Carme Riera: “My son would stick shit in my books because he felt like they were taking his mother away from him.”

PalmFifty years after publishing his debut, I leave you, love, the sea as a pledge, the writer Carme Riera (Palma, 1948) has left in writing some reflections on literature in Thank you, a title dedicated to its readers and published by Edicions 62. The book also serves to reveal some lesser-known aspects about the author, such as that she began writing in Catalan thanks to Aina Moll, who finds that the censor's report on her first book "gets it pretty right" and that she is a big fan ofThe Simpsons.

I would never have imagined you seeing The Simpsons, much less paying homage to one of your books.

— I like them a lot, I think they make a brutally humorous critique, and sometimes when you look up the names of the characters, they sell you things about people you know or tributes like that. And this happened to me with Barbara Simpson, fromA white shadow.

Do you still see them now?

— Of course!

In Thank you It is clear that he has made literature his life.

— Well, it's been more of a way of life. If I had to make a living from literature, I'd be very thin [Laughs]. I've been a teacher all my life. Consider that authors, when we publish a book, only receive 10%, which is very little.

So you can't make a living from literature?

— Well, if you're someone very important, like Ken Follett... Maybe so, but nothing more. For me, literature has been a reason for living, but not a way to earn it.

And it all starts when she was little, with those stories she heard around her.

— I always say we're writers because of everything I felt as a child. I was already shy as a child, and that's why I used to listen behind doors, and all of this gave me that fantastic feeling of searching for words I didn't understand. When they said, "This woman is crying because the man is cheating on her," I didn't know what that meant, that whole cheating thing, and I asked for it. Back then, adults were one world and children were another, and people chatted and shared stories. It was incredibly interesting, fascinating, and the Mallorcan they used was beautiful, very rich.

In all this, a key figure was her godmother.

— Yes, there was a huge connection. Godmothers were very important; what they told you served as a link between the past and the present, although I think all of this has been lost. In fact, I heard a horrifying news story today: that teenage girls are entrusting their thoughts to artificial intelligence. This is horrifying.

What did her godmother confide in her? What did she talk to her about?

— Almost all the stories were like tales. For example, her father didn't want her to marry her then-boyfriend, and when she was about to confess—to Antoni Maura's brother, by the way—the confessor told her he wouldn't give her absolution if she didn't let him. Imagine how far his control over everything went!

And he left it?

— Of course, she left him and thought about becoming a nun, but they didn't let her either. And then she married another man, who was my grandfather.

"I am fortunate, in my opinion immense, to have two languages, which I know is not very popular here, among many Catalans, nor there, among many Castilians. But to me it seems like a luxury that I do not want to give up," he wrote to Thank you. It seems like she's defending herself against something, as if she feels challenged, so to speak.

— Yes, it always happens that there are people who would like me to defend only Catalan, or only Spanish, but I defend both languages. I'm on the border [Laughs]. Catalan should be promoted, of course. If we don't do it here, no one will. It's an extraordinary language for explaining things, as is Spanish, with which you can speak with Argentinians and Ecuadorians and... For me, seeing the world through languages is an enormous wealth.

Vox has asked the Balearic Parliament not to translate its deputies' speeches into Catalan.

— This is a huge blessing. I find it a lack of... I find it a bit doi. The interesting thing is precisely having both languages and having them work at the same time.

In the book, you talk a lot about your female readers, about those who outnumber you. Is this a suspicion or a certainty?

— One thing is certain. I've always connected much more with female readers. I hear that from the publisher, too, although I also have many very good readers, and I'm very grateful to them.

He also explains that during the Sant Jordi of 1975 when he had just left The garment, as she often says, while she sat waiting to sign books, I saw her son, who was still young, walk by with his kindergarten classmates. And that made them wonder if you're a bad mother, if "it's better than writing stories to have your children mentioned." Has sacrificing family life weighed heavily on you over the years?

— My eldest son, the one I say I saw that day, would stick things in my books because he felt they were taking advantage of my mother. Sometimes he even crossed out my manuscripts, because I was writing with him sitting on them. And I understand perfectly, all of this. I've had to make a lot of effort, and I've received a lot of reproaches because I didn't play with him as much as I should have, and I'm so sorry for that. But back then I was preparing for exams, and I was writing, and... Sometimes I've wondered if I should have gotten up from that table and left everything behind, and sometimes I don't know how I managed to do everything I did.

This Thank you appears alongside a special edition for the fiftieth anniversary of I leave you, love, the sea as a pledgeNow that you're back out there, do you still feel recognized?

— I hesitated over whether we should revise and update it, but the editor told me that if it had survived these fifty years, we should leave it as it was, and I found she was right. Now, I've noticed that there are words that appear, like guilt or morality, that are no longer used. They seemed to me to be terms from a bygone era, from another time, issues that no longer carry their weight today.

This edition features the prologue dedicated to him in the first edition by Guillem Frontera.

— And I'm very happy, very much so, but something terrible happened to me [Laughs]. I I left you… I dedicated it to my husband, and it seems that they removed the dedication a handful of editions ago. Since I hadn't noticed all these years, I just found out: the new edition doesn't include the original dedication either, and I had to ask the publisher to explain that it was because of this, that I wasn't the one who removed it! [Laughs].