2023-10-31 18:29:50
UllastrellWho more who less, everyone has walked through a house full of family photographs that visitors observe from the dining room shelves. The writer Pep Puig (Terrassa, 1969) grew up under the gaze of Aunt Núria, who died when she was a teenager and who often interrogated her through the portrait of her godmother’s house. “In that image she looks serious, sad, and I wondered: “Where does my godmother store the pain of that death?”, explains Puig. Years later, the writer of novels like Life without Sara Amat (Proa, 2015) i The sea upside down (The Other, 2021) appropriated that photograph and merged it with two others: the portrait of her brother, who died at the age of 26, and that of a friend’s uncle who died in war when he was 17 years old. “All three share youth and injustice,” the writer emphasizes.
From this union has arisen If a bumblebee one afternoon in July (The Other), a short novel that talks about the end of childhood, the ability to dream and desertion in just over a hundred pages. Puig imagines a teenager who spends the summer at the home of his godmother, a shoemaker, when a stranger enters the shop. In the eyes of the protagonist, the man could very well be the grandfather who died in the war and who he never got to know but who has always been very present because of the portrait of the man in the dining room. Both the stranger and the missing grandfather are called Valentine, and it is from here that the young man lets his imagination run wild. “The game was central to the story. The boy has so much faith and so much desire that he is his grandfather, which maybe he is,” says Puig.
A fake detective story
The story of the young man and the outsider takes place in Serrall, an imaginary town inspired by Ullastrell, where the writer spent his summers as a child. “The father left the godmother at home and went back to Terrassa. Then the children’s mythical territory began with friends, the pool and football,” explains Puig from the entrance of the godmother’s house, which is now in sale “We played hide-and-seek, and crossing the corridors at night with dimly lit lanterns was quite an adventure. Now it’s impossible for a child to do that,” reflects the author. Ullastrell has also been the scene of inspiration for other Puig stories, such as that of Sara Amat, with which he won the Sant Jordi prize and was later made into a film. “The town had only one street with two sidewalks: one was where the children played, and the other was the one facing Montserrat and where all the shops were. Growing up meant going from one sidewalk to the other” , add.
The transition from childhood to adulthood, platonic loves and nostalgia are recurring themes in Puig’s stories, and here they also come to the fore. Through a false detective story, the writer explores them and also incorporates a deep anti-war view very adjusted to the current times, with Ukraine and Israel in full wars. “The one on the other side of the war is someone just like you, with the same fears and hopes. In wars there are no causes, there are interests at the service of a few. It is urgent to desert,” he emphasizes up This feeling of a deserter, “which is not easy to reach”, has also led him to write a novel for young people and another for adults – which is in the process of being created – on the same issue. “I served in the military and I saw comrades die. Nowadays with globalization we no longer believe many things – concludes Puig -. It is clear that behind the wars there are only the traps, lies and hypocrisy of the politicians”.
#wars #interests #urgent #desert