Interview: Richard Schweid

I was living in Formentera in 1968. It was a different place then. There was just one phone on the whole island and there were hardly any cars.When you arrived you had to go to a little guardia civil shack and hand over your passport. When you were ready to leave, they would give it back to you. They knew who was on the island at all times. 

Barcelona was where you’d get the ferry to Ibiza to get to Formentera. It was also where you had to come to cash travellers cheques, so every so often I would make the journey over. It was dirt cheap to get a chair on the ferry. I would stay in a pensión down behind Plaça Reial and rarely wander beyond Plaça Catalunya. It was certainly a different ambience nearly 50 years ago. 

I was in Formentera in February 1981 when the attempted coup took place. I remember I was in a bar when it came on the radio that Valencia had fallen. Citizens were instructed to go back to their homes. People began to cry in the bar then went on their way. I remember thinking that this is how life must have been under a dictatorship.

I travelled to Barcelona a lot until finally settling here in 1995. I came here in 1991 to report on the Olympics. I was writing a book about Barcelona called Jews, Transvestites and an Olympic Season, about changing sexual habits in the city.

I saw your ad on the bulletin board of the Come In bookshop window for an editor and got in touch. We met for a coffee in the Zurich. That was a different place back then too. 

I got a lot of pleasure out of editing Metropolitan and it really helped my relationship with the city. Whenever I walked around and saw something interesting, I could assign it as a story and find out more about it. In retrospect I like how many people we’ve helped in the city, by being a reliable resource. A lot of our writers and photographers also went on to make a name for themselves and that has been good to see too.

It was a long struggle getting the magazine going. We knew very little about publishing a magazine and essentially had to learn everything on the fly. We met a lot of great people who helped us out. From the beginning we decided to adhere to Anglo Saxon editorial standards, which meant that we didn’t sell editorial content to advertisers. That was a novelty for many companies here and made it hard for us during the first few years.

Architecturally, the same things continue to delight me as when I first came here. My gym is at the bottom of the Rambla. The other day I was looking at the entranceway to Nou de la Rambla, where that Kentucky bar has been forever. You look down that street and it’s such a beautiful view. It doesn’t look like somewhere that has international chain stores and commerce. It looks like another time, another place.

Some things never change. Forty years ago there was good cheap public transport. That’s still the way. It’s much better than many other European cities. And sitting out on a bar’s terrace in the sun is still a pleasure. 

Now, I divide my time between Barcelona and Rhode Island.  My new book is called Invisible Nation and is about homeless families in America. Two and a half million children in the US are growing up in conditions defined as homeless. Kids are living with their families in shelters, motels and cars. The book is about how the problem of extreme poverty in the States has worsened and how the government has responded to this. 

I started writing Invisible Nation in 2002. People confuse chronically homeless individuals with homeless families. Most of the time, in the case of families, the issues are strictly economic. You don’t see these families on the street. They are scared the state will take their children so they stay hidden. 

The federal government recommends people spend 30 percent of their income on rent. In order to do that in Boston you have to make $18.50 per hour. The minimum wage is around nine dollars. A lot of people work 40 hours a week with no sick leave, no benefits, no time off, and they can’t afford to rent a place to live. When I became aware of what was going on, I could hardly believe there were so many homeless families. I decided to write a book about it as that’s all I know how to do.

Invisible Nation is available on Amazon.com.