away for the weekend, camping with my girlfriend; and I went to Denmark for a month. I turned up after a month. (Laughter) That was the philosophy. If we’re responsible enough to live in this neighborhood, fight against drugs, why wouldn’t I be responsible enough to travel and write?

H- That will do for a title.

M- Did you start travelling at a young age?

V- I did my first InterRail when I was 16, influenced by our French friends Opak, Honet, that came over here and showed us what that all was.

H- There had already been some Scandinavians here, Finnish.

V- Yes. Pablo, Manson, Trama… And they hung out with us. People with whom we had daily contact, that came to Barcelona to get trains done around ’92-’96. That was the train boom over here. I was lucky to speak English and able to talk to everyone. My English was very basic, C- level from school, but I wasn’t afraid to talk and that’s how I learned. That was the spirit; learning, wanting to know how things were in their country, wanting to visit them, getting those trains. It was a time without cell phones, no smart phones, nothing. It was letters, home phone calls… it wasn’t as easy as it is now. Just imagine a 16-year-old organizing his month-long InterRail journey, getting out of the country for the first time. You didn’t know street names, there wasn’t Goggle Maps, you didn’t know the difference of currency, where to go, how to get food… this is what teaches you in life.

I remember that first InterRail, I left Barcelona with Krash, Oves and the girl I was seeing at that time. Our first stop was Paris, and we did some writing with Opak. Our second stop was Brussels, and we got robbed on the train, they took all the money we had. They left is with the InterRail tickets, and our passports. That’s it. No cash. We got to Brussels, we were sitting down in the MIDI train station, deciding whether to head back to Barcelona like a bunch of losers, or went forward with the journey to the “Sud Cool”festival in Denmark.

And right there, whilst trying to steal a couple of cokes from the vending machine for breakfast, this guy walks by and hears us speak Spanish, sees we’ve got spraycans with us. He said: “You’re Spanish. What’s happened to you?”, “We got mugged on the train and have nothing left” we answered. He told us he was also into writing, and he invited us to his house. That was Jaba. We stayed at his place for 4 days. He taught us how to survive; how and where to steal, and we geared up to continue our journey.

Shout out to Jaba, he’s a genius!

M- How lucky to have found him. Was the rest of the trip OK?

V- Yeah, we decided we had to go on. Destiny wanted us there. It was one of my best experiences, and with people I hung out with in Barcelona.

We got to Brussels and opened a map to find the nearest end point. We went there, did some writing, slept in trains, it rained. We had a great time. Then when we got to Denmark, and we did some pieces in that festival where we’d been invited by some Danish friends, who had been in Barcelona too. It was amazing, we were in a sort of gigantic gymnasium, and the festival lasted for like a month. Seen came, and Quick and, well, a bunch of people we didn’t even know. I went there as His/Dom, but did my first Vino.

M- Did those names have a reason?

V- Those two were because of the letter combination, but Vino had a reasoning, yes. Imagine, it’s ’95, my house is like a hostel, my mom was the one who took care of everyone; and each week there’d be Danish, French, English people over, people from all over the world, and of course, as it is usual, they would drink. My mom has never drunk, and with the Swedish guys from WUFC, I’d tell them to give my mom booze, as she loved it due to her alcoholism.

M- Poor thing!

V- Hahahaha. Well yeah, so of course my mom was sick and tired of us. And I decided to use Vino*, for my mom. (Laughter). It represents us, we have Good wines in our country. The V is one of the worst letters to start with, but it started off to represent my mom, but afterwards I took it upon myself to get better at it and modify my letters.

M- So in all that, there’s your own style, I guess due to the cultural influences that have nothing to do with NYC graffiti, it’s completely different.

V- Yes. If you notice, in Sweden or Finland, the classic thing to do was NYC style. In those times, it wasn’t like now, where you can get access and information form all over the world. Each country was defined by their own style, and then most people followed it. In Barcelona our main objective was doing things differently. That’s why we connected so well with Pie. His mindset was also set on being different and he permeated us with it. Why would you be doing the same as others?

That was the way for us, we travelled and interacted with people from abroad; I understand and value that each have their own style, because that’s what defines you. But being able to travel, share… for quite some years I was with SDK, IT, with the French PME, with Sober, Foe, Pum, we had a different group concept than what was around. We were a real family: in my crew there was my brother and two guys I’ve been with since we were 15. We travelled together. And until this day our bond is real tight. Maybe we valued this concept of family much more because we came from an unstructured family ourselves. This style of family group, of crew, we took it seriously. This was us, what defined us.

M- After so many years, you’ve been able to adapt to all eras of graffiti and life. Is that an innate quality of yours?

V- Well I think in the end we are all survivors, nobody made it easy for us in life, and thus you fight for what you like, and you learn. Traveling opens your mind up. When traveling I learned things which I didn’t understand how or why we hadn’t done it before. For example, the backjumps: seeing the 5 minutes in

group needed in ’95-’96-’97 in Stockholm, we at home could do backjumps of 25 minutes. You adapt to the situations. Same thing happens with people that say nothing happens in Barcelona, that you can talk about things, put pics up on social media, etc… but we’ve always had Sweden, Germany as reference, and have followed their ways of doing things. Keeping a low profile, avoiding detection, not making it easy. Doing it in such a way that you’ll be longer in the game.

M- Well that has been noticed, because you guys have always been around.

V- I do graffiti for myself and my people. If I go two days without writing, I’m going up the walls. My wife then tells me “go write already”. It’s kind of like that, I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, only to myself. I am very demanding with myself. I think this is what makes you get better. In the end, the ego is only there to get you in trouble, trying to convince people that you are more, that you’re there, and the truth is you don’t have to convince anyone. You do it for you, to feel good, to share it with your friends, to keep doing something creative, and because you just can’t stop doing it. Not for anybody else.

M- So basically, what you and your crew did was nudge the graffiti train scene here; every time you traveled you learned something new that you then implemented here to the scene that was not ready for it.

V- We were importing the technology from abroad. We were a bit ahead of what was happening here, and that allowed us to, for example, keep watch with cell phones once they came out, having index cards, keeping track of security guards. We would take turns, we worked as a team. We did that and some people would say that was not necessary, and well, some got caught. For example, I remember while traveling, you’d be in Hamburg with rage, and we’d go watch a train yard for three days; we monitored the guards, followed them by car, before finally deciding ‘OK, we’ll go this day to write, but with a lookout here, with prepaid phones, and calling each other. A whole deployment of resources to be able to do some bombing, and you learn to incorporate that into your way of working in Barcelona, thus being able to do it longer, avoiding problems.

Although people from abroad have this image of us here being all crazy “5 minutes, it’s all good”, “yes, yes, possible”.

H- Do you prefer the discreet way or the rowdy?

V- There are two ways of doing things. One is trying to reduce the risks, doing it well. The other is ‘by any means necessary’. I would say that I like both ways, depending on the circumstances. It depends on the country too; but if there’s no other choice then we must do it ‘the Spanish way’.

The ideal would be without having to go through this, but otherwise, you just got to go for it. In the end, you can do things in a myriad of ways, but just not halfway. We all have balls and, in the end,, we do our thing.

Depending on the objective, you analyze the situation, you evaluate, and you know we either do it the crazy way or we don’t. And we do. It’s true, sometimes we say: today is not the day, and maybe you’re wrong; but you always have to make a decision.

M- Do you have a fixed plan, and if it doesn’t work you go home, or do you leave with alternative plans?

V- The Germans and Swedish are stricter than we are. They see a fly that’s not supposed to be there, and they stop. We are not that extreme. We’d see the fly but would think it was nothing, and you want to convince yourself of that. Your desire to write is stronger. That’s our eagerness to write. In that situation others would abort the mission, but not us. I am quite methodical and like to prepare well.

H- The paranoid moment of the life of a train writer… you’ve lived that.

V- Yes, for sure, many times. Imagine in ’95 with friends from OTP, that went writing all drugged up, saying they had seen a bus full of nuns. You get used to it.

M- And how’s your eyesight? What with all the eye strain at night…

V- Well, truth is I don’t see very well, my sight is quite bad. But when I’m in certain situations, my senses are keener. I think that’s come through wear and tear. But yeah, you sort of rely more on your other senses.

M- Considering your history… What are the circumstances now?

V- Well I thought everything had already been thought of, but you see things and situations that happen, specially in Barcelona: research, investigations, people doing their best to get some information, I think we’re still a tad bit ahead. I don’t if it’s due to having less sort of vanity, or wanting to do things another way, not having that ego struggle, or not being into publishing everything on the Instagram; that all makes us be on the fringe of issues… We’re not that exposed. I don’t know if that’s being a bit ahead, or just having a bit more common sense.

M- That’s why I guess that your system, and the system of those with you, must be considerably closed off.

V- Yes, in the end facts prove you cannot trust everyone, and in a situation of pressure you can even see up to where you must go for someone.

H- And having brought up the subject, who are TSK?

V- Rallie, Yokos, Rocky, Trojan, Amigo and myself. We still do pieces together, moving about together and in contact.

H- Who’d you see writing first?

V- In the area where we lived, there weren’t many. There were pieces of people who’d approached the neighborhood, Heiz and Save. We were very naïve and had no contacts with the outside world, but we went looking for places, and saw graffiti in the area of the train tracks. We saw pieces by Heiz, Save, Sutil. I remember, like it was yesterday, seeing a train pass y in front of my house, and seeing a Telz piece on it, in gold, a window down end-to-end, with yellow 3Ds. It moved around for days. Seeing these pieces circulating was what motivated us to get started with trains. I remember the first mission in ’92, we went with Tumsie and Seven to Maçanet, on the last train. We slept there and hid out in the mountains. It was horribly cold. We went back down around 3 a.m. to start, it couldn’t be done before, and we were done in almost an hour, say 40 minutes. It was that power, that sensation of I can whatever I want.

M- Didn’t anything weird happen to you in Maçanet? There was a rumor of some escaped crazy man over there.

V- I’ve had lots of things happen to me, I’ve even been attacked by boars; and the sky out is incredible, and you see lights you do not recognize. Yes, I heard about that crazy guy too. It’s all from that time, like the abandoned shed with the satanic symbols; but to us it was like our home, we were there every week. The spirits watched over us.

We didn’t have a car back then, we were kids. For us, those first times, it was madness, 16-year-old kids going out there at night. In a train yard where only the cleaning crew were present. We thought ourselves the smartest, and thought we’d mislead them by jumping each out of a different wagon door. Right there where no one would get off. So, we had to be creative finding ways to arrive without them spotting us. I remember the regional trains opened from the door in the back, and we decided that when the train was heading into the station, and would be slowing down to stop, we’d jump. Just picture it, like bombers, like parachuters launch. I would stay last, because the train would go slower then, and I’d see the other soldiers rolling through the tracks. (Laughs). We were really crazy, 500 meters from the station they’d start jumping. That’s how it went, and I’d go last. We’d be wrecked all night.

Some of those who tagged along were unreal, they’d even bring cologne, to get cleaned up and say they were going to school. Imagine that. The station manager would burst out laughing. In the ‘90s it was all very laid back.

From ’95 on, there was security, and everything changed a lot. In my point of view, it was even more dangerous then than it is now; because now you now they’re there and you can watch out, but in those times it was random, they could be hidden in the trains, outside, or they’d call the cops.

H and M- Aside from markers, what else did you have back then? Had you gone to the shop where Moockie worked?

V- Well, in the beginning we used Felton, Spraycolor, Vaivén, Dupli, that we stole from Servei Estació. Whatever we could get our hands on. In fact our graffiti was very local, we both bought and stole from the neighborhood shop, to an old woman who we would con: we’d pay 2 and we’d take 4. But during the times of Universidad, we met people and started to get to know the scene. We heard about a shop where Moockie worked, and how to make a homemade… you know, by word of mouth.

M- You were at Pueblo Español, right?

V- Yes. I think it’s the best festival that’s been done in Barcelona, and one of the best in Europe, due to the time it took place and the quantity and quality of artists that came. Kapi and Moockie organized it, and it was incredible.

I remember being outside and we were given Mtn cans to try out. The event was great, they had brought everybody, and we met people from abroad because we didn’t start traveling until later. It’s really sad that nothing like that has been done again since. A really good thing they did was, aside from bringing stars from around the world, everyone from Barcelona was represented too, to a greater or lesser degree, and 90% of writers from Barcelona were there.

M- Well, up to today I’ve never heard anyone speak badly of that festival.

V- Really, everyone was there.

M- Remember the train exhibition that was done in Vilanova? It was pouring down, and we had to take shelter in a wagon, and we destroyed it.

V- Yes, yes, I was there too. I did a Dom there. They even gassed a girl with a fire extinguisher, and she was asking everyone to please stop.

M- That was the girl organizing the festival. I remember the wagon being full, and people were getting restless because it wouldn’t stop raining and writing was not an option, and some started kicking the seats. And things took off from there.

V- I’d say I was on that same wagon too, along with the guys that had used the extinguisher. (Laughter) You should point out that this took place in the train museum of Vilanova.

M- Imagine the scene. They grant us some of the museum’s wagons, beautiful old ones; they let us piece them, they even bought the cans. They let us do whatever we wanted. A girl that promotes youth activities in the neighborhood of Gracia, takes a chance on us and stands up against Renfe* -who had their doubts about it-, and she ends up wholly covered by white extinguisher powder. That woman must have lost all faith in humanity.

V- I’m sure they regretted it. She was some kind of social worker. And yup, I would have lost it too. She either became a nun or…

H- Nope, she got into politics and became Margaret Thatcher.

(Laughter)

M- They gave us absolute freedom. Moockie even wrote Fuck Renfe*.

We’re talking about a creative freedom that doesn’t exist. You can’t go just go to a festival and be talking shit about the ones sponsoring you.

V- You can, but you’ll never come back. That also defines a bit of how we were back then, rebels. We were from different parts of the city, all out of place, without a specific space in this society. Yes, that was a reflection of how we were, people against the set norms and that’s what I’ve always defended when family or friends ask me why I do this. I do not agree with this society, that may sound very idealist, but ultimately that’s reality, an artistic form of protest.

*Renfe is the Spain’s largest train and freight company.

V -Sometimes you don’t need to write freedom for the people of Palestine, which is something all of us support, but just writing is a way of protesting against this shitty rotten society where it’s all about the money.

The moment money is involved, all values are lost. That’s how I think. Friendships made through graffiti, are maintained until the end, there’s no money in between. That’s the way humas are. In graffiti, there can be brawls, but when you have a friend in another country, whom you’ve helped and who has helped you, that’s a tough bond to break. It’s not that easy to destroy. The hardships you’ve gone through with that person, the bad times, the good times, that makes a relationship strong. I have friends in different parts of the world, finally seeing each other after 15 years, and the relationship is as if we were brothers. I stay at his place, he in mine. Now that we have a family, we go with the kids. We have the same values, or very similar.

H- Somehow the normal people, the mass media, with a job, a barbecue, etc… that type of people, that have always scolded Vino for his way of life, they don’t realize that just being the way we are, we’re already out of that system, of the preestablished way.

V- 100%. Some may perceive it as some kind of sign of superiority, whatever, but I just feel very far from this society. As I was growing up, I would see people, -I always had a job, in that aspect I am very stable, to have this crazy side in me, I need that part of stability-, spending their money the way society says they should, or you should do this or that. I would see that from the outside, and I’d laugh thinking “How miserable you must be. You will die without knowing what it is to travel, to share with people, what it is to go crazy, to go through tough times to then appreciate the good times.” You honestly felt bad for people. What you have gained cannot be bought with money and not many will have that.

M- You were also in Que Punto de Fiesta…

V- Yes. I wasn’t invited but I went with Mike, Sesac, Straks. We bombed, and we were at the party, which was incredible. That was maybe my second trip. The first one was to Madrid in ’92.

H- There we have it, the rapper Vino…

V- Well, not really, we were very ignorant. There was even a time where we tried to listen to rap, but in my neighborhood, we’d be listening to Paco de Lucía.

We took the train, 6 hours; everyone from Barcelona left together, drawing, having fun. The first adventure by train. The on to Madrid was also a bit of an adventure. My brother’s brother-in-law, 18 years old and with a car, had just broken up with his girl and tagged along with us on this adventure. He still remembers this as his trip of a lifetime. We went to see pieces by Koas, Zeta, we walked around Móstoles, Alcorcón. We saw the pieces on the street that we’d seen in the Sutil’s fanzines and in Game Over a year before. We slept in a field, did a train in Móstoles, had some trouble… Everything that could have happened, happened. Adventure. On the last day, we met Deno and Buny. We hung out with them, and from then on, we kept in touch. Coincidence.

M- You and your coincidences.

V- Yeah, well yes, life is a bit like that, isn’t it? On the trip where we met Jaba, afterwards, in Copenhagen, we were just three Spanish 17-year-old kids, and most people were older… Seen, Quick, and some rappers, Mobb Deep… They put Krash, Oves and me together, and we shared a room with Zedz from Holland and Swet from Copenhagen. We were the children in that festival, we were supposed to do our pieces, but we didn’t care. We were out to get the bicycle train. We got there and asked about it, and were told “don’t mess around, you guys are at a festival”. There was an interactive part, where a camera was focused on the tracks and you could see the runs. They told us it was a tough spot, but we were seeing pieces by Moas going back and forth, so we thought they were just messing with us. We went to a classic yard called Farum, I remember we went all out, and were back by midnight; we mingled with the people at the festival, and by the next morning we had no fear whatsoever. The guys started seeing our piece roll by on the festival camera and asked us if we’d gone bombing. On the train station to the festival, Osterport it was called, we got to talking. A dude walked up to us and asked “you’re Spanish, right? I am FIZZ from Paris, but my dad is Latino. I do trains and am here with Vans. What are you going to be up to?”. We left with the French guys. I am talking about TPK from Paris. We killed it in Klamperbourg, the Moas yard, we went there ‘cause we were kids, we didn’t care. Had a great time doing pieces. We broke through the fence and it went swell. We said: back tomorrow.

When we went to catch the run back at the central station, this older guy walks up to us, baggy t-shirt on and gesturing in a rapper way. Saying we had written in his yard. We said yes. “And who has told you that you could?” “We’re freelance” -we said, “We asked at the festival, but no one wanted to go bombing, so... we took our pick!”. At first, he was quite angry and, although with time we became good friends, that day he did tell us people respected them there. “Sure, OK, but we’re not from here” -we’d answered, “We’re Moas” -he said again. “Yeah, whatever, and we’re kids from Barcelona, so if we need to swing punches, let’s go”. The guy understood he was alone. He left saying “fuck you man”. The next day, at the festival, the older ones came to us to tell us we couldn’t do that again. We said sure, ok, but asked they’d at least tell us where we could go instead, otherwise we’d be back in that yard. The old-school people from everywhere were saying what a bunch of brats these kids were, we’d fucked up well.

H- And now, all good with those people?

V- Yes, with some of them we get along. You know, nobody has done what these people from Denmark have. They’re geniuses and have taken the concept of being a group further than just their own personal names. A couple of years ago I was in Naestevd, in a festival with Swet. TKid was there that year. I was back there after 20 years and it surprised me to hear TKid telling his version of his life. About when he got to Berlin, and about how people started using his style, creating their own styles. He was explaining how he’d done trains in NYC, and that he’d had 5 very active years, he’d done about 100 trains. It’s his story, what he’s lived. I asked him a question; I was doing my piece next to him, and he speaks Spanish. I found it very pretentious to come around that way to Denmark, even though I like his history, and I like the fact he makes a living telling it. TKid has done 100 or 200 trains in 5 years, but there’s people there that have been doing trains for 30 years, and that weren’t at the festival, because they’re in jail: they’ve all gone through jail. It’s fine that he makes a living out of it, but get informed, educate yourself.

We have to educate ourselves with what came before, and I’m a bit of an illiterate in that because I’m not interested, because just I do graffiti. But if you’re going to make a living out of it, you need to pay some attention to the graffiti that’s going on elsewhere, the graffiti there is in Europe, if you’re coming here. In the USA there’s been writing and development in 5 or 6 or 10 years, but writers here in Europe have been doing so for 25 or 30 years, legal and illegally. I’m fine with him making a living out of it, but not by trying to imply that you are more than people here.

The only graffiti still alive in the New York subway, is European.

M- Speaking of unspeakable things, tell us something you can tell, what was your worst mission?

V- The worst was Brasil, because of trusting people that do things from the heart but have no know-how. Sometimes when you travel, you trust people. We were going to do a daytime blitz in an open-air subway terminal. We jumped the tracks and started bombing. The train left. I wanted to leave, but they wanted to go back; so we started arguing. I usually do not go back to a place where I’ve left a piece halfway, in a city I do not know, but they convinced me. They didn’t typically do trains either. We had someone on the lookout, although in the end he didn’t notice anything, and we went down a bridge and hid in some bushes. The train had to arrive, it passed by the station first, and came to a point where it had to change over to another track. When it got there, we saw people running beside the train, it was crazy. Right by the bridge these two guys came by, and they seemed quite suspicious, thug-ish. We decided to leave. The first guy climbed, and the second one caught me peeking out and I found myself being pointed at with a gun. The guy before me tried to run, and I saw how they pointed at him, but he turned a corner, and they didn’t shoot. Had that shot been fired, probably none of us would have made it out of there. The three of us remained. They threw us to the floor, kicked us and more people came, they were hitting us with the butt of the guns. They made us kneel, they frisked us, and things settled down a little when they saw two of us had our foreign passports. They questioned us and took us to the police station. Sao Paulo is not the best place to end up in jail, but yeah, we ended up at the station and detained. As an anecdote: we started getting the hang of it, we had friends in the city that helped us out. “You’ll have to stay”-they said, “but we’ll release you tomorrow, no worries.” We’d started to have a bit of complicity with the superintendent, and I ended up in a cell, with a guy that was crying on the floor, open head wound, torn, beaten... the superintendent said, “ask him what has happened”. I spoke to him in Portuguese, but he said he didn’t want to talk. The superintendent explained to me that this man was a police officer, and that whilst drunk, had gotten into the subway. A poor boy in the wagon was begging for money and put some candies on the cop’s leg. This guy threw them back at the boy, and the people on the wagon jumped him and a fight ensued. The cop took out his gun and started shooting inside the wagon. People were able to take him down, but he had already shot several people. He was crying because he would end up in jail, and his life would end there. You then see the value of life, and you realize the kid’s life they’d been pointing at could have ended right there.

M- And you, have you reflected on it?

V- We’ve had that several times. In the end, it’s the oblivion of not knowing how things are in other countries. When you live it, you realize it; this time it wasn’t the first time we landed in the police station, and you know how to defend yourself, what to say and what not… it wasn’t an issue, but you do realize how your life could have changed in a second, and that you’re lucky.

The fact that you do trains makes you believe you’re indestructible. It’s true, you end up believing nothing is going to happen to you. Also, because you get to a point where you think if something happens, at least you’ve already enjoyed it.

M- And also because you’re used to dealing with difficult situations.

V- Right now resilience is very in, snobs use it a lot. Poor people have had resilience their whole life.

M- Do those life-or-death situations make you ponder, or not?

V- I think my way of thinking is living life to the max, and when it’s my time, it could be tomorrow, I’ve reveled in it all. The rest can all cry, but at least I enjoyed my time. I’ll go to the grave happy. Maybe I’ve lived three more lives than a normal person. I’ve experienced what I wanted, I’ve followed the rules because there’s no other choice, but I have done what I’ve wanted. There are people that are happy spending a bunch of money on drugs, or on weekend parties, or on an apartment in Benidorm; and I’ve preferred having little money, and living, and spending it on cans, and sleeping on the street. Now if I have more money and I can afford to stay in a hotel, I do, of course. We’re all getting older, but listen, if I have to sleep in a doorway, a doorway it is. And I try to get my children to understand that. I go with them, we do an InterRail every year, and I tell them “Today we sleep in a lush hotel, and that’s nice, but tomorrow we’ll sleep on the street or in a station, and that’s what it is. Today we eat in a restaurant, and tomorrow you’ll have to make do with one euro on the street.” I will not leave money behind to my children, but I will leave behind experiences, resources and them being able to fend for themselves.

H- You’ll take are of spending the money.

M- Tell us the funniest or best experience you’ve had. One that can be shared, of course.

V- I had been to Brasil with some friends, to do trains legally, and it might be not be the funniest story, but it is the most shocking… They let you write, you sleep in 5-star hotels, you eat in luxury restaurants, you have a chef. Os Gemeos have achieved that. We were treated like superstars, we’d be picked up by car, they’d take us to the yard, and someone from the company came to compliment our work. We were floating. And after that to a 5-star hotel in Ipanema, in front of the beach, pool on the top floor; we were the happiest men on earth. But in the end, it’s not real, because you’re actually happier when you’re fighting to do your writing. You’re there through the good times and the bad. That one was quite shocking, because we shared some incredible moments with people with whom you have a great friendship.

Also, another crazy mission was two years ago when I did the Capetown subway in South Africa. All these experiences make you lose your fear, otherwise you wouldn’t do them, but it does make you feel this kind of anguish, which in those moments makes me think it might be a good time to call my children and tell them how much I love them. You know? I’m not kidding. The city is very hostile. Downtown, the neighborhoods, the tracks, the yards are in the outskirts, very hard places. You hear stories from Germans who’ve been there in jail and have been infected with aids. Thousands of stories. And when you’re there you’re like, “well, guess it’s my turn now”. My friend was explaining this to me, while giving me a canister of extra heavy self-defense gas, that has to be used when the security guard sees you, because otherwise he hides and tries to kill you. They’ll jump you with a machete or a gun and will use it to kill. Because they’re black Africans and the white has been the oppressor during all these times. You, a white boy, come where I work and try to bother, history repeats itself. So, in other words, I had to be ready. He said last time he had been at that yard, a guard had jumped him with a knife, trying to kill him, and he’d had to gas him.

We started getting busy and everything was going well, when you’re in the zone you forget it all. We had someone on the lookout, thank god, and he’d warn us of any movements. We had just enough time to take a picture and get out of there. It was funny because, with the years, one starts to get heavier, and just when we were getting out, I had to go through some fence bars, and I saw that I couldn’t. I asked my friend if we could pry them a bit open. And he says: “Man, we need to get out. The guy is coming.” Well, then you suck your gut in and tell yourself you need to get through. He pulled at me and we got out of there. That was a tense moment. It was the end of the line, with a favela nearby and I remember when he gave me the gas for protection, a couple of workers walked, carrying clubs. I asked my friend why, and he said you needed to defend yourself. You don’t know what you might find. We have it so easy here in Europe. Over there they can kill you.

It was shocking because in other yards in Simontown, which is on the other side, on the snobbiest part, with other types of security guards, and you could see pinguins on the beach. You couldn’t bomb there. Of course, you don’t go to the cool places, because it’s impossible.

H- After having told us the good one and the bad ones, and you must have thousands of stories, tell us which remains a thorn on your side… An “I still have to…”

V- Well, my “Still have to’s”… it’s just a matter of time. Sooner or later, they will fall.

(Laughter)

H- But which one fascinates you and is still to be done…

V- Well, that’s not something I think of…On the go, things will turn up. Which one gets me motivated the most? Cairo in Egypt. In South America, I’ve been in Brasil, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia. Before, when I was younger, I gave that more importance, now if it happens, it happens. I mean, if I try, I’ll go all the way. If the opportunity arises, great, and if not, then not.

A couple of years ago I was working in Moscow, and that was yes or yes. The opportunity. I was working a fair, and on one of the nights I slipped out and hit the subway. All night in the snow, up on a roof because the security guards were walking around all the time. I bombed for 10 minutes and couldn’t get out of there, I stayed in that yard for hours; I got back to the fair at 6 a.m., just in time to open the booth…

M- Complete double life.

V- Yup, like Superman and Clark Kent.

(Laughs)

M-In these types of situations, there must have been moments where the investment of energy put in, comparing to the result… did not make up for it, right?

V- Lots of escaping… when you have to run, you think “this is the last time, because I am not going through this again”, but once you’re safe, you forget. The most intense getaway… I’ve had some crazy ones, but we try to do things well and minimize the risks, so that they’re less each time, because we’re getting older; your abilities drop, and you try to balance that out. Physically, I’ve sometimes come out full of scratches due to hawthorns. I remember one time going into work with my face all scratched up and my body bruised. A wreck. But never broken anything.

M- And you’ve never stopped, right?

V- No, never. Let’s say from ’90-’91, what I did in ’90 I do not consider graffiti as it was only tagging; but in ’92 I did my first wagon, and since then nonstop. Well in 2003 there was a time frame of two months where I wasn’t very active, my relationship had ended, and I was a bit down and out. I was out two months, but friends from abroad would come over and I would take them places. I didn’t want to write, but I looked out for them, went with them to the yard, with all my sadness, telling them my sob story. (Laughs). That started in April and two months later I was on the InterRail.

All of us in graffiti have had to sacrifice a great deal of our lives. That’s graffiti, sacrifices. A lot of us haven’t partied, haven’t had relationships, or we’ve had relationships but haven’t been able to maintain them because it’s difficult to combine both. The life of a graffiti writer is hard, and that of their partner even harder. Because we’re selfish, and it’s always been clear to me that, above my partner, comes graffiti. Your partner can leave you, but graffiti is with you forever.

M- I 100% agree with you.

V- The only thing above graffiti are my children. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is, for life. And even so, we’ve managed to handle it well. (Laughter).

It’s about priorities in life, this gets you hooked, and if your partner doesn’t understand, it’s complicated. It’s part of your life, more than 30 years, more than two thirds of my life doing graffiti. It’s innate. Someone that asks of you to leave a part of your life behind… that’s not going to end well. That side of you will come out sooner or later. That’s why it’s hard to find a partner that understands it, with whom you can find that balance. You also have to mature and understand that if you want someone by your side, you need to take care of them and give in. And if not, all good, each their separate ways. It’s what we mentioned before. I try to have some stability for the rest of my life. My relationship, work, family, because the other side is quite unstable. If I had a life of graffiti, drugs, partner... that’d be too much. I had to leave something behind.

My concept of graffiti cannot be linked to drugs because I have to be 100% and be able to control the situation, and even so there are times that things get out of hand. I’ve stopped going with people who take drugs, not because of them taking drugs, but because this is serious. And I do not want to get caught, and I want to be able to do this for a long time.

M- Tell us about the book you’re preparing.

V- The idea is not to make a book to reach out to people and showing what I do, to sell and make a living. The idea came from being 30 years making graffiti, being a senior, and finding yourself with teenage children to whom you’d want to explain what you’ve done, your adventures. And that these will help them and be captured as a legacy. There will be people who won’t care, but it will, at least to my children, explain what I did. Explain it to them through images, texts, from friends all over the world, a story in time. That’s what lots of graffiti writers have done, but for me it’s for my kids to understand what brought their father to do this.

M- Well I’m very happy to be recording this. It hurts to think that we are losing all these ways of seeing life, this philosophy.

V- My wife, my family, they don’t know about this. Don’t want to know. But later on, I want my children or grandchildren to know what I did and why. That’s the only goal of making this book.

You can live according to a set of norms, but you can fight for your own path and make your own. 30 years writing, that’s a lot of trains, and many adventures. I have photographic memory of my pieces, and I remember everything. I want to embody this all in a book. There’s a text I’m doing for the book, that a friend of mine liked a lot, where I say that people have the need to go to the movies to see and learn these stories, but we’ve lived our stories firsthand.

H- That’s why it’s important to keep things in memory, through books, to preserve places, cities and pieces. For them to understand that you’re a key element to the national scene, regarding trains. That’s a good legacy. One out of the two million people that does something different with their life, leaving a legacy of what he’s done.

V- Yes, it will have value in the future, because life is changing. My children do not have the capacity to focus themselves that much on a hobby, the youth want fast things. If they can’t have it, they move on to something else. And now being able to say you’ve done something your whole life, that’s 30 years doing it. Something that I’ve combined with having children, troubles, with money, without money…

M- And the stories behind the people. Lesseps was an open field, which before that was a convent of nuns, and now it’s a library. If there’s no record of how things were done, and only the pieces remain, you lose loads of information because nowadays people do legal walls, and they only know how that is. There are people on the lookout for spots, yes, so their pieces will last, but you know what I mean.

H- How lucky some are with legal walls, huh? I don’t know what we would have done without them. It’s a matter of convenience; people lonely go to a spot once they’ve seen someone else go there and nothing happening. But hey, that’s not the way it works. That’s my wall, I did that.

V- And specially before, when you could write freely, right?

M- One of the things I like about you is that you’re always talking as if you’ve got an audience.

V- Yeah man, who are you talking to? Hahahaha. I remember one thing, when bombing walls in the ‘90s, in ’97 and ’98 to be more specific, people were complaining that due to the civility law there were no wall left. What we are living now is a consequence of that, of the “We’ll fight to get you your walls, to express yourself”. When this civic ordinance kicked in, we who did trains said that the difference was that it used to be some of us having to run, and now all of us had to go off running.

M- What also happened is that it became obvious who wanted to write and who didn’t, people would find ways, and took risks.

V- Would all these people be writing if it wasn’t that easy?

(Laughter)

M- To wrap this up… you see yourself writing forever and ever, right?

V- Unfortunately, yes.

(Laughs)

Especially when you see things such as the pandemic, or if your partner leaves you, or your children growing up… you realize that you’re doing something in life. That’s what you appreciate the most, graffiti connects you with people, it creates bonds, strong ties. How can you lose that?

M- You are the first or second generation of train writers that’s still active, and we’re getting older…

V- There are some older than me, and the thing is that I was lucky to coincide with all generations on an international level, and of the earlier generation I have met some and some are still at it, other have stopped. Germans like Chintz, Shark, Rio, and Opak, Honet, and Kaos in Stockholm; from all over the world and all of them pacesetters. And you think, if they keep on then I must keep on too, because they’re living proof that it can be done. So I don’t even question myself.

On the physical side of things though, I was talking to Shark some days ago and he was telling me “I was in Berlin and my knees are not what they used to be, I’m almost 60 years old…”, but he’s still getting wholecars done. He’s a beast. It’s true, you start noticing it, but mentally, you can’t stop. If you could you’d be forever young just so you can keep writing. Physically, I know I won’t be able to carry on at the same level as I do now. But I’m looking forward to it. To be honest I’ve also learned a lot from you María, about masks, I had never used it and now I do because there comes a time when you need it. Because what I want is to be able to piece for as long as possible.

It’s now very trendy to say that it’s all about the ways you choose, but it’s true. It’s always been.

(Laughs)

M- With Covid, for the first time lots of people have seen the writing on the wall**. For the first time, people have been cut back from their liberties and have seen they’ve no control over their life.

V- You find one way or another to keep on doing what you love. It has been positive. There’s been creativity, and it’s been good because it’s given us time to think, about what we’ve already gone through, what’s still out there, and what we want to do.

M- Tell us about your style, which you’ve developed throughout the years until it became as effective as a Swedish watch.

V- I guess it all has to do with circumstances. This past summer I was with Opak in some train sheds in Italy, where you could be for a while and it threw me off. I was hesitant. What do I do, 10 pieces in 10 minutes, or a piece with a figure? You have to recalculate to use your timing well and not have to wait. It’s cool, ‘cause in the past you’d try to modify or simplify with style, and movement, to be effective in the time frame you have; and in places like these, it’s the opposite, if I do a piece I have to get more details in.

When you do trains and then afterwards move to walls, you’re in such a hurry that your mind wants to already see it traced out. And that’s the first thing.

**No pun intended

M- You use sketches, right?

V- Yes, always. I actually spend 10 minutes to an hour a day drawing, if I get in front of a sheet of paper and something comes to me, I go on, and if nothing does, then it’s not the right day. On the matter of trains, there aren’t many that spend much time drawing, and that’s a mistake, because having it all thought out will save you time. It’s been proven. I’m quite fast writing because I’m very organized, very methodical. You’d think this wouldn’t allow to be very dynamic or able to improvise much, and could end up always doing the same thing, but no, because my work is prior. And it buys you time.

M- Do you always try to finish first?

V- Yes, I’m always the one waiting. I’m always looking for contrast and effectivity.

M- And to finish off, who’s story would you like to hear?

V- From several international ones, How & Nosm, Shark, Chintz, Kaos. In Spain, people like Buny, being peers, Krash, that started a few years before me, and yours, María.

M- Thank you very much for giving us your time and sharing this talk with all of us. It’s been a pleasure.