"When you have a lot of passion for something, it can blur your view." (Pep Salazar bonus episode)

Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary) - Radim Malinic

In this bonus episode of 'Daring Forever,' host Radim Malinic explores standout moments from his conversation with Pep Salazar, director of t

Key takeaways

• Passion can cloud judgment; true progress often comes when creators step back to manage rather than perform.
• The most valuable insights come not from finished products but from the messy, imperfect journey of creation.

Main topics

• The origin story of a creative leader
• Balancing passion with professional management

Notable quotes

"When you have a lot of passion for something, it can blur your view."

Conclusion

Pep Salazar's story reveals that true creativity isn't just about making art—it's

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Forever podcast. This is my weekly opportunity to zoom in on a few standout moments from this week's interview to find those moments that deserve a second look and dig deeper in what makes them special. This week I spoke to Pep Salazar, who is the director of Festival in Barcelona and beyond. In our conversation we went back to his own beginnings as a drama student in a small town near Barcelona. through his years building Sonar Festival and what it really takes to design a temporary festival city, one that now travels across Mexico, Sevilla, Montreal and future in Tallinn and other cities. The episode published a few days ago was titled Dare to Chase the Hardest Place on Earth and it was about risk, honesty and why community, when done properly, is the hardest and most rewarding thing you can build. If you haven't checked out the full episode yet, let me share with you these four standout moments. Speaker 1 (0:53) I came from a small town, well, it's not in the small today, but it was a pretty small town near Barcelona. It's called Terrassa. I was working there. My parents wasn't at all in our culture or creativity. And I don't know why, but I really started loving theater and plays at the age of 14, 15. And then I realized that I wanted to be an actor. So I studied drama for five years. I've been four years studying drama in Barcelona, and then I went to London for one year to study drama. I was remembering the other day, I was doing this Meissner technique, which is a repetition technique that you repeat the other one and that starts the dialogue. And that pulls me into the deep culture, in a way, and in deep creativity. And then I realized that I wasn't an actor. I mean, everybody can be an actor, but you need to be very lucky and you need to hang up with people that maybe you don't want to and you need to build families that maybe you don't want to. That's the acting thing. And I realised that I was cool in behind the scenes. And then I went to the university. I knocked to the university and said, hey, can I come back to study some cultural policies and management and that kind of thing? Speaker 2 (2:04) As I've said it many times, I like to come not knowing much about my guests. I've been friends with Pep for nearly a decade, but I never knew that he wanted to be an actor. And I absolutely adored that revelation. in our conversation because as you know I always say I've got a habit of taking the things to the sort of origin stories and Pep's one was incredible because he wouldn't strike me as an actor he wouldn't strike me as someone who would want to do this he's a very particular very unique character and it's beautifully then revealed like how he was more interested in the things behind the scenes that really showed him what happens in delivering things whether it was from theater plays to then becoming interested in more sort of business of performance That led him to working with Sonar Festival and then jumping into helping off. Speaker 1 (2:58) And I guess there is always a