The year 2017 was very difficult for Catalonia. An attack in the heart of Barcelona with an aftershock, hours later, in the coastal city of Cambrilsleft a balance of 16 dead, many more wounded and the conviction that any city could be an easy target for jihadist terrorism.
It was August and there was yet another shocking chapter to conclude that unforgettable year.
The declaration of the catalan independenceon October 27, put on the table, with all its consequences, the political crack that had affected the region for a long time and ended up marking with uncertainty and violence the climate of a very dark time for the Catalans.
To this exceptional situation he attributes, in part, Javier Fenceshis desire to transform into someone else and change his stories and the way of telling them.
Until then, the writer born in Cáceres in 1962 and considered one of the best living Spanish authors, had conquered readers with “self-fiction” texts, born from historical investigations of public and family situations. “Soldiers of Salamina” was his most applauded book, which was followed by “Anatomy of an instant”, “The impostor” and “The monarch of the shadows”among other novels and books of essays.
But in 2019, with the Planet Award, Cercas inaugurated another stage in his career. He not only changed his publishing label (until then, he was a writer for Penguin Random House, an editorial with which he continues to work) but also his style, themes and characters. Up to now, three books make up this “saga” (which is reluctant to be considered such) made up of the novels “Terra Alta”, “Independencia” and “El Castillo de Barbazul” (Tusquets). All three have the same protagonist. Melchor Marin, “a guy full of fury, pain, darkness, desire for revenge,” explains Cercas to NOTICIAS. Marín is not only a policeman with a difficult life – the son of a murdered prostitute, he spent several years in prison – he is also the “Mosso d’Escuadra” who killed four terrorists in Cambrils and from whom, for security reasons, nobody know the identity or whereabouts. Precisely, this anonymity is what allows Cercas to imagine that his mysterious character is actually the hero, admired throughout Spain, who prevented dozens of deaths on August 18, 2017.
Cercas has lived in Catalonia since his parents moved there when he was just a boy and he feels part of this Spanish region, crossed by conflicts of identity and language.
He spoke about his land a few days ago with NOTICIAS, in Buenos Aires, where he traveled to participate in the Book Fair. Also of the police, of good literature and of Melchor Marín, his character, with whom he says he is completely in love.
NEWS: Are your last three novels police?
Fences: I didn’t set out to write a police novel. What appears to me is a guy named Melchor Marín. A guy full of fury, pain, darkness, desire for revenge. That darkness, those desires for revenge were mine. Who has not felt these things is not a human being, he is a machine or a liar. After many pages, I realize that this guy is a policeman, he can only be a policeman.
NEWS: Do you feel that today you make a more popular literature?
Fences: I have had stupid prejudices about popular literature. He believed that good literature can only be secret, minority. It has never been like this. Don Quixote is the best book in the world and has been enormously popular. Shakespeare was popular. The best thing that can happen to literature is that it becomes popular again, relevant, that it says important things to people again. For literature to be as popular as it once was, it has to come out of the catacombs, the ghetto, it has to go to the street to break its face with everything and tell people that there are interesting things here.
NEWS: Was he criticized a lot for changing course?
Fences: Of course yes. And on top of that I won the Planeta Prize. But what does it matter.
NEWS: Did the character of Melchor Marín occur to you after the 2017 attacks?
Fences: No, it’s very curious. He appeared one day on the street. A phrase occurred to me. It is the first sentence of the second chapter: “He was called Melchor because the first time his mother saw him, just out of her womb and dripping blood, she thought he was just like a wise man. His mother was called Rosario and she was a whore”. And this character appeared to me. At a certain moment, I discovered that he was a police officer and very immediately I said to myself: “Ah, this is the character from the Cambrils attacks”. And I was able to attribute that character identity to him because we don’t know who he is.
NEWS: Did you know the policeman who confronted the terrorists in Cambrils?
Fences: His identity was hidden for obvious reasons and that for me was ideal. Nobody knows who he is yet. I know of people who know him. I know you’ve read the novels. I think I’ll meet him. I don’t know what effect that will have on me.
NEWS: In Argentina, since the dictatorship, the relationship between people and the police is complex. In Spain is it possible to imagine a police hero?
Fences: The more democratic a country is, the better the relationship with the police. The democratic quality of a country is measured by the relationship with the police, who are public officials; for the quality of the prisons, of the schools. When we left Franco’s dictatorship, the relationship was terrible, but today the police is one of the most highly valued classes by the Spanish. Which means that Spanish democracy is better than before.
NEWS: Did the global struggle in recent years against gender violence influence you so that this was a central theme in the Terra Alta novels?
Fences: This problem was not invented by #MeToo. It is as old as men and women. But only now do we realize that it is a problem. “Now” he means four days ago. Do you know how long the murders of women at the hands of their partners have been counted in Spain? Not even 20 years ago. Before it didn’t exist. It was called a “crime of passion.” It is a universal problem. It happens in the best democracies in the world. And we have realized that it is as if we had lived with a big elephant in the middle of the room. It is a central problem in all 3 novels. Melchor Marín is a character besieged by violence against his own women. This problem also serves to pose a fundamental problem: that of law and justice.
NEWS: How do you see Catalonia today, after the convulsions of 2017 and the attempted secession?
Close: Catalan society is divided and there are economic effects. Let’s see what happens in the long run. Taking people out is very easy, returning it is very complicated. Feelings are respectable, but democracy must also be respected. You have to respect laws and procedures. And there are people there who have not respected them, have acted in a very barbaric way, with the excuse that “we feel different”. We all feel different.
NEWS: The book “Patria”, by Fernando Aramburu, had the quality of showing the world what happened every day in the Basque Country when ETA was active. Is there a similar text in Catalonia that talks about what happened in these years?
Fences: I don’t think that “Patria” shows what happened every day. It is a version. The Basque Country thing happened 40 years ago. This is not over yet, it is still boiling. These novels of mine elliptically talk about that. But I don’t know if that’s the function of novels. I don’t know. I do not have the answer. That’s why I’m not a big fan of “Patria”, it’s too pedagogical. But from outside Spain, there has been a romantic reading of what happened in the Basque Country and what is happening today in Catalonia. The Catalans freeing themselves from the oppression of the Spanish. This is how these things have been romantically understood. And that’s an absolutely simplified version of the problem.
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