He speaks French, Italian, Spanish and English like Portuguese and fell in love with economic policy when he was still a teenager. He was a founder of the MES but was never attracted to politics because he likes doing more than showing up. He continues to study the real economy, reading and discovering destinations and music that enchant him. A staunch sportsman and author of the Mateus Plan, he counts ignorance and the attempt to deceive others among his greatest irritations. And he doesn't give up his independence. Back in the days of Augusto Mateus & Associados, he often had lunch at O Madeirense and so it's with pleasure that he goes back to see the owner, Manuel Fernandes, who has already given him a home remedy for his persistent cough - hot poncha - made worse by his recent visit to the José de Alvalade Stadium. Born a Sporting fan - his father, manager and first CEO of Sonape de Bullosa and Queiroz Pereira (later Galp), was vice-president of the club and organized the 1966 World Cup campaign, which allowed Augusto to have lunch with Pelé at the age of 6 - but raising a family of Benfica fans, he only managed to captivate one of his four grandchildren, 18-year-old Téo, half a dozen years ago, and together, with the Gamebox, they don't miss a home game. It's one of the moments that gives him pleasure, like the one he gets from helping his daughters Joana and Maria, together with his wife Maria do Carmo, to manage the extracurricular activities of the boys, aged between 7 and 18. He also takes pleasure from the trips he makes, from discovery. She always buys "a nice book" about the cities she visits and gets to know incredible places, like the hotel in Algiers that looks like it's straight out of her Tintin books. But he also asks ordinary locals who they like to listen to, and has found talents like Souad Massi. He enjoys the experiences that enrich him, such as seeing an opera in Italy, where the audience behaves just like at soccer, cheering, getting excited and even throwing planes out of the galleries. "And I can buy a book for 200 euros, which I wouldn't spend on a shirt," he confesses. We sit down at the table and the political conversation begins, with Augusto Mateus recalling that, in his time as a government official, it only took him 15 days to realize that the biggest opposition he had was from the PS itself, in whose government he was Minister of the Economy (under Guterres). He's not laughing, he's serious - in a Socialist government, the decisions of an independent were not always in line with what suited those who were party activists. But that never made him lose initiative and independence. We order steaks, beef and tuna, and the economist who could have been a doctor or an architect tells me why he is fluent in five languages: French, Portuguese, Italian, English and Spanish. In that order. "I always studied at the Lycée Français, I learned both languages at the same time and that makes me very agile," he tells me. His early interest in economics, particularly the Italian school, led him to this new language. And in the early 1980s, he joined a project that led him to Spanish: "It was the best magazine of Ibero-American thought, an initiative of the Institute for Ibero-American Cooperation and CEPAL, of the UN. It lasted until 1992 and I was the only Portuguese member, which gave me an advantage because I spoke several languages and I met the greatest figures in economics there." The initiative included names such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso or the Argentine Raúl Prebisch and made him travel around Latin America, standing out among the big names, bringing him the crowning glory of being 31 years old and Prebisch stopping to listen to him and, in the end, congratulating him on his performance. Reserved, but an excellent storyteller - one of those people you enjoy sitting down with and learning from - Augusto Mateus doesn't like to talk about himself. But he does tell us about his happy childhood in Lisbon's Praça Pasteur, and even how, at the age of four, he was dragged by his brother and carried an iron chair through the window of Mexicana, one of the feats he recalls with humor. He doesn't like routines or canteens, he gets bored with repetition and prefers to discover new things, enriching his mind. He describes himself as a "broadband" person, who really likes history: "Only those who come from afar go far, I hate those who are only present," he tells me. But this career path would have little impact on society and, at the age of 16, that was already a goal, to be able to change the world. "I often say that there are those who like lobster, those who only like lobster if they know they can eat it but others don't, and those, which includes me, who only like lobster knowing that everyone can have it on their plate." That's why, during the decades in which he taught, he always spread the word about everything he discovered with quality and tried to help students if they showed an interest in learning - he gave explanations at the ISEG bar, but also asked students, for example, to allow a Guinean colleague in the cooperation program, who was excellent in class but did badly in the exam because he was weak in Portuguese, to have more time in the tests. And he always chose not to dedicate himself exclusively to academia, because "you can't learn to swim out of water": to teach economics, he had to be in the real economy - which he did, whether in the research center he created at the university or in the consultancy he named after himself, focused on helping companies to have strategy, opportunities and better results, and which he sold to EY in 2017 as the largest in the country, with 30 professionals in competition with the Bank of Portugal (and with salaries of that level). He proved his success in his desire to have a useful profession, defined when he was still a teenager, when he chose Architecture - too individualistic - and Medicine - with too much risk and not enough ability to define success - in favor of Economics. Read the full article in the edition of NOVO on newsstands this Saturday, March 2. Joana Petiz