It was a great pride for me to collect the Female Talent in Wine and Wine Tourism award given by my Donesvi project last November.
Donesvi was born a long time ago, between countries, professions and aromas.
Countries.
Andorra.
I had the feeling that I was small, like my country, and that beyond those borders that I controlled as a policewoman there was a universe to discover. Now when I look back I see myself as Saint Exupéry's Little Prince. An Andorran looking at the horizon from her little world. I decided to build myself a ship and set off to discover what was in that unknown universe.
Paris.
There I felt like a real citadine, the Andorran Colette who finally felt like a free woman exploring the revolutionary works written by Simone de Beauvoir or Simone Veil amongst others.
London.
I flew to London and I stayed there for about ten years, although I have never felt British
and my Andorran roots have always made me return to my country. They were always short visits to my native country, to soak up the energy of the mountains and those I love before returning to the great city of London that was giving me so much experience.
From London to live among vineyards, here, in the Penedès.
Professions.
I left Andorra as a police officer and practiced as a lawyer in Paris. Messieurs et Mesdames, quel luxe! I was not yet 30 years old. Although a promising working life awaited me in Paris, I decided to listen to what I felt inside, and what I felt told me that Paris was not where I should stay.
From Paris to London.
As I said before, I left Andorra as a police officer, and I had always said that I was leaving my country “to eat the world”. And it couldn't be any other way, I thought, I was a police officer and I had just registered as a lawyer. But life reminds us that in order to grow we have to go through several crucial stages and even at that time I still lacked a way to go. All this to tell you that what really happened is that life really ate me up. To begin with, on one of my first flights to England, I was retained in a lounge at Heathrow airport, among non-EU citizens (remember, I'm Andorran). They wanted to check who I was, why I was coming to England, how long I was staying there, among other questions that were familiar to me. I was a police officer, I asked these questions to those we retained and detained at the Andorran borders. Now they were doing it to me and I felt so, so small. What was happening to me? A voice inside me wanted to shout 'you can't hold me back! Don't you see that I'm a policewoman?', another voice, the one that still accompanies me today and that I call "the bloom voice" whispered to me "thank the Universe for the lesson you are learning today". Today I thank you, thank you Universe and thank you Bloom for always accompanying me.
I got out of that, but other lessons arrived, like killer waves that sweep away everything after a tsunami. Each and every one of those guillotines were both the hardest moments of my journey as well as the greatest learnings of my life. My bloom voice knew it, I still didn't.
In London, between dodging and surfing killer waves, I managed to get a postgraduate degree and start working as a language teacher in a Secondary school. But I was missing that police job. I don't know if it was the lack of adrenaline at some moments, or the close contact with the public, but in any case I decided to present myself for the tests of the Metropolitan Police (also known as Scotland Yard). And here we are again, dressed as a cop, well, now as a bobby, patrolling the streets of London Bridge. I could tell you so many anecdotes, moments of happiness and so many others of enormous sadness. Police work in London was like an explosion of a thousand sensations a minute. Almost like the same feeling when you smell a Pinot Noir from Burgundy. Close your eyes and concentrate... you can smell dozens of aromas at once. Strawberry, cherry, black pepper, clove, mushroom and even horse stables. Now that I'm talking about wines, I have to mention that it was precisely at that time that I developed a taste for wine and that's where the Donesvi journey begins. Well, let's go back to what we were saying, a thousand sensations in a minute. As a police officer in London you could be helping a homeless person and suddenly have to run after a guy who just stabbed another guy. And often with the fear within us, we were not armed.
From London to the Penedès.
I would summarise it as "calm comes after the storm". My voice Bloom was right. In fact now she and I are much better friends. I listen to her more and don't shut her up as much. Maybe here among the vines there is more silence, or maybe I am more at peace. In any case, between mountains, vertiginous waves and big cities, that fondness for wine became a passion and hence my profession. Now I continue to feel like the Little Prince, like that citadine with the soul of a policewoman, all in one, but now more than ever I observe and most importantly I listen to myself.
Well, I wanted to introduce myself briefly so that you would understand the soul behind Donesvi and in the end I went too far. But as I said, thanks to this recognition of Female Talent, which apart from the excitement that makes me collect an award like this also reminds me that Donesvi is born not only from the wine (which I will talk about soon) but from me, from my countries, my professions and the aromas of a thousand colours that accompany me at every moment.