What was Miquel Àngel Raió like, according to his aunt: "He was obsessed with dictionaries"

PalmaAs a baby he slept a lot, so much so that his grandfather would often say to him: “You need to get a move on, be sharp. It’s not good to sleep so much”. He was so content in his baby role that he had little interest in walking. One fine day, without having gone through the crawling stage, he got up, put on his shoes – on the wrong feet – and started walking. “I think his steps just came to him because he’s very stubborn!”. This is told to us by Aunt Marieta – Maria Bauzà – the wife of the brother of Miquel Àngel Raió’s mother, who started dating the old man when the current director of the Principal Theatre of Inca was only two months old – she was 17 years old. She saw him born. And she still remembers the laughter that the family produced seeing him walk in that way, so confident, the day the child decided it was time to get up.

Miquel Àngel Raió was born in Inca in 1973. Marieta says that “as a child he was very blond, very handsome: he looked like a "pepo”. He played a lot with his older sister, Elisabet, and also with his younger cousins. “He grew up surrounded by women: his godmother, his grandmother, his cousins, his sister... I don’t think that fact shaped him much, but it’s true that he has been very sensitive since he was little, and he can boast of having great intuition”, she says.

He got angry rarely, “but when he did, he showed his temper,” recalls and explains an anecdote that still makes the family laugh. They were at the beach. Miquel Àngel must have been four or five years old. For some reason no one remembers, he got angry, dug a hole, and buried his head in the sand; he was left with his bottom in the air, like an ostrich, with no one able to convince him to come out. He was so angry that he was shouting. After a few hours, when they were having lunch at home, the child yawned and Marieta saw that he had a small shell stuck to his palate, because it had created a vacuum: “As angry as he was, he had ended up eating sand,” she says, laughing.

Even as a child, he has been interested in stories: “I think he is a great storyteller, his father, Pere Raió, and also his grandfather Miquel were already storytellers.” Stories and words fascinated the young Miquel Àngel, who around eleven or twelve years old became “obsessed with dictionaries.” First with the Diccionari General and, when he was twelve or thirteen, with the Diccionari de sinònims i antònims by S. Pey. He still keeps it “worn out” from so many hours he spent with that book in his hands. Thus, he also became a voracious reader of poetry: “I wrote it constantly. I read Josep M. Llompart, Damià Huguet, Federico García Lorca, César Vallejo… I felt a special fascination for metrics.”

He had some movies available that they recorded on VHS, and since there wasn't as much content as there is now, he watched them over and over again. One of the ones he watched the most was Closely Watched Trains, a Czechoslovak film directed by Jiří Menzel, winner of an Oscar. Miquel Àngel also went to video stores and particularly enjoyed adventure films, such as Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. With his friends, they also had sessions of The Goonies.

Beyond his tastes and quirks, Maria points out that she has never “heard him fight or argue with anyone,” and that he likes “a good atmosphere” wherever he is. At the same time, she describes him as “a very stubborn child”: “When he had a fixed idea or something truly interested him, he wouldn't stop until he achieved it, and if he had to involve other people, he would.” For Maria, this is one of Miquel Àngel's flaws: stubbornness. And as virtues, she points out his sensitivity, firm principles, and commitment to everything he does. But isn't it true that sometimes someone's flaw can also be a great virtue?