2023-08-09 06:30:52
The olotín Sergi Arimany Pruenca he had the opportunity to taste the Second Division B as a striker for Llagostera and the Leia Basque when I was in my thirties. Now, he is 33, but football stopped him for good in February 2020 when he was 30 and wearing the shirt of the mountain woman, in the Third Division. He no longer wants to know almost anything about football. His life has, a priori, undergone a radical change. He was a corpulent player, a tank, who had it with rival defenses. Now, he has eighty animals as playmates, including cows, horses, goats, sheep, pigs and chickens. Arimany has settled in dranknear Olot, in the family farmhouse La Canova del Puigwhere his father already had herds of goats and sheep for 25 years.
The garrotxí is very versatile: for the past three years he has earned his living as a bomberat the park Vic. It was the reason why he left football. But he also has a degree in Primary Education Teacher. “I have three different and separate lives”, he confesses.
Arimany is not an urbanite who has now become enlightened to go live as a farmer, since his grandparents, both paternal and maternal, from Amer and Les Planes d’Hostoles, also worked the land and cattle and he spent the summers there. “A lot of football people don’t know it, but I’ve been involved in it all my life, I used to ride the tractor as a child. I’m going back to my childhood and my origins.” He doesn’t have enough time. Without going any further, last Saturday, after working all night in extinguishing the Portbou fire, he took the flock out at sunrise. “All the hours that I’m not a firefighter or going out, I’m at home. I’m a very productive person and I’m always scrambling. I get up very early, I go to bed very late and I don’t stop». Arimany shares his adventures as a farmer on social networks, which can be followed on Twitter and Instagram.
Recover the Catalan goat
Little by little he is taking over from his father. Since it was installed in Begudà, it has expanded the family, with the addition of cows. “You can’t imagine a farmhouse without cattle, bringing herds is taken inside. At home, I am very happy. It’s not that I’m a lonely person, but I’m very good with myself and working in my own way». The next step is to get performance out of it. “I work very long days at home, but if we lose money it makes no sense. The numbers never come out and we want to give value to what we do.” Currently, they sell the calves to third parties, but the intention is, soon, to sell beef and goat directly through the La Canova del Puig brand, the name of the farmhouse. “We’re trying to go back to the traditional. We are recovering the Catalan goat, which is an indigenous breed. It’s an ant job, we have little amount, but we do it with a lot darling».
To carry it out, Arimany has the help of his father and his partner, who are very connected in the sector. Is imma puigcorbé, veterinarian, rancher and mountain runner who has also become popular on social networks (16,200 followers on Twitter) to show, normalize and pedagogy her work. “Meeting her was a turning point, because instead of slowing down, she tells me to shoot more”, he confesses. The Puigcorbé family has, in Les Llosses, 50 km from Begudà, the farm Mas El Lladré, which produces dairy products with its cows and also sells beef, pork and goat meat. Regarding whether a merger or a link between the two brands is considered, Arimany sees it as “complicated” for logistical reasons.
Trajectory “of lights and shadows”
Puigcorbé is usually Arimany’s adventure companion. Continuing with his passion for the mountains, the Olotí practices sports such as mountain skiing, climbing, mountain biking, abseiling or trekking. The only grass he wants to notice is that of nature’s fields. The one on the soccer fields is completely parked. “I haven’t put my boots back on even for a while and I don’t miss it at all.” He is signed up for a league of Olot veterans with childhood friends, but “I haven’t been to any games”. At home, he still has a ball, signed by his teammates, from when he scored a hat-trick.
The ex-footballer who wanted to be a “cowboy”
Throughout his career – between Second Division B, Third Division and Primera Catalana – he also played for Olot, Formentera, Palamós and La Jonquera and had three experiences abroad: in Finland (Seinäjoki), in Germany (Energie Cottbus) and in Austria (Kapfenberg). Where was he happiest? “There were different stages, but the ones with the most continuity were in Austria, Palamós and Girona in Division of Honor (youth)”. However, he considers that he lived a career “with lights and shadows. Football has given and taken away a lot from me. He was a special player, he wasn’t a fan or a match watcher. But I squeezed it to the max”, explains Arimany, who left La Muntanyesa halfway through the year when he still had two years left on his contract to work as a firefighter.
“Through football I forged myself as a person, met many people, traveled and learned new cultures and languages. But I also remember traveling alone, having short and precarious contracts. And if you want to perform at a good level, it requires a lot of servitude and dedication and I have always been a very self-demanding person”, he concludes.
Sergi Arimany explains that “I’ve always had a lot of anxieties and football put them off a lot because it forced me to be at 100%”. Among these interests was the dream of being a cowboy. And two years ago, when he was already retired, he went viral because he went all the way to Canada to fulfill it. He experienced a rodeo firsthand, for two months, in Alberta and Ontario: “It was an experience, like that of someone who goes to India for two months with an NGO.” L’Olotí considers that he is “far from calling me a cowboy”. He claims that what he experienced is “like in the movies. I liked the herds, the American culture, and I wanted to work and live like they did. If you go to the origins, they are very authentic. I would love to go back.”
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