Oriol Pueyo is a student on the 3 ^rd year of the bachelor's degree programme in Business Administration and Management at Pompeu Fabra University and president of the UPF Entrepreneurship Society. For him, being one of the 10% of the Spanish population that suffers from dyslexia has involved making an extra effort in order to get into university.

- What is the mission of the UPF Entrepreneurship Society?

- Basically to help students see entrepreneurship as a career opportunity. For this reason, throughout the year we hold conferences with entrepreneurs who inspire young people to have ideas and with businesses and start-ups that teach
them tips for business.

- Are Catalan university students entrepreneurial?

- They find it quite hard, compared to students from the rest of the world. Here, most people want to end up working in a consultancy or a large company; therefore, entrepreneurship isn't considered an option.

- They also encounter added difficulties. What are they?

- In Spain it's very hard to get funding, but the real problem is our education system, which is very memory-based. This means that people only think about getting good grades and finding a good job, not going beyond the knowledge that they have been taught.

- Is the lack of entrepreneurship due to the fear of failure?

- Yes, but it's a fear induced by this system. In Spain, a 'fail' is seen as a failure. This makes engaging in business and not being successful a very serious issue. Conversely, I prefer the Anglo-Saxon way of thinking; they don't see failure as a problem, but an opportunity to learn.

- What can be done to change this view?

- On the one hand, there is a need for more useful tools and subjects with a view to entrepreneurship. The study programmes of universities should be more creative, and not so concerned with reproducing a series of memorized knowledge in an examination. On the other hand, the budget should be increased for units such as the UPF Business Shuttle that promote the entrepreneurial spirit among the university community.

"The study programmes of universities should be more creative, and not so memory-based"

- At the end of April, you represented the UPF Entrepreneurship Society at a ceremony in Parliament. What was your message?

- First, we asked for cooperation between universities to give more assistance to young entrepreneurs and to foster entrepreneurship from within the classroom. And secondly, we demanded better integration of dyslexics in the education system.

- In what way are they discriminated against?

- A dyslexic person concentrates their brain activities in the frontal and left parts of the brain, those that deal with the most creative reasoning. This means they need more time to process activities that require more analytical reasoning, such as reading, mathematics or memorizing. So, an education system that is as memory-based as ours automatically removes those who don't adapt to analytical reasoning. In fact, despite the fact that 10% of the Spanish population is dyslexic, very few reach University.

- Can a dyslexic person's more creative mentality be an opportunity for enterprising?

- We could say so. Dyslexics are people who have to make more of an effort to get through school. They are used to working full out. On the other hand, as they are more creative, they find it easier to come up with innovative ideas and put them into practice. But it is a question of extremes. In the United States, for example, 30% of entrepreneurs are dyslexic. But it is estimated that 50% of prisoners are too. You either do really well or really badly.