Like the fans of a rockstar, more than a thousand people crowded a few days ago in front of the José Hernández room of the Book Fairto attend to the presentation of the latest book Arturo Pérez Reverte. Just a handful of the multitude of readers who follow his exciting stories around the world, in which wars play a fundamental role. In his most recent novel, “Revolution” (Alfaguara), violence becomes a source of knowledge and a brutal educator. There a young man with the same look as the Pérez Reverte of youth, joins the hosts of the mexican revolution, to assist in a conflict that does not concern or belong to him. The result is accelerated learning in the most important issues of life: friendship, power and the constant presence of death.
Whoever it was war correspondent in his first professional stage, is also one of the most prominent historical novelists in Spanish literature, with already classic books such as “The fencing teacher” or the saga of Captain Alatriste. Pérez Reverte is also a member of the Royal Spanish Academy and editor of the literary magazine Zenda.
“I do not intend to change the world with my novels, I do not want to do an apostolate, I want to tell stories in a fair way, so that it is the reader who decides to shape the world,” he explained in dialogue with NEWS. Here, the main moments of a talk in which the writer also spoke about the war, women and the lessons of age.
News: You were in Argentina for six months covering the Malvinas war when you were a correspondent. What memories did you have of that conflict?
Arturo Perez Reverte: I have indelible images that still move me, like seeing the Skyhawks fly low over the water, past the British fleet that was throwing everything at them. Even the English applauded them. I have a bitter taste from that war because it is not understood how you have mixed those heroes with a military junta made up of murderers and drunken psychopaths. Why not honor the memory of so many boys, who without any obligation and with rusty weapons and wet boots, fought as best they could. What do these heroes have to do with Galtieri or with ESMA. My great reproach to Argentina is that it has not known how to distinguish, it could not have a selective memory. It was a great injustice and that is terrible.
News: How did you see the Book Fair in the context of this Argentina in crisis?
Perez Reverte: He hadn’t been here for five years. This Fair makes me feel envious, because in Spain there is nothing like it. The one in Spain is a booksellers’ fair, while here it is a national cultural event. There are schools, children, people who pay to enter… and it’s not cheap! I am moved by how, despite everything, the Argentina that I love is still alive in those things.
News: Martin Garrett, the protagonist of “Revolución”, is a mining engineer who is involved in the Mexican revolution. What does that character have about you?
Perez Reverte: The story is not autobiographical but I give the character a way of seeing things that is mine. For me, violence was like an educational system. Violence is bad, but it is part of the world. In violence, the human being frees himself from that cocoon that he has become socially, comfort, education and good manners and returns to being what he always was, a rigorous son of a bitch. In the war I realized that what human beings are good or bad is a lie. And when you find out, you no longer see the world in the same way.
News: Russia’s confrontation against Ukraine poses a different scenario from past conflicts. Is it a remote control war?
Perez Reverte: All wars are the same, but it is true that technology has changed them. The danger of this new war is that so much image, so much video, dehumanizes it. It pushes her away rather than brings her closer. In addition, the war is no longer covered by journalists. We were a kind of link that connected the wretch who was there, with the world to which he showed the horror. The journalists are no longer there, because it is expensive. That qualified witness has disappeared. Now it’s like a video game. And everything is manipulable, nothing is reliable. That’s why big newspapers are needed. You may or may not agree with the people who make them, but they are a guarantee of credibility. There is a degradation that has no turning back. At my age, it’s all the same to me. I’m going to be 72.
News: You talk a lot about your age, does the passing of time weigh on you?
Perez Reverte: But without drama. It’s just that I’ve been very lucky. I left to travel the world at the age of 20, with a backpack and money from the newspaper. Adventures, pretty girls, friends. I had a very happy marriage, a daughter who has turned out very well for me. I have reached the age of 70 with professional success, in reasonable health, I have a sailboat that is my life and I sail. I am a republican, but I defend the current king of Spain because I think of Spain as a republic. And who will be the one to represent that republic? Sanchez? Shoemaker? They are a band of murdered all. So I prefer the king, who is a young, honest, balanced, calm guy and also handsome and pleasant as a person. So, me, Republican; I am a monarchist.
News: The women in your work have not been much investigated. How do they get along with the ideas of the new feminism?
Perez Reverte: I have Carlota, a feminist daughter, an underwater archaeologist, who has worked removing sunken ships. She and her mother are true feminists, they do an admirable job as women and they are breaking ground with their intelligence and lucidity. The great leaps of the human being, at least mine as a man, have been through women. They have acquired, over the centuries, analytical skills and intuitive intelligence. But another thing is the so-called “folkloric feminism” that feminists use as a pretext to apply inclusive language. Argentina has allowed itself to be completely invaded by that which poisons the real feminist cause. No one who has read one of my novels can say that I am macho. But I reject the opportunism that under the umbrella of feminism tries to make a political reckoning, carried out by ignoramuses. I am a professional writer, language is my work tool and it has to be perfect, clean. Anyone who threatens, disturbs and poisons my work environment deserves my contempt.
News: You have a lot of experience in transferring your works to the cinema or streaming. Do you usually agree with that passage?
Perez Reverte: I always like it because they pay me, and very well! I don’t feel responsible for the result. I sell them, collect them and goodbye.
News: What book of yours would you like to see in the library of the future?
Perez Reverte: I do not care. There will be no books in the library of the future. The books have 30 or 40 years left. I even give up myself. Before I read every night before going to sleep, now I watch a television series. This is it, it was, let’s live in the present.
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